Like the return of the leaves on the trees, birds building nests, and daffodils appearing, Brits will light their (BBQ) fires, buy garden furniture and set themselves to carry out do-it-yourself (DIY) chores in spring. With two May Bank holidays around the corner and the trend set by a strong Easter bank holiday performance, now is the time to spare a thought for your home & garden ad groups.
Easter Bank Holiday
Homeware sales rose steeply with a 9.1 per cent increase in March, reports the Retail Bulletin. It says the traditional Easter DIY season fuelled a surge for many stores, with textiles & furniture performing particularly well.
The Independent also mentions a strong Easter, pointing out that Easter Monday was the fifth busiest day for online retailers so far in 2010 with visits increasing by 3.6 per cent between 2009 and 2010, much of the growth coming from department stores and house & garden retailers.
Online driving offline advertising
In the same article, Anita Manan, senior analyst at Experian, mentions that it is likely online promotions helped in driving shoppers to stores. I reckon this happens in general when pure DIY advertisers use paid search, but it is something that is annoyingly difficult to proof. If I were to buy something expensive in a DIY store, I would do some online price comparison and then go to the store and buy it so that I could get on with whatever job my ageing house was throwing at me.
Spring Focus Areas
In early spring our search data suggests people are searching for garden furniture and anything DIY-related. The demand for BBQs also starts to peak in June.
Microsoft Advertising Intelligence, a keyword research and optimisation tool, gives further insights about who is searching. ‘Garden furniture’, ‘DIY’ and ‘BBQ’ are the most sought after by people in the age group 35-49. ‘BBQ’ has a close runner up in the age group 25-34 whereas ‘garden furniture’ is favoured second-best by people between 50-64 years old.
Women search a bit more often for BBQs than men, men search a bit more often for ‘DIY’ (but not by that much) whereas women seem to look much more often for garden furniture than men, according to our data.
All graphs represent historical adCenter data.
BBQ summer?
But what will the weather be like? Over the last few days I have heard reports that this summer will be ‘a BBQ one’ and you know what, I am certain this is true. I did not grow up in Great Britain and so, as a relative outsider, I have observed that here every summer is a BBQ one. Even if it is only 10 degrees and the sky is grey - the gazebo, the garden furniture and last but not least, the BBQ will come out.
So dwell no longer and make sure your ad groups are ready for the seasonal spring surge in search!
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