Father’s Day Statistics: How to Make the Most of Your Marketing

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Maddie Tovar Written on May 30th, 2023, Last updated on October 10th, 2023

Father’s Day is a global celebration that acknowledges and appreciates the love and contributions of fathers and father figures. It presents an excellent opportunity for brands to connect with people through relatable experiences and emotions. The purpose of Father’s Day is to honour fatherhood, the bond between fathers and their children, and their impact on society. That’s why we’ve gathered a bunch of Father’s Day statistics you can use to leverage up your marketing. 

Here’s a breakdown of Father’s Day statistics from 2022:

All Father’s Day statistics gathered from Truly

  • Retail spending on Father’s Day estimated to be £951 million
  • The average gift budget increased from £20 to £24
  • 81% of dads saw their children, up from 50% in 2021
  • A quarter of Brits spent Father’s Day at a restaurant or pub
  • Children in Belfast splurged the most, £35.33 on each gift
  • 30% of those polled treated their dad to food or alcohol 
  • 20% of children treated their dad’s to new clothes
  • 12% opted for the trusted gift card or voucher

The redefinition of traditional gender norms by the gender-fluid influence of Generation Z has prompted discussions on the concept of modern masculinity.

Outdated phrases like “man-up” are being replaced with calls for emotional openness, self-care, and well-being. While the gift and greetings industry has been slow to address stereotypes associated with gender norms, Father’s Day presents an opportunity to initiate change.

According to GlobalData, retailers are being criticized for not seizing the potential presented by shifting societal perceptions of gender issues and diverse families. However, the range and variety of ideas for Father’s Day gifts are considerably lacking compared to the efforts made by brands for Mother’s Day.

Brands are missing out on existing demand and failing to convey appreciation for the significant role fathers play in society, as noted by GlobalData.

Top tips to leverage your marketing for Father’s Day:

Offer Special Promotions and Discounts

One of the most effective ways to leverage your marketing for Father’s Day is to offer special promotions and discounts to your customers. This could be in the form of a sale on your products or services, a discount on gift cards, or a free gift with a purchase. 

By offering special promotions and discounts, you can attract more customers and encourage them to buy gifts for their fathers. 

Plus, offering discounts and rewards makes shoppers feel that their custom is valuable, which can lead to increased customer loyalty in the long run. 

And with the chance of selling to an existing customer reaching 60-70% vs 5-20% for a new customer, customer loyalty is crucial. 

Create Father’s Day Gift Guides

Plenty of consumers approach Father’s Day not knowing what they’re going to buy as a gift and searching for inspiration. The good news is that they’re already looking online with a view to buying products – you need to make sure the products they buy are yours. 

A simple way to leverage your marketing for Father’s Day is to create a gift guide specifically for fathers. This could be in the form of a blog post, a downloadable PDF catalogue, or a dedicated page on your website. 

You can feature popular gift ideas, including your products and services, and provide information about each item to help customers make informed decisions. 

Creating a gift guide can help consumers that are still searching for the perfect gift and point them in the direction of your products. 

To make your content even more engaging, consider creating a Father’s Day gift quiz, in which consumers answer questions that direct them to the most suitable products for their needs. 

Leverage Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool that you can leverage to reach your target audience for Father’s Day. You can create social media campaigns that promote your products and services and encourage customers to share them with their friends and family. 

You can also create special social media posts and graphics to share on Father’s Day. By using social media, you can reach a large audience and increase brand awareness, especially if you take advantage of Father’s Day-related hashtags.

Utilising user-generated content is another excellent way to interact with customers, build trust, and promote your products. Where possible, share customers’ social media posts (with their permission, of course) as a form of social proof to help increase trust from new customers.  

Paid Media

Father’s Day searchers begin weeks in advance and are most active the week prior to the holiday. Follow the tips below to make the most of paid media’s reach in the run-up to this retail calendar staple. 

Screenshot of ‘Fathers Day’ trend over the past five years. 

Leverage a Multi-Channel Strategy

Multi-channel targeting lets you reach your audience through various platforms and channels. You can run campaigns on two channels, like display and programmatic audio, or even more, including video and connected TV. 

This approach helps you expand your reach by capturing users who may not be active on all channels.

By combining different channels, you can reach a higher percentage of your target audience and build a consistent brand story throughout the customer journey. The goal is to ensure your message is cohesive across all channels, so don’t change the campaign too much across each channel.

You can then use retargeting to show online ads to people based on their past actions on the web. Retargeting is an effective way to re-engage users who have shown interest in your brand and move them closer to a conversion. With cross-channel retargeting, you can increase the chances that your message reaches your audience repeatedly.

Capture Shoppers’ Attention in the Right Moments

Contextual advertising is now powered by advanced technology like machine learning and AI, making it more efficient and effective than ever before. This type of advertising focuses on the context of the ad display so that ads are shown to users based on the content they are viewing at that moment. 

By using keywords, website content, and other metadata, contextual advertising algorithms ensure that ads are placed in a relevant environment, which can increase the chances of users being receptive to the ad.

For instance, a restaurant brand could use target phrases such as “Mother’s Day activities,” “brunch spots,” or “best restaurants” in their contextual advertising campaign to show ads alongside articles about Mother’s Day activities. 

By doing so, the brand could reach users who are in the right mindset to consider dining options for the holiday.

It’s much easier to convince consumers with existing purchase intent to buy your product or book your experience. 

Performance Max Campaigns

Best Practices 

  • Add at least 5 versions of text assets (4 headlines, 5 descriptions) to your asset group.
  • Add at least 5 versions of image assets (including 1200×1200) to your asset group.
  • Use as many assets as possible.
  • Use relevant audience lists as signals to speed up machine learning ramp-up.

Segment your Feed 

Add custom labels in your Shopping feed to signal which products are for ‘Father’s Day’. Use the labels to segment these products into a separate campaign with a separate budget to ensure maximum coverage. 

Best Sellers Report

Use Google Merchant Centre’s ‘Best Seller Report’ to identify the products and brands that would benefit from increased budget or bids. 

Ad Extensions

If you are running specific promotions on Father’s Day products make sure you have these in your merchant centre (go to Marketing > Promotions), this will ensure they are highlighted in your Shopping ads. Make sure to do this in advance (you can set a start and end date) as there is an approval process. You can also add promotion extensions within Google ads, these can be set at the campaign or account level.

Audience Signals

Creating an audience for Father’s Day is an important factor in ensuring that you are targeting the right people for your products. You can input first party data such as email lists, keywords around Father’s day gifts (top performing search terms/keywords from previous years) and interests/purchase intentions.

Asset groups

If you are going to target an audience specifically around Father’s day it is better to create an asset group within an already established PMax campaign, this means historical performance data can be utilised and you can avoid the learning period of a new campaign. It is best to do this sooner rather than later to give it time to collect data and for performance to ramp up ready for the peak buying period. Add promotion assets and specific audiences to the new asset group to ensure ads are as targeted and relevant as possible.

 Budget and bidding

Ensure your PMax campaign has an adequate budget so you do not lose out on any potential customers, also you may wish to decrease your tROAS to push the campaign to be more aggressive in its bidding and to search for new audiences.

Father’s Day marketing example: Durex

Campaign concept: Durex’s Father’s Day campaign embraces diversity and honors dads and father figures of all orientations and identities. They extend their warm wishes to gay dads, bi dads, straight dads, pan dads, trans dads, and everyone else. Whether you’re a biological dad, adoptive dad, or even a proud dog dad, Durex wants to wish you a joyful Father’s Day through this inclusive campaign.

Father’s day marketing example: Kate Spade

For those unfamiliar with the brand, Kate Spade is primarily focused on women’s clothing. As a result, their target audience doesn’t include fathers. To indirectly reference their menswear line, Jack Spade, they incorporated it seamlessly into their email rather than being overtly explicit about it.

Technical: Measure the Impact of Your Fathers Day Marketing

Measuring the success of your campaigns, both online and offline, is important because it helps you determine the impact of your efforts and make changes on the go. 

It perhaps goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway! Be sure to have robust tracking in place and consider varying attribution models to fully understand the impact of your Father’s Day activities.

By monitoring performance, you can see which parts of your marketing process are creating the most value and use that information to make smart budget decisions that will boost the profitability of your digital campaigns.

That way, you’ll stop wasting money on ineffective measures and be able to channel your budget to marketing methods more likely to yield results. 

Conclusion

In summary, Father’s Day holds significant meaning for people worldwide and presents a valuable opportunity for businesses to engage with their customers. This global celebration recognizes and appreciates the love and contributions of fathers and father figures, offering brands a chance to establish meaningful connections through relatable experiences and emotions. By honouring fatherhood, the bond between fathers and their children, and their societal influence, businesses can create impactful Father’s Day marketing campaigns.

By leveraging Father’s Day statistics insights, you can develop products specifically designed for the occasion, resonating with your audience and maximizing the reach of your marketing efforts. If you’d like help with your paid media activity, feel free to reach out to us! 🙂

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Maddie Tovar Hiya, I’m Maddie 👋 Brand Marketing Executive at Bind Media. Started my career within PPC four years ago, however, did a 180 and now my day-to-day consists of SEO, content creation and social! Fun fact: I’ve got an obsession with making weirdly specific playlists on Spotify and talk in TikTok references only.

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