How a major laptop brand educated and inspired audiences for Back to School.
By the numbers
+33%
Impressions compared to goal for Gen Z
+170%
ROAS compared to the previous year for Gen Z
+82%
Clicks compared to goal (primary KPI for parents)
$26.06
ROAS from affiliates for parents
Brands know they have to maintain a full-funnel presence to reach their goals. But what happens when your funnel is split between two unique shoppers who both play a part in deciding what to buy?
This is the challenge of the back-to-school season, where Gen Z students and their parents share shopping goals but have different interests and shopping behaviors.
At Best Buy, we know that Gen Z students influence back-to-school shopping lists. However, their parents make the ultimate decision when it’s time to check out.
When a leading mobile computing brand partnered with us for Back to School, we leaned into this deep audience insight for more tailored activations, leading to incredible results.
Challenge
One smooth shopping process
In order to reach both Gen Z students and parents where they are, we needed a dual-audience strategy and a cohesive funnel. Our KPIs, channel mix and units needed to align with the varying roles these two audiences play to drive back-to-school sales.
Solution
Insightful activations across the funnel
Our solution was to activate a full-funnel Back to School campaign for mobile computing based on key insights about Gen Z students and their parents. Using our first-party data and key partnerships, we were able to segment both audiences and create authentic interactions that matched their interests.
For Gen Z, we needed to inspire and encourage awareness using top-of-funnel tactics. Reaching parents required us to focus on middle- and bottom-of-funnel strategies that would lead to clicks and sales.
How we related to Gen Z.
- Embraced a video-first approach.
- Worked with new and historical partners for more audience segmentation, high-impact units and interactive capabilities.
- Focused on shoppable media to shorten the path to purchase.
How we reached parents.
- Leveraged programmatic to reach shoppers at scale and drive efficiencies.
- Created high-impact display placements through key partnerships.
- Authentically promoted laptops where we know parents were in-market and harnessed affiliate relationships to highlight deals.
Activation
Scoring higher across KPIs
With fine-tuned insights and targeting, this campaign for Back to School over-delivered on the primary KPIs with both students and parents. For students, social campaigns performed best on Snapchat and TikTok, with the latter driving 77% of total social engagement. With parents, the campaign brought in an additional 3.7 million clicks above goal, flying past the primary objectives and leading to impressive sales.
Channel mix for Gen Z
- CTV
- Digital Video (Off-site)
- Social Video (Paid)
- Streaming Audio
Channel mix for parents
- Streaming Audio
- Display
- Social (Paid) & Affiliates
Staying plugged into key drive times and planning ahead can lead to A+ results for our brand partners—just like it did for this Back to School campaign. No matter the time of year, we can help you leverage our first-party data and deep customer relationships to reach the perfect audience for your brand.
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