Digging for explosive products, what is most popular during the overseas graduation season?

What explosive products are popular for overseas graduation season?

Every spring and early summer, there is a wave of graduation season consumer frenzy both domestically and abroad. On TikTok, a graduating female student shared her consumption list to celebrate her graduation with the public:

Source: T=-Tk-_okg

White dress for $68

Wig for $323

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High heels for $116

Earrings for $10

…

Adding it all up, in order to celebrate her graduation and take good graduation photos, she spent a total of $961!

Graduation is a highlight moment in everyone’s life, and both students and parents value it and are willing to spend for it.

What are overseas consumers buying during this graduation season? What marketing opportunities do cross-border sellers have?

Combining TikTok #Graduation keyword video data and NRF’s survey report, graduation season marketing is mainly focused on two directions: graduation outfits and graduation gifts.

Marketing Scene 1: Graduation Outfits

For many people, graduation season is a very important moment in their lives. People usually spend a lot of time and energy choosing the most suitable outfits to show their respect for the graduation ceremony and to showcase their personality and style.

Popular Selection: Pure White Dress

Wearing a white short dress at the graduation ceremony is an American tradition, and white symbolizes purity and innocence. Wearing white at graduation symbolizes the beginning of new things. At the same time, wearing a white dress can make girls look more elegant and confident at the graduation ceremony. Many graduating girls can be seen wearing white dresses at high school and college graduation ceremonies.

TikTok fashion blogger @robynpridmore released a graduation-themed fashion video in April, in which she showed off the upper body effect of a white sleeveless dress, bringing her 7.5 million views, 690,000 likes, and 65,000 collections.

Source: T=-Tk-_okg

This white sleeveless dress has a simple and fashionable design that can highlight the curves of women very well. At the same time, the folds at the waist add a sense of layering, making the whole dress look more exquisite. Whether paired with high heels or flat shoes, it can showcase an elegant temperament.

Netizens in the comment section have asked about the source of this dress, with some saying they have bought or plan to buy the same product, and others suggesting that the blogger should promote graduation season dress-up with black high heels.

Photo: T=-Tk-_okg

Marketing Suggestions

01 Release a Graduation Season Dress-up Guide

The graduation season dress-up topic is hot on TikTok, with #graduationdress tag views reaching as high as 375.4 million, and many netizens looking for dress-up inspiration on it.

Merchants can release a graduation season dress-up guide, reaching consumers through social media, email, and SMS, among other means, to attract more audiences and strengthen consumer stickiness.

Recommended Tool:

The SHOPLINE SmartPush tool has now integrated AI tools and can help merchants quickly write a graduation season dress-up guide in combination with products, making email writing easy and effortless. It also comes with a variety of exquisite templates that can be directly applied, freely adjusted, and make emails more visually appealing. Moreover, SmartPush can achieve personalized push for customers with different characteristics.

Use AI to generate email content in SmartPush

02 Collaborate with Internet Celebrities (KOL)

Viral videos featuring Internet Celebrities on social media may become a guidepost for consumers’ enthusiastic shopping.

By finding Internet Celebrities who are vertical and have a large number of fans, and collaborating with them to promote products, you can not only use their influence to get popular products into more fans’ shopping carts, but also make more users actively search, browse and learn about your brand, achieving the dual purpose of promotion and marketing.

The women’s clothing brand Lulus, which specializes in light dresses, collaborated with multiple Internet Celebrities on TiKToK, allowing them to share white dress outfit ideas for graduation season on the internet. For example, the outfit video with @smoothjaazz on April 16th had 3.6 million views, 640,000 likes, and 55,000 favorites; the outfit video with @hannahncortez on April 27th had a cumulative view count of 2.2 million, 420,000 likes, and 49,000 favorites.

Photo: T=-Tk-_okg

Recommended tool:

The “Alliance Distribution Tool” can help sellers efficiently launch alliance distribution. It automatically generates recruitment landing pages and quickly initiates recruitment; provides various commission methods to help sellers flexibly set distribution strategies and achieve multiple cooperation modes; after determining the promoted product, you can generate distribution links with just one click to improve distribution efficiency, fast and convenient.

Marketing Scenario 2: Graduation Gifts

Graduation season means that students are about to leave campus and start a new stage of life. At this time, teachers, parents and other elders will give a graduation gift as a reward for their children’s completion of their studies and a blessing for their future, and classmates and friends will also give gifts to each other, expressing gratitude and blessings to each other.

According to the latest survey data from NRF, in 2023, 36% of consumers plan to give graduation gifts, with an average expenditure of $116 per person. The four most popular graduation gifts are: cash (52%), greeting cards (38%), gift cards (33%), and electronic products (15%).

Image: NRF

Popular Product: Customized Commemorative T-Shirt

Customized commemorative T-shirts are a common souvenir during graduation season. These T-shirts often feature information such as the school, class, graduation year, and student names, to commemorate the student’s time and achievements in school.

TikTok clothing brand ashesvault launched a graduation-themed T-shirt set during graduation season, featuring sparkling fonts with graduation year, school or class name, and through showcasing the printing process of the T-shirt slogan**, ashesvault received 8.4 million views and 360,000 likes.**

Source: T=-Tk-_okg

This customized T-shirt set is priced at $120 on the ashesvault official website, including a sweatshirt and a skirt, supporting customized text, size, and color, and containing three colors of sparkling fonts. However, on Amazon, a normal customized T-shirt is priced at $20.

Many netizens in the video comment section expressed their willingness to purchase, with some asking if they could order black and gold styles, and some wanting to customize styles for the parents of graduates.

Image: T=-Tk-_okg

On TikTok, in addition to customized T-shirts, DIY handcrafted flower decorations filled with cash, gift cards, jewelry, and graduation dress-up dolls are also popular gifts.

Marketing Suggestions

01 Launch personalized gift solutions:

Overseas consumers’ demand for personalized custom-made goods is increasing year by year, with more than half of consumers in surveys indicating a preference for custom-made gifts.

For merchants, launching customized goods can create differentiation advantages in fierce category competition, establish competitive barriers, and help increase brand premium.

Customizable product template

Recommended tool:

“Product Customization” function plug-in can meet the diverse needs of sellers in customization business, taking clothing as an example:

● Provide exclusive customization templates for different categories, accurately fitting product attributes, supporting merchants to apply with one click, and helping to improve store conversion rate.

● Customization content style is rich and customizable effects can be previewed: logos, patterns, and text can be customized, and a variety of local font effects and fluorescent effects can be added to make personalized custom-made goods more “unique”.

● Support customized sets, set up family sets for sale (father, mother, and child), and increase the unit price.

02 Launch graduation season themed gift cards

Gift cards are a very convenient gift choice that allows the recipient to choose their own preferred gift, while also saving the gift giver time and effort.

Launching graduation season themed gift cards, printing graduation blessings to increase the emotional value of the gift card. Merchants can also carry out various marketing activities around gift cards, such as big wheel lottery, social media comment draws, etc.

Recommended tools:

The SHIPLINE platform has a dedicated “gift card” function, which supports sellers in creating and listing gift card products. Sellers can also use various marketing activities such as the “lucky turntable” and “membership system” to promote gift cards.

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