A Marketer's Guide to The Mattress Industry Introduction At one point or another, nearly everybody will need to buy a mattress. Of course, there are some parts of the world where their use isn’t ubiquitous — but for millions, perhaps billions of consumers there will come a point in their life when it’s time to go mattress shopping. They might be finally moving out, promoting their children from the cot to a bed, fitting out a furnished property as a landlord, or maybe just looking for something that offers more comfort and support. And buying a mattress is no trifling matter. The average person spends around one-third of their life asleep — typically 8 hours a day. A 10-year- old mattress could theoretically have supported a person for more than three whole years of continuous sleep. For most of us, this is more time than we’re likely to ever spend in front of our televisions or at the wheel of our cars — so, it makes sense that consumers take great care and consideration when picking out the mattress that’s right for them. But despite this, mattresses aren’t aspirational in the same way that other considered purchases are. Most consumers probably have a dream car they’d opt for if they could afford it but, while we all want a good night's sleep, mattresses don’t quite capture our collective imagination in the same way that other consumer products do. So, mattress brands have a unique challenge. How can they stay at the top of consumers’ minds, building a memorable brand proposition that sticks with them until they activate and enter the market for a mattress? How can marketing campaigns effectively prompt consumers to start thinking about an upgrade? How can marketers get consumers excited about their products? What must mattress brands do to win loyal customers that come back time and time again? Rest assured, we have the answers. In this guide, we’re going to break down how marketers can get the most out of their campaigns to gain an edge over competitors and identify the essential ingredients to building a successful mattress brand. 1 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry of Contents Introduction An Overview of the Mattress Category A. Vital Statistics On Market Size and Growth Mattress Marketing Recommendations A. Digital Marketing Tips B. Video Advertising Tips C. Social Media D. Out Of Home (OOH) Advertising Mattress Brand Case Studies A. Casper B. Nectar Sleep Conclusion What’s Next CHAPTER 01 CHAPTER 02 CHAPTER 03 P. 1 P. 4 P. 11 P. 24 P. 34 P. 36 Table of Contents 2 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 01 Chapter An Overview Of The Mattress Category 4 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry While there are other popular products for sleeping — such as hammocks, futons, and sleeping mats — the dominance of the mattress cannot be overstated. Book a room with a major hotel brand anywhere in the world and you’re guaranteed to find a mattress perched atop the bed frame. But, it wasn’t always like this. Since early humans wrapped themselves in insect-repellant grasses to fend off irritating bites while they , we’ve been concocting myriad ways to hit the hay. That might mean sleeping on an animal skin stuffed with leaves or dosing off on a communal Kang bed — — as the northern Chinese and Mongolians did, and occasionally still do. However, the mattress as we know it today didn’t really arrive until around the 18th century, while those with innersprings appeared even later in 1871. Invented by Berliner Heinrich Westphal, this new and improved mattress switched the wool, hay, or down feathers that had traditionally comprised mattress innards for metal coils. The “firm, springy sleep surface that was supportive and could withstand compression.” slept some 77,000 years ago “heated stone platforms” result was a An Overview Of The Mattress Category Chapter 01 5 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 6 Source: Google Patent Images A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry These types of beds weren’t popular initially, but, by the 1930s, they really started to take off. Nowadays they’re still popular but newer innovations have since taken their share of the market, too. After the Second World War, beds in America started to grow in size. Before this point, Americans had been perfectly content with twin or double beds — but with the beginnings of post-war confidence, Americans were encouraged to have it all. Bigger houses had bigger bedrooms and they needed bigger beds! As such, the era of the king- and queen-sized beds began. While NASA was developing memory-foam technology for use in the aviation industry during the 1970s, a groovy new trend was sweeping across the USA: Waterbeds. “Fueled in part by marketing that focused on the supposed sex appeal of the mattress” their popularity soared into the 80s when they made up 20% of all mattress sales — a figure that has since dropped to around only 5%. 7 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry In the 1980s, NASA finally released its memory-foam technology to the public and the first memory-foam mattresses entered the market in the early 90s. By 2020, they held the largest share of the market — a feat attributed to their easy availability, lower prices, and heavy usage by people suffering from orthopedic issues. The mattress category today offers consumers more choice than ever with hybrid styles, latex, and air beds also vying for a slice of the market alongside innerspring and memory foam. In the 2010s, a host of new challengers entered the market with the e-commerce-fueled “mattress-in-a-box” — making the process of buying one easier than ever before. Next, let’s take a look at the state of the global mattress market in 2022. 8 Vital Statistics On Market Size and Growth The global market value of the mattress industry is estimated to have — and is slated to keep growing to reach $72.9 billion by 2029. A number of factors are influencing this expansion. In the Asia-Pacific region, rapidly growing housing units and an increase in single-occupancy homes are driving demand. On top of this, “a significant shift in consu mers' perceived notion of mattresses beyond durable goods to an indicator of social status” is shaking up the opportunities on offer in this category, while also transforming how consumers interact with these brands. In North America, the market is “distinguished by a strong consumer preference for luxury and high-quality goods” — however, purchasing decisions are also heavily influenced by the products’ lifespan. In short, consumers are willing to spend, but they’re also hoping it’s a one-off purchase that should see them through to the foreseeable future. reached $50.6 billion in 2022 $50.6 billion 2022 $72.9 billion 2029 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 9 Tourism is also a surprising factor in the growth of the mattress sector As already stated, even if you’re traveling to a region where it's common to sleep on hard surfaces with only a mat or futon for support, hotels are almost all likely to be stocked with mattresses. The growth of tourism and the construction of new hotels across the world is good news for mattress brands. Not only does this mean larger orders, but more frequent ones — while single consumers may only change their mattresses every 9-10 years, hotels do so “every 5-6 years”. A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry King-sized Mattresses USA Queen-sized Mattresses USA 10 41.1% 37% 2010 2018 17.8% 10.2% 2010 2018 On the topic of replacement cycles, the amount of time it takes before consumers feel they need to replace their mattresses is falling. In 2017, the average expected lifespan of a mattress for the first time since 1996. This trend is being driven by younger consumers aged 18 - 35, who replace their mattresses on average every 5.7 years, in comparison to the 12.1 years that those over 56 do. One final trend that defines the current mattress market is that — in America at least — consumers are demanding bigger beds. Between 2010 and 2018, the number of queen-sized mattresses shipped . On top of this, the even-bigger California-King-sized is growing in popularity. fell below 10 years grew from 37% to 41.1%, while king-sized mattresses grew from 10.2% to 17.8% A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 02 Chapter Marketing Recommendations 11 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry In this chapter, we’ll dive deeper into some recommendations for those looking to increase brand awareness and audience engagement for their mattress brand through advertising channels. Before we begin, let’s recap some of the key challenges that mattress brands face. Over the course of this chapter, we’ll return to these challenges and how each marketing channel can play its role in overcoming them. You’ll need to build brand awareness in clever ways to break through a wall of indifference and plant your brand in their mind so it’s ready to sprout when the right time comes. Individual consumers are rarely in the market for a mattress. consumers make up their minds within 2 weeks Buying a mattress is a big, important purchase. But it isn’t aspirational, or fun — like buying a car. Once they decide they need one, you only have a short window of time to strike. In fact, surveys suggest that most . Once they’ve bought it, as long as they’re satisfied, it could be 10 years or more until they’re back on the market for another. Getting your message to the right customer, at the right time, and using the right channel is essential! Getting a good night's sleep is vital for just about everybody, so consumers aren’t going to leap into a purchase lightly. In order to get consumers to purchase your mattresses, you’ll need to gain their trust and prove yourself against tough competition. Most challenging of all, despite being so important, consumers won’t be eager to think about this purchase until they’re actually in the market for one. And like buying insurance, consumers probably won’t be too excited to be shopping for a mattress. Marketing Recommendations 1/ 2/ 3/ Chapter 02 12 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 13 Digital Marketing Tips Right Message, Right Time, Right Channel After a consumer has bought a mattress, they’ll hope to get around . So when a mattress brand is targeting consumers, they have an insufferably long period of time to build brand awareness but only a short window of opportunity to actually get them to make a purchase. Once upon a time, marketers could rely on cookies and, in particular, third-party cookies to track consumers as they browsed the web and strike with their ads at the most opportune moment. This could be used most effectively to retarget consumers with ads displaying products they had shown an interest in. However, and their use is now much more regulated than it once was, limiting their effectiveness. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean you can’t use other methods to make sure you’re products are displayed in front of the most relevant consumers at a time when they’re thinking about making a purchase. seven to ten years out of it third-party cookies have been phased out by Google Your first-party cookies are still extremely valuable in learning how users interact with your site and could help you build a streamlined user experience to improve conversion rate. And you can still advertise across the web on targeted sites where you’re likely to find potential new customers. On top of this, a robust SEO strategy targeting the types of queries that consumers might enter when they’re thinking about replacing a mattress could be a winning strategy. Because it’s an important purchase, most consumers research and shop around. As we’ve already mentioned, this process takes around 2 weeks and around to get this research done. 41% of consumers use an internet search engine A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 14 This is the perfect moment to introduce your brand. While it makes sense to build a content strategy around pre-purchase inquiries, it’s also important to think beyond transactional keywords and create content that could get your brand in there before consumers even realize they need a mattress. Whether that relates to sleep problems, moving house, or making a home more eco-friendly. This thinking extends to platforms like YouTube, too! Mattress brand Casper has more than 80,000 views for their video This brings us nicely to our next section: video advertising. explaining how to put a duvet cover on A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 15 Video Advertising Tips Don’t let consumers sleep through your ads! Advertising on TV or streaming platforms and on-demand services gives you the ability to reach huge numbers of people. The chances are that only a small percentage of this audience will actually be thinking about replacing their mattress (or in a position where they’re buying their first) — so an effective TV spot needs to play more than one role. Firstly it must be memorable, delivering a strong brand proposition or communicating your core brand values in a way that sticks with consumers — so that the name of your brand springs to mind the next time they’re struggling to get to sleep or when their furnishing their first home and wondering where to start. A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 16 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry Reputation Customization Innovation Materials Comfort Support Size Warranty At this stage, it’s important to identify a core message that really sums up your brand and its products. Consumer research revealed that were considered the most important features of a mattress. But since preferences can vary so much, it might be best to appeal to consumers’ emotions rather than getting technical. Are your mattresses so comfortable you’ll be asleep in seconds? Are they easy to order online and conveniently delivered in a box? Maybe you want to empower your audience and focus on how much can be achieved after a good night's sleep or This is typical for lots of other products and services — before you can convince consumers to open their wallets you need to first introduce your brand, its offering, its identity, and its values. Brand awareness campaigns are crafted with this intention in mind. comfort and support how integral a bed is to a relationship y o u r b r a n d Brands can run a campaign like this and across the regions they have targeted — once it gets to a healthy level, they can then switch track and lead with specific offers or showcase features in a move that is designed to activate those consumers who have now been made aware of the brand in question. The other role that an advertisement must accomplish is to successfully activate those consumers who are already considering purchasing a mattress, providing the key details needed to drive them to make a purchase with your brand. This is where you can include price points, sales, guarantees, and other purchase-orientated details. measure awareness levels 17 For mattress brands, however, it can be an effective strategy to wrap both of these goals into a single campaign. A survey from BedTimes magazine found that , suggesting that it couldn’t hurt to get straight to the point and skip the intros. A successful example is Nectar Sleep’s ad: It combines price points and key features — such as a 365-day trial period — with a wry and memorable message about untrustworthy advertising that helps establish a strong brand identity while also delivering a call to action for viewers to check out the brand’s many favorable reviews. a recognizable brand name was only important to 17% of American consumers Don’t Trust Commercials A good tip is to treat mattresses like insurance. Consumers don’t necessarily take pleasure in shopping around for a mattress, but ultimately they know it’s vitally important. Just as with insurance advertising, don’t get bogged down in the details and the boring stuff. Remind consumers what they can achieve with your product, empower them, or make them laugh — give them a memorable jingle, a recognizable mascot or spokesperson, and reassure them that with your brand they can get back to living their life to its fullest in no time. A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 18 Social Media No brand can afford to skip social media — it’s a powerful tool that can help you build connections with consumers, foster a community around your brand and promote your products through effective word-of-mouth marketing. As already mentioned, there are some tricky challenges when building your mattress brand — making your brand memorable, building trust, and overcoming indifference. But social media can be leveraged to help you overcome all of these obstacles. A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry 19 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry When it comes to building trust, you can get a little help from consumer reviews. They’re an important decision-making factor for “45% of consumers” when researching mattresses. A social media platform like Facebook or Instagram can be a great hub for showcasing your most positive reviews and telling customer stories. According to research, Gen Z and Millennials — those very 18 - 35-year-olds who renew their mattresses more frequently than older age cohorts — “prefer brands that are ‘real and organic’ and not ‘perfect and well-packaged.’” While your video ads for TV or streaming platforms should likely remain polished and professional, social media certainly doesn’t require the same level of production value. In fact, if you want your brand to come across as authentic, keep things decidedly un-polished — or better yet, tap into user-generated content (UGC). If your customers aren’t forthcoming with content about just how much they love their brand-new mattress, you can encourage them to share with competitions and rewards. Social media can also be a fantastic tool for building a memorable brand and overcoming the indifference you might face from consumers who aren’t yet on the market for a mattress. Platforms like , Instagram, and Twitter are great places to create an engaging brand identity via bitesize snippets of content that are typically inexpensive to produce but can help get your brand in consumers’ heads. TikTok 20 A Marketer's Guide to: The Mattress Industry Many brands, like Casper for example, use humor — but it isn’t the only method available. In fact, you have a plethora of options to choose from depending on the type of identity you want to curate — embrace on TikTok, share pictures of dogs and cats bundled up on your beds, or partake in some activism and use these channels to #cosycore promote causes that your brand supports