Tips for your January Sales

It is no news for most retailers that January and February are typically the slowest months of the year. Consumers had been spending a lot during the months leading up to the new year, so they are not exactly excited about spending even more. Not to mention the popular new year's resolution of saving up, which typically is a short lived promise, but does affect the first few months of the new year.

Consequently, most businesses see a significant drop in their numbers during this period, but it does not have to be the case for you. We have gathered some tips that can help turn the odds in your favour.

Extend the success of holidays for the new year

Analyse your sales during November and December. Are there products that shoppers showed interest in, but didn’t purchase? Consider deploying retargeting tactics such as ads and personalised emails concentrated on these categories.

What about the products that customers did end up buying? Think about what other needs have these purchases raised in these consumers and offer them complimentary products.

Get more people to your physical stores with Local Inventory Ads. Enhance customers' experience. Local inventory ads helps you connect online customers to your physical locations.

Use weather data in CPA ads if you sell product which sales are affected by weather as many experienced players, such as Rains do. For example, if you sell snow boots - trigger ads in the areas where it is snowing or it is forecasted to snow in the next upcoming days.

Do not put your marketing on hold

Since most companies expect that customers prefer to spend money during the holidays, they typically allocate less resources in the first few months of the year. 

This can be your time to shine! Not only do you have less competition, but lower costs as well. Having a creative message and campaign in place, you should see a greater return on every unit of spend. Coupling that with an optimised product feed, you could soon be on to a winner. 

New year's resolutions don’t have to be your enemy 

Without a doubt, most people swear to spend less money next year. But they also think about many other goals. Whether it is eating healthier, exercising more, seeing more places in the world, most likely you can find something suitable for your business. 

If you can grasp what’s on your customers’ mind these times and how you can help them achieve their new goals, you are set up for success! This approach not only positively impacts sales numbers but can also help you connect with your customers as part of a long term strategy.

Christmas is not the only holiday

There is no denying that Black Friday and Christmas are super busy periods for most businesses, but who says holidays during January and February can’t be? You should not forget about the big dates January and February have for you. 

Valentine's day for instance should not be disregarded, and if you are having a hard time connecting it to your business, you can always create your own holiday. With a powerful message, and consistency over years you can establish your own promotional holiday.

January clearance sale

By going through your reports from the previous year you most likely can identify many slow moving products that have been sitting in your inventory for a long time. Products that don’t move but sit in your stock do nothing but cost you money. 

Use this time to cater to your price-sensitive shoppers and get your products moving with a clearance sale. Consider lowering the prices, introducing bundles or offering better prices if customers buy more at a time. You can use your old low-price inventory to achieve some greater good, for instance, you can offer a free gift or a voucher for a specific product category if customers subscribe to your newsletter. 

The message of big discounts are best conveyed in your product images. But, manually adding badges and savings is a time consuming and virtually impossible job. This is where image transformations are ingenious. Use seasonal templates to convey the right message with a minimal effort. 

If you have data on shoppers’ preferences, this could be a great time to target with personalised product recommendations. Utilise all your channels including emails and social media.

Find the silver lining in returns

Once the holidays are over, you are bound to get some return requests. These times, you can reduce your loss by offering a substitution product or a voucher of higher value to customers. If something is sent back due to a malfunction, reach out to ask if the buyer would be happy with a replacement sent as soon as possible. 

It is not set in stone that all customers prefer to have their money back. If you can come up with a clever alternative that can make your customer happy, it is a win-win situation. Optimising your return policy does not only have a great effect on your numbers, but it also helps to nurture long term trust and good relationships with customers.  

Automate your efforts

Struggling to grasp how you can manage all the above? …with automated feed optimisations and image templates you can have more time on your hands to come up with clever marketing activities and customer experience improvements. 

We have seen it over and over again, companies grow faster when they automate laborious tasks. Get a demo to see what a product feed management platform can do for your business.