How To Beat The January Sales Lull

For a lot of people, January can be a tough time- it’s after Christmas, people have less money to spend and in some cases, are stressing out trying to lose weight, quit smoking, learn Mandarin or any number of other resolutions!

Unfortunately for small businesses, this can be especially tough as they deal with less footfall and do their best to maximise sales. However, it is not all doom and gloom- there are ways to increase sales and defy the New Year blues.

Nurture campaigns

Also, known as “drip marketing” a one to one email campaign can be a great way to market businesses and get a return on it. While social media can be brilliant for building brand awareness email marketing can allow for a more direct scheme. For example, you can use it to make customers aware when loyalty cards are running out or to alert them to sales events.

Unique sales

A good example of unique sales is if you run a department store- if a customer buys plates from you, offer a discount on cutlery. This can increase the chance of upselling.

Hold an event

Be proactive- support a charity, hold an art exhibition or sponsor a local sports team or amateur theatre company. While it is an investment, this means you are more likely to be featured in local media and also provides some excellent PR as people will want to share your pictures and posts from the event.

Start a blog

If you haven’t done so already blogs are a great way to keep engaged with your customers and spread the word. Or if you are not confident with writing you may want to do a video blog (vlog) instead. Encouraging interaction is a great way to keep people engaged and want to be loyal to your brand (if you can give them the message in the most effective way).

Customer service

You may think this one is obvious- customer service should be something that people work on. In practice this is not always easy- people are more likely to want to return or exchange things over the New Year and this can lead to some difficult conversations, especially if people do not understand your refund or exchange process.

This can take up time and inevitably this can mean frustration for people waiting- whether they are on the phone or waiting in the queue it can be difficult. This is why it is important to be as efficient as possible and maintain the best level of communication- if you can maintain a positive atmosphere while dealing with difficult situations customers are more likely to leave positive reviews and recommend you, so it is worth having as much as possible in place to make your business run as efficiently as you can.

We can help

January can be a challenging time for small businesses but these are just a few ways you could potentially defy this difficult time and maintain or even potentially increase sales. For more examples, on how we could help you and give you the resources, you need for this contact Digi Toolbox today.