Small Business Guide to Surviving the January Slump

Overcome the post-holiday slump and improve revenue returns with Hive Life’s small business guide to revamping your sales strategy.

January is a slow month for businesses across various industries, with a majority of them experiencing a sales slump, following high profits generated during the holiday season. In the new year, consumers often take a few months to recover financially, and tend to focus on savings and cutting down expenditures. The online shopping sector showed a significant decline in growth in the first quarter of 2022, observing a 24.4% year-on-year (YoY) drop in trade.

Unfortunately, the trend continues this year. For small and emerging business owners, this places a strain on their profitability and adeptness to overcome the January slumps. Companies ought to act swiftly, starting by reassessing their sales strategy, optimising operations, and ultimately setting a more positive tone for the coming months.

This year, break the pattern and get creative with your business to retain customers and boost sales long-term, while effectively overturning the January slump.

Conduct Market Research

Companies can optimise downtime by revising and streamlining their business strategy, starting with conducting market research on their respective fields. This offers a competitive advantage by enabling you to comprehend changing consumer demands, and adapt outcomes and solutions accordingly.

Coordinating thorough research is essential in determining your business’ future success. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can stay ahead of the curve by asking important questions- from evaluating which products generated consistent sales in the previous year, to reviewing competitive strategies, studying demographic shifts, and other key analyses.

Businesses can leverage data and analytics technologies, such as their online point-of-sale (POS) system, to generate insightful information, further incorporating results to develop their sales approach for the new year.

Renew Your Marketing Strategy

A brand’s marketing strategy reflects its voice and vision, and is vital in boosting a company’s “position, perception, and purpose.” Following post-holiday slumps, businesses are determined to make the most out of the slower sales month, and are revamping their approach to content and advertisement of their products beyond seasonality.

Renew your strategy based on the goals and objectives of your target audience, and compare sales performance and upswings over the year. Take note of customer reviews, seasonal offers, previous successful campaigns, and other useful data, to assess and improve your marketing.

Marketing your solutions with a strong purpose and relevance can help you reach a wider crowd, while boosting your post-holiday sales more efficiently.

Renew Your Marketing Strategy_Survive Business slump

Capitalise on Monthly Themes

Setting monthly themes is an effective stimulation for businesses to regain their focus, while driving targeted sales throughout the year. In January, people are focused on kickstarting their new year resolutions. This means that brands could market their products to match the themes of renewal, healthy living, wellness, and others, to retain their customers.

Throughout the year, companies can rebuild their tactics by developing solutions in alignment with consumer needs. Identifying market demand further enables businesses to solidify and capitalise on their sales strategies and themes for the month.

Capitalise on Monthly Themes_ Sales Strategy

Devise a Long-Term Sales Plan

Successfully achieve your company’s annual objectives by laying out a long-term sales plan and targeted marketing approach, with an emphasis on customer-focused campaigns. Strategising ahead of the new year will equip your business to actively navigate potential setbacks, and enables you to allocate necessary resources accordingly.

Most companies are quite familiar with a business plan, and can apply the same tactic to write a post-holiday sales strategy by deliberating on yearly objectives and a detailed plan to achieve them. Deliver customer pain points and needs, research which products to push, and their respective financial costs and returns.

Aim to bring newness to your brand, while staying consistent on your objectives to deliver on your sales targets and capitalise on seasonal opportunities.

Replenish Your Best-Sellers

When restocking your inventory this month, conduct a detailed analysis of your best-selling items, paying attention to their popularity based on seasonal promotions, exclusivity, and prices. This offers you better insight into which products add greater value to your sales, and further informs you on what to invest in for the coming months.

With inventory running low following holiday sales, take this slow period to replenish your year-round best-sellers immediately. As for other items, order the necessary amount required to maintain stock levels, saving on production costs and potential sales losses.

Replenish Your Best-Sellers_ Sales Strategy

Refresh Your Customer Loyalty Programme

Rewarding loyal customers is key to building long-term relationships and a prosperous business. Companies investing in loyalty programmes have higher retention rates and tend to generate more sales over time. Refreshing your existing reward schemes beyond holiday offerings will allow you to build more anticipation well into the new year, and attract shoppers in the long run.

Reward systems can significantly improve customers’ shopping experience as well. Businesses can offer their loyalty base a sneak peek, exclusive deals for a new product, additional discounts, or points, along with other services to enhance their journey, keep them engaged, and maintain a good rapport.

Juicyapp is a business-to-business (B2B) marketing technology company based in Hong Kong. It develops customer relationship management (CRM) tools for corporations, while streamlining their loyalty programmes to facilitate retention, engagement, and growth over time.