4 Tips on Taking On the New Year at Your Store

After a year that felt ten years long, we’re finally at the end of it and the beginning of the next one. Goodbye, 2020 and hello, 2021! Let’s hope this one goes a bit better for all of us.

New Year’s puts most people in a festive mood and makes them open to change or new things. With all the holiday cheer and hype going around, now is the perfect time for you and your store to reach your core customers and beyond.

This is the time to try new things and get people’s attention. The more impact you have around this time, the fresher your store will be in people’s minds.

So, let’s take a quick look at a few tips to help you and your staff ring in the New Year with style.

1. New Year, New Promotion

“New Year, New Me” is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. It basically alludes to the idea that many people see the coming of a new year as an opportunity to turn over a new leaf or make some change in their lives for the better. This sort of thinking is also what leads to people making new purchasing decisions around this time.

This also means that New Year’s is a veritable goldmine of opportunity for savvy businesses. A new promotion being unveiled around this time is highly likely to grab people’s attention and draw their eyes to you.

One smart way is to offer discounts or special offers on stock you need to clear. This can include products like seasonal or themed products.

Another option is to use this chance to unveil new products. Your customers tend to be in the mindset to make changes and to try new things. So adopting new products might come easier than in other parts of the year.

2. Get Some Feedback

Feedback is essential for any customer-oriented business. Knowing the effect your products and staff have had on your valued customers is vital to ensure that your endeavors are succeeding. It is often the justification to make any changes to your approach, if needed.

Asking your customers to send in feedback around New Year’s works because people tend to have very emotional and assertive moods. Plus, framing it like your store as an organization wanting to make some positive changes going forward also taps into that “New Year, New Me” mentality.

Plus, throwing in a special offer or discounts for customers who provide feedback is a good tactic to convince them to share their views. Loyalty cards and offers can also work well with such promotions.

It is worth noting that social media posts, online surveys, and face to face questionnaires all have their role to play in information gathering. However, one very important thing to consider is to make sure that the feedback process isn’t too long or intrusive. Failure to do so will result in customers being reluctant to engage with your staff.

3. Social Media Mastery

It is not unusual to see large multibillion dollar corporations on social media these days. They present themselves as funny, relatable, or sarcastic characters to a willing public. So there is no reason why your store shouldn’t take to social media to engage with your customers.

One good social media strategy is engagement posts. Creating posts with questions or statements that will get a reaction out of people is an effective way to get some form of response. Connecting these engagement posts to recent events or festivities, like New Year’s for instance, can garner a positive response.

Another strategy to try around New Year’s is creating contests for online followers to participate in. You could offer some prize as incentive, which further creates interest in your store.

You could also try marketing in a more subtle way. For instance, if your store sells running shoes, you could tweet about running as an activity. By talking about its benefits or tips and tricks during a time when people are looking to try new things, the chances of your message being the push that gets them going is at an all time high.

And if these followers want to go running in 2021, guess who just so happens to sell running shoes at a great price? Your store, of course.

Social media mastery is necessary all the time in the modern world but knowing how to capitalize on holidays can make a huge difference, long term.

4. Post-Holiday Sales

It is known that sales tend to drop off after the holiday season. After a splurge for the end of the year, many people start the year a bit hesitant to spend. So most businesses tend to limit procurement and focus on making fewer but more expensive sales to make up costs.

Another option you and your store could try is a post-holiday sale. By offering your products at a slightly lower price, the urge to grab them becomes greater. Framing it like a great opportunity or a limited time offer only increases the perceived value of these products at this time.

A post-year sale can also be used to move old products so your store can be ready for new products. The late majority and laggards of society are more willing to try new products at this late stage, so they could be your target demographic with this sort of sale.

The main purpose of a post-holiday sale is to keep the momentum built by the holiday season going. By making offers or selling new/old products, you are able to keep a close connection with your customers and maintain a stable level of profit, even during typically unprofitable months.

Those are some of the tips we at Ewity have to offer store owners and staff regarding New Year’s. We hope that you found these tips useful.

If you want to ring in the New Year for your store in the best way though, perhaps it is like to let go of all the paper-based record keeping, inventory management, and tracking sales. Perhaps it is time to go for an easy-to-use cloud-based POS system that can be customized to your needs.

Our recommendation is that you head on over to our website and give Ewity a try for the low price of FREE.

You won’t find a better post-New Year’s deal than this!