This Is the Simple Marketing Hack Your Business Needs to Drive Sales All Year Long Seasonality isn't just for holiday pop-up shops. Spotting and understanding the cyclical trends in your business and industry can help you maximize profits throughout the year.
By John Boitnott Edited by Kara McIntyre
Key Takeaways
- Understanding and leveraging seasonality in business can lead to growth by identifying patterns in sales and customer behavior.
- Properly preparing for seasonal trends includes stocking up on inventory, creating targeted promotions, and planning your marketing efforts.
- Optimizing business plans around identified seasonal trends can help maximize profits during peak periods and mitigate slow times.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Every business experiences both "boom and bust." Sometimes it might be random changes in the market or in your customer base. In other cases, those changes aren't random — they're cyclical. When you know how to spot those trends, you'll know how to plan for them. The result: Your business keeps growing.
Understanding how to use seasonality to your advantage can help ensure your business's continued growth. And yet many, if not most, business owners miss out on this simple marketing hack. Here's how to take advantage of it to drive revenue all year long.
Related: This Is the Overlooked Partnership Your Business Needs to Grow
What is seasonality?
Seasonality refers to predictable changes in business activities based on the time of year. These changes may result from weather changes, holidays or simply evolving customer habits.
One example of a seasonal business is the Christmas tree lot, which shows up in late November and closes a month or so later. Yet seasonality can affect just about any kind of business in some way. Think of the retail clothing store that gets a big rush during the back-to-school shopping, the annual rush to join gyms at the start of the year or the demand for toys and electronics during Black Friday and Cyber Monday events.
How to spot seasonal trends in your business
The first step to taking advantage of seasonality and making it work for you, instead of against you, is understanding how to identify those trends in your business. Predictable changes over time are the key. How can you spot those trends? You've got a few options.
1. Look at your sales data
If you've been in business for longer than a year or two, your own past sales data is your best source of information. Compare sales year-to-year during different time periods (such as "summer months" or "back to school season"). Do you notice any patterns? Are there times when sales tend to spike or dip? For example, I've worked with a bakery owner who found that her sales always spiked in December, because customers ordered her special desserts for the holidays. Once you spot those trends, you can more effectively plan how to respond to them.
2. Pay attention to customer behavior
This example underscores the overall strategy to stay aware of changes in customer behavior. Are there certain times of year when people ask for different types of products or services? Do your customers seem more likely to book appointments or place orders around certain holidays or events?
It's easy to make assumptions about customer behavior. Use your data (e.g. sales, revenue, traffic) as a jumping-off point to examine the kinds of products and services that move throughout the year. This will help keep you on top of your store's inventory, so that you've got what your customers are actively searching for at the right time.
Related: Don't Waste Your Money (or Time) on These 3 Marketing Tactics
3. Keep up with industry trends
In addition to reviewing your sales data and customer behavior, try to stay up to date with trends in your market and industry. Look for repeating events or trends that you can use. For example, retail businesses usually experience shifting fashion trends from season to season. Those evolving trends can significantly impact the specific styles that your customers want.
In the same way, some industries have recurring seasonal boosts, such as accountants at tax time. Stay up-to-date on market trends to fine-tune your business goals, marketing and staffing plans.
How to prepare for seasonality and boost sales
Prepare for the trends that impact your business and drive higher revenue and profits with the following tips:
1. Stock up with the right assets and resources
Knowing that business is about to explode — or slow way down — lets you more effectively prepare for the coming change. Make sure you have enough of the right kind of inventory on hand, as well as enough sufficiently trained staff and other resources.
Planning ahead also helps reduce stress for you and your staff. I've worked with business owners who had to scramble to get inventory and train staff in time to meet a rising tide of customers, and it's not the route you want to go. By ordering your inventory early, you can negotiate better prices with your suppliers and even save some money.
2. Create special promotions and offers
Everybody wants to score a great deal. When you offer special promotions, sales and discounts that are tightly aligned with the shopping trends you've already identified, you broaden your customer base and attract more shoppers who are ready to buy what you sell. Some ways you can fine-tune your promotions include:
- Think about ways to bundle together services and goods for holiday gift-giving. Busy shoppers in a hectic time of the year appreciate the convenience of prepackaged gifts.
- Drive foot traffic (or web traffic) to the most highly sought-after products in your inventory, and create special promotions to help move those items.
- Consider a series of micro-promotions: targeted discounts that last for a very limited time — for instance, a few hours on sequential days.
Look for promotion ideas that give customers a reason to buy, create excitement around your products and help move the inventory you're most keen to sell.
3. Focus on marketing
Designing a strong marketing campaign is the best way to inform your customers about your inventory and promotions, and seasonality permits you to do just that in a thoughtful, prepared way.
Marketing is simply spreading the word about what you have to offer, and you'll need to consider how to create those multiple points of contact that prospects need to become paying customers. Think about ways to spread the word about your seasonal promotions and products through social media, email messages, newsletters, paid online ads and local advertising.
Use seasonal themes in your marketing to grab people's attention — e.g. fall colors and autumn leaves for back to school; festive bells and holiday lights for the holidays. Seasonal marketing can make your business feel more timely and relevant.
Related: Quick Wins to Boost Customer Count & Revenue
Conclusion
Seasonality can offer both challenges and opportunities for businesses of many types. Even if your business isn't seasonal in the way a Christmas tree lot or fireworks stand might be, you can usually spot patterns in customer behavior or sales trends throughout the year and then optimize your business plans based on those trends. In short, once you understand it, you can use seasonality to take full advantage of your busiest times and keep your business growing.
