When we think about winter shopping trends, both customers and businesses alike tend to get stuck in the holiday season. From Black Friday and Cyber Monday to the days before and after Christmas, the emphasis is on shopping for gifts. But what about the rest of those cold weather months largely bereft of holidays? How can businesses boost sales in the New Year?
The best ways to motivate shoppers around the New Year is to feed into New Year’s Resolutions — many of which are focused on health and weight loss. This is an arena with a variety of possible approaches.
Here are four ways you can put the emphasis on health to drive post-holiday shopping.
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Trust In Technology
One common feature of fitness and weight loss resolutions is that people make the same “lose twenty pounds” resolution year after year with little success. After years of failed efforts, many shoppers think they will be better able to stick to their resolutions with some computerized assistance. The fitness tech market has responded to this inclination with a variety of products.
In the New Year, put your advertising weight behind calorie trackers and smart watches with fitness tracking capabilities. Thirty-one percent of Americans are interested in using calorie trackers to attain their fitness goals while another sixteen percent are more interested in smart watch technology.
In addition to advertising these products and keeping plenty in stock, consider working with sales teams to educate them about the features of these technology tools and let buyers know your staff is ready to discuss these details with them. Aim to become the store that helps uncertain buyers. You can also set yourself apart by emphasizing the fashion aspects of new wearables in addition to their health benefits.
Partner With Professionals
Beyond wearable technology, the American College of Sports Medicine predicts that body weight training, strength training, personal training, and fitness classes targeted at an aging population will be popular activities in the quest for better health. Consider finding local fitness programs to partner with for your post-holiday sales. For example, you might bundle you fitness tracker purchases with reduced rate exercise classes in your neighborhood. This can boost business for both of you, while also helping to motivate your customers.
By bundling your sales with another local business, you also open up the opportunity to retarget your marketing practices. Collaborative marketing can help drive customers from your sales partners to your business. It’s important to make sure both businesses invest in running the ads, though — this should definitely be a partnership. That’s the only way it will benefit both of you equally.
Appeal to Beauty and Budgets
The New Year is a great time for health services as people shift their budgetary interests away from holiday shopping. After running through their Christmas budgets, buyers find themselves looking for ways to hold fast to New Year’s resolutions while not overspending. This makes it a great time to post coupons on your website or send out mailers, particularly for new customers.
In addition to appealing to their pocketbooks, bringing in new customers for dental treatments or quick plastic surgeries at the start of the year makes them more likely to return as the year progresses. Now is also the time to boost your customer service. New customers will come in for the procedures, but they’ll only stay if you shine on an interpersonal level.
Bundle What They Need
There’s a new trend in the business world, and it knows no industry limitations: gift baskets. Sure, you may be used to seeing gift sets of perfume products and makeup or holiday candies and trinkets wrapped together, but the new industry interest in gift baskets is different. These come from less expected places, like supermarkets. In fact, the number of gift baskets available this holiday season is astounding.
One popular form of gift baskets this season are food baskets, particularly at gourmet grocery stores. These bundles often offer significant savings over buying the products individually, but they’re also a way to market a lifestyle. This is where health, fitness, and weight loss bundles come in.
For customers committed to New Year’s weight loss, create bundles of tasty low calorie foods, perhaps combined with a kitchen scale and some cookbooks. Other baskets ideas include diet shakes and supplements or fitness products and exercise DVDs. Most people beginning a new exercise regimen at home start up their DVDs, get through the warm-up, and then suddenly find they don’t have what they need, from resistance bands to kettle bells. Check out DVDs and match them with the right equipment — your customers will be grateful that you’ve helped them stick to their plan.
A Post-Holiday Plan
Emphasizing health as the core of your post-holiday marketing will put your business on the road to success. And while your customers may or may not stick to their resolutions, you can help get them off on the right foot by offering health and fitness-focused deals.
As the holidays wind down, change direction and get ready to break out some healthy products in the wake of all those Christmas cookies. For at least the next few weeks, your customers will be thinking about their waistlines while you think about their wallets. By the time they’ve lost momentum, it will be a new marketing season.
Resolutions Photo via Shutterstock
[“source-smallbiztrends”]
