How to Manage Seasonal Trends in Retail throughout the Year

Predicting trends in retail can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. You need to be able to anticipate what’s coming up in order to prepare for the year ahead, whether that’s because you’re managing your inventory, forecasting your cash flow, or staffing your business for busier periods. 

If you want to stay ahead of the rest, and not be reacting to trends as and when they appear all the time, you need to know what to look for, create strategies for trends you find, and price your items correctly. That’s why we’ve written this piece to show you exactly how it’s done. Let’s get started.

• What are seasonal trends?
• How to use historical sales data to predict trends
• How to create marketing strategies for seasonal trends
• How to adjust pricing based on demand
• How to optimise window displays for seasonal trends

What are seasonal trends?

Seasonal trends in retail refers to the predictable changes in buying habits that happen at different times of the year. They’re a big deal in the retail world, and for good reason. Trends allows retailers to offer new sales, discounts, and offers and maximise their revenue by ensuring that they have the right products – when customers are looking to buy them.

Let’s use an example: if you were to buy a winter coat, when would you normally buy one? July? August? Probably not. Products trend based on external factors, like seasonal demand, so items like a winter coat would likely be purchased from October through to January. Timing your product releases at the appropriate time can, unsurprisingly, lead to more sales and fewer unsold items. 

There are a litany of reasons why staying on top of trends is crucial for your business, but here are a few of the most important ones:

• Inventory management: Improving sales isn’t the only reason staying on top of seasonal trends is important. It will also help you to manage your inventory. If you know which products are in demand at different times of the year, you can manage your stock more efficiently – so you only have the right stock, at the right times. This means no more stockouts (running out of stock) or overstocks (having too much stock that doesn’t sell).
• Cash flow management:  If you can predict when trends will hit with relative accuracy, and plan for the costs of increased inventory and staffing during busy periods, it will ensure you’re not caught off guard financially.
• Customer insights: Seasonal trends will also offer you insight into consumer behaviour. If you keep an eye on what your customers are buying at certain times of the year, you can isolate trends yourself, better understand what your customers are after, and refine product offerings based on your research. 

In summary, spotting and capitalising on seasonal trends can supercharge every aspect of your business’ operations. That’s because they influence almost every aspect of your business – from sales, to inventory management, to financial planning, and customer satisfaction. Learn how to find and react to trends, and you’ll set your business up for future growth, profitability, and long-term success.

How to use historical sales data to predict trends

Looking at historical sales data and trends is an easy way to see what trends might reappear in the future. This can allow you to ‘sales forecast’, which means you can roughly predict your future sales, plan your market presence, and set realistic financial targets. 

This will further allow you to manage and track your inventory levels, marketing strategies, staffing, and overall business planning. If you want to get started forecasting future sales, start by doing the following:

Organise and collect data

• What it means: This step is about gathering all the sales data and organising it into meaningful categories.
• How it works: You collect information about sales and break it down by things like time (when the sales happened), product (what was sold), region (where the sales happened), and demographics (who bought the product, such as their age or gender). 

Identify trends

• What it means: This is about finding patterns in the data to see what’s happening over time.
• How it works: You look at how sales change during different times of the year, like increased sales during the holiday season or a dip in summer. Look for moving averages which smooth out fluctuations in data to show a clearer trend over time, and pay attention to growth rates to measure how fast sales are increasing or decreasing over time, like comparing this year’s sales to last year’s.

Conduct market basket analysis

• What it means: This is a way to figure out which products are often bought together.
• How it works: If you’ve ever noticed that people buy two different types of products together, market basket analysis can help you identify such patterns.

Act on insights

• What it means: This is about turning predictions into actions that improve the business.
• How it works: For example, if predictions show that sales of a particular product will increase, a business can stock up on that item, or offer a promotion.

Once you’ve worked out how to spot trends and are making efforts to act on them, your next step is to begin planning marketing campaigns. 

How to create marketing strategies for seasonal trends

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a seasonal business, you don’t need one to benefit from a seasonal marketing campaign. If you’re able to strategically time your promotions around holidays, changing seasons, and any special events you might be having, you can keep your brand fresh and relevant throughout the year – and never fall behind on trends.

Seasonal marketing is when businesses adjust their products, messaging, and any deals or offers they have on to match certain times of the year – and campaigns they have around these new offerings. They tap into how people tend to shop or behave during these times when they have different needs or spending habits. 

Creating a great seasonal marketing campaign can take some planning, but with the right approach, you can connect with your customers and see real results. Here’s a few quick ways to improve whatever campaigns you decide to create.

Understand your audience

Start by really getting to know your target audience. Do some research into their preferences, buying habits, and how they tend to act at certain points of the year. The better you understand what drives them, the easier it is to tailor your seasonal campaigns to speak directly to their needs. You can use insights and analytics from your point-of-sale system to do this, if you don’t already.

Set clear measurable goals

Once you know who you’re going to market towards, you need to decide what success looks like to you, i.e. what are your goals? Are you trying to increase sales? Generate leads? Or, boost brand awareness? Well, whatever it is, you need to make sure your goals are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This will help you hone in your goals and keep you accountable to what you’re trying to achieve.

Get creative

Now, it’s time to create some campaigns. Knowing who to speak to – and how to speak to them – are two entirely different things. So, you need to make sure your campaigns are not only relevant to your target audience, but are also creative and true to your brand. A lot of brands follow trends of platforms like TikTok or Instagram to see what is trending, pivot quickly, and are able to create campaigns and offer deals and products around those trends. This will give you an opportunity to show off your brand’s personality and set yourself apart from the rest of the competition. 

Create content on different platforms

Much in the same way you might find ideas on TikTok or Instagram, you can also post there as a way of getting the word out about your business – and seasonal promotions you have on at the moment. You can also make use of social commerce to allow consumers to purchase products or services directly from the social media apps.

Track your results

There’s little point in going to all the effort of creating a campaign, if you aren’t going to properly measure its success. Look at key metrics like sales, website traffic, social media engagement, and customer feedback, from the moment of launching your campaigns, to measure success. This will allow you to see what worked, what didn’t, and how you can improve next time. 

How to adjust pricing based on demand

When it comes to seasonal products, or offers you might want to make, knowing how to price them can be tricky. If you go too low you risk cutting into your profits, but if you price too high, you might scare potential customers away. You could look into dynamic pricing if you wanted to offer products at a fair, but competitive market price without having to manually adjust all your prices whenever there’s a new trend.

Dynamic pricing is a strategy that helps businesses set prices based on real-time factors like market demand, competitor prices, past sales data, and more. It’s all about finding the perfect price point that maximises your goals – whether that’s revenue, profit, or market share – by constantly adjusting prices as conditions change.

Think of it as a pricing system that uses self-learning algorithms to adjust prices automatically based on what’s happening in the market at any given moment. Here’s how it works:

• Data input: the system gathers information from different sources, like your sales history, current market trends, customer buying habits, and competitor pricing. This data feeds into the algorithm to help it understand the best way to price your products or services. 
• Data processing: the algorithm then processes all this data using machine learning. It crunches the numbers, looking at patterns and trends, and takes things like seasonal demand, supply shifts, and market fluctuations into account to come up with the best price at that moment.
• Pricing adjustments: Once the algorithm has done its calculations, it adjusts prices in real-time. So, when demand is high, prices may increase, and when things slow down, prices can drop to encourage sales. It even keeps an eye on your competitors’ prices to help you stay in the game.

At first glance, dynamic pricing might seem complicated, but the good news is that you don’t have to handle all the details. The software does the heavy lifting, making it easier for you to focus on other aspects of your business while still making informed pricing decisions.

Dynamic pricing isn’t something you can just set up and walk away from. You still need to stay in the loop by monitoring sales figures, profits, and customer feedback. If your prices are turning customers away, you’ll need to make adjustments. 

You should also be aware of some ethical considerations when it comes to dynamic pricing. Some people worry it could lead to “price gouging,” which is when prices are raised too sharply in response to demand. Small price adjustments that keep you competitive are fine, but big jumps can upset customers and make them feel like they’re being taken advantage of.

How to optimise window displays for seasonal trends

Seasonal trends, if you own your own retail store, means you’ll have to tweak a few things, but arguably none more important than the humble, yet powerful, window display. Get your visual merchandising right and you’ll turn your average window shopper into a budding buyer in no time. Here’s a few tips to get more people to take notice of whichever seasonal trends you have on offer.

Create a story with your display

When designing your in-store setup, ask yourself, “Does this tell a story?” People connect with narratives and look for an emotional link when they interact with displays. Your merchandising should reflect who you are, what your brand stands for, and what shoppers can expect when they buy from you. 

Whether you go for bold colours to show off your brand’s personality or create a product journey that guides customers through your display, the key is to make it meaningful. It’s not just about showing products – it’s about showcasing your brand’s identity. 

Focus on POP displays

Did you know that nearly 80% of purchases are impulse buys? If you want to boost sales on certain items, try adding more Point of Purchase (POP) displays. These displays are designed to highlight a specific product, drawing attention to it in a way that makes shoppers stop and consider buying it.

POP displays can work wonders for speeding up sales. By focusing on one product, you can include details like easy-to-read descriptions, customer reviews, or even demonstrations that show off the product’s best features.

Capture sales data with ease

Spotting trends starts with your historical sales data. But, doing this without a reliable point-of-sale system you can rely on for historical and real-time data of your company’s sales can prove difficult. Take the struggle out of sales forecasting with Lightspeed Retail.