Planning for peak season is already underway, and it’s crucial that businesses get it right. D2C ecom entrepreneur and podcaster Björn Påhlman Spenger shares his advice for businesses in the run up to peak season 2024.
The current economic climate looks very different from market to market right now, which will of course have an impact on performance this peak season. A few factors are influencing this: dependency on interest rates, general economic growth, and the current strength and weakness of different markets.
For this year’s peak season, I expect that strong markets will perform well and weak markets will have lower sales. Much like last year, consumers may not have much disposable income in weaker markets, so brands will need to work harder to get a share of their wallets.
To encourage sales during peak season, my advice is to plan ahead thoroughly. To me, this means detailed supply chain and purchasing, marketing and content, and execution strategies.
Make sure your plan is detailed, including strategies to action if things don’t go as you expected, for example if some products aren’t selling as well as you predicted.
Purchasing should be 100% data driven. Meanwhile, marketing and content production has to be planned in detail, including all assets needed for performance marketing, drops, campaigns etc. Marketing is all about execution, so make sure you prepare ahead of time and have everything you need to launch campaigns that grab attention.
When peak season is actually underway it’s all about prioritisation. You need to make sure you’re doing the right things at the right time. But, things can move quickly and you may need to be reactive, which can make it challenging to decide what to prioritise.
The model we usually use for this is the Impact/Ease Model, which is a simple yet effective framework for prioritising initiatives, projects, or tasks based on two factors: their potential impact and the ease with which they can be implemented. This gives us a score that prioritises the most impactful action at each time.
Impact refers to an initiative's potential value or benefits to your business or organisation. It could relate to financial gains, operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, or market share—whatever your strategic goals are.
Ease refers to how simple or complex it would be to implement the initiative. It takes into account factors like time, resources, effort, and any possible barriers.
Once you’ve evaluated potential actions based on these two dimensions, you can map them on a simple two-axis grid.
The top-right quadrant (high impact, high ease) is where you want to focus most of your efforts, as these quick wins deliver significant value with minimal effort. Meanwhile, initiatives with low impact or low ease might be deprioritised or at least examined more critically before investing resources into them.
Email abandonment cart campaign: Automating abandoned cart emails is a classic example of a high-impact, high-ease initiative. This is easy to implement with most ecommerce platforms and has a significant impact by recovering potentially lost sales.
Customer reviews: Adding a feature to your website automatically requests customer reviews after purchase. This can boost conversions and credibility with little effort, primarily if your platform supports review automation.
Subscription model launch: Introducing a subscription-based model like monthly deliveries of consumable products, can lead to higher customer lifetime value (CLTV) and more predictable revenue streams. However, it can be challenging to implement due to the need for a robust subscription management system, fulfillment adjustments, and marketing efforts.
Website redesign for conversion optimisation: A complete website redesign focused on improving the user experience and increasing conversions could significantly boost sales. However, it’s a complex and resource-intensive project requiring designers, developers, and significant testing.
Social media giveaways: Running small giveaways on social media to generate engagement is relatively easy to execute, especially with the abundance of tools available. However, the impact on long-term sales may be minimal unless well-targeted.
Minor site tweaks: Adjusting the colour of CTA (call to action) buttons or moving some elements on your product pages might be simple to execute but usually results in only marginal gains in performance.
International Expansion without Localisation: Expanding your ecommerce platform to a new international market without a solid localisation strategy like localised currency, language, and customer support could be costly and complex, yet the return on investment could be slow or limited if not carefully planned.
Developing a custom app: Creating a custom mobile app might sound appealing, but unless you have a clear strategy and audience demand for it, the complexity and resources required may not justify the benefits compared to more straightforward initiatives like optimising your mobile website.
The beauty of the impact/ease model lies in its simplicity and practicality. It helps ensure that our team focuses on the projects that yield the most benefit with the least resistance.
In fast-paced business environments, it’s easy to get bogged down by low-impact work, so this model helps keep the team aligned on priorities that truly move the needle. It’s also flexible, applicable to various industries and teams, and can easily be updated as conditions change.
Seasonal brands face one key challenge: risk. The more seasonal a brand is, the more risky the business model. When you’re reliant on a few key windows of time to make the bulk of your sales, you aren’t spreading out your risk. In a challenging macroeconomic environment, it becomes more important than ever to give yourself as much time for sales as possible.
My recommendation is to broaden your product portfolio to become less seasonal. While this can be a sizable investment, you’re more likely to set yourself up for success by being able to sell throughout the year.
If you need capital to invest in inventory, flexible financing like Juni’s Invoice Credit can help you pay and extend your repayment terms on any invoice, including inventory. Solutions like this can give a boost to invest in new inventory without impacting your cash flow negatively.
You could also experience benefits like negotiating better terms with suppliers, early payment discounts, and ultimately increasing your profit margins.
Overall, planning and prioritisation are essential for success, especially when it comes to seasonality. I encourage you to start planning now, especially if you’re in a market that is still adversely affected by the challenging macroeconomic climate. Give yourself every opportunity to have the right plan and products in place to scale your sales, in peak season and beyond.
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