New Year, New Leads: How to Use The Fresh Start Effect to Magnet Customers to Your Business

Your buyers are feeling pique motivation right now.

The stats on New Year resolutions are deceitful.

According to the numbers, as many as 92% of people who make resolutions every New Year don’t stick with them by the end of the year.

Follow this narrative and you will conclude it is all a waste of time.

But the failure rate of New Year resolutions is not the entire story.

What’s being left out is the part that will make you win in sales and marketing.

We don’t set goals (or try to change) only during the New Year. We do it year-round. But research shows that when compared to a baseline, people are 145.3% more likely to stick to a goal set at the beginning of the year.

Put another way: the 8% success rate of New Year resolutions is way higher than that of resolutions made at other times of the year.

There is a reason for this: the fresh start effect.

What Is The Fresh Start Effect?

Change is hard.

This is something we all know, especially those who have tried leaving old habits or taking on new ones.

But in her book, How To Change: The Science Of Getting From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be, Katy Milkman showed us that there are times in the year when it is easier to change.

It’s in this book that Milkman introduced what’s called the Fresh-Start Effect.

Here is the idea put simply: There are moments in life when we feel as though we can start over and forget about our past mistakes, which makes it simpler to stay committed to our goals.

This is what the fresh start effect is about, and the moments the effect takes place are called landmark moments.

Imagine that it’s Friday but you’ve not done much about an earlier decision you took to start working out.

You now feel bad about it but rather than call it a quit you talk to yourself, “I must do better to get this right.”

No more lazying around.

From now on it’s going to be 20 push-ups, 10 squats, and not less than 20 minutes of cardio every day.

But, you tell yourself, the week has already ended and you have gone off track. You will try again, but definitely not today!

You’ll start working out again…on Monday.

Why wait until Monday? It’s the first day of the week.

The first day of the week is a landmark moment.

Research shows us the effect of starting something new in landmark moments:

• Helps you to let go of your “old self” in the past.
• Assist you in seeing your long-term life goals more clearly.
• Inspires you to take action and make the necessary changes to realize those goals.

The reality of the fresh start effect is true for you, it is also true for your potential customers. You can leverage this truth during marketing.

The Fresh Start Effect And Your Buyers

When it comes to business, one thing the fresh start effect is teaching us is that selling more is also about when you market your products and not just how you market them.

You can leverage these landmark moments and use them as buying triggers for your customers.

There are dates in the calendar that increase our motivation to get started with our goals:

• Birthdays
• The beginning of a new week
• The beginning of a new month
• The start of a new year.

Your buyers are feeling peak motivation during these landmark moments. So you need to apply this effect on your marketing to win more sales.

How You Can Apply The Fresh Start Effect

Here are ways you can utilize the fresh start effect to create winning marketing strategies:

Leverage important landmarks

New Year is the classic example. Think gym memberships, fitness gear, and self-improvement courses. You can use these elements to tap into the “new year, new me” mentality.

Back-to-school offers a fresh start for students, which translates into increased demand for stationery, clothes, tech gadgets, etc. You can cater to this with back-to-school sales and targeted advertising.

Mondays offer a mini-fresh start every week. Motivational quotes, productivity tips, and limited-time deals can all be used to encourage engagement and purchases.

Then there are personal milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations. These milestones offer your brand the chance to connect with customers on a deeper level and promote products or services related to this new chapter in their lives.

Create a sense of new beginning

You can always rely on everyone trying to make a change in a new year.

They want to get in shape; eat healthier, learn something new, quit smoking, stop binge-watching Netflix, read more, or make time for family. The list is endless.

You can capitalize on this if you have a product that can help them achieve any of their new year goals.

Use language and visuals that evoke a sense of clean slates, new chapters, and renewal. Words like “start”, “refresh”, “reimagine”, and “transform” can work wonders.

You can also creatively use “New Year” in your marketing campaigns to capitalize on the ‘New Year, new you’ rush.

Here is how the folks at Peloton designed their ad using this trigger word.

Create opportunities for change and action

The other thing people are doing apart from planning their new fitness regime is writing their New Year resolutions.

Relevant brands must encourage their customers to set these resolutions and help them achieve them.

You can make your brand the guide and your customer the hero. You turn your brand into a winning brand if you can help your customers get from where they are to where they want to be.

Have a look at how Notion designed a template to help their users become their best selves:

Add challenges and contests to the mix

A lot of people quickly fall off track on their New Year resolutions.

You know this, and so do your potential customers.

You have an advantage if you can predict obstacles and provide a way of overcoming them. Your potential customers are scared of falling off, so you can build a solution that keeps that from happening.

One way to do this is by gamifying the fresh start effect.

You can use elements like fitness challenges or creative contests to leverage the motivation associated with fresh starts and increase brand awareness.

Boiling it down

When you market is just as important as what you are marketing.

Connect your product or service to the beginning of a new week, month, or year if you want people to use it.