Advertising in the Most Expensive Month

What actually happens to the price

Advertising is an auction, so the price is set by how many people want the same audience.

In late November and December, every retailer with a budget is in that auction simultaneously.

Costs on broad commercial terms roughly double against a quiet month, and on the busiest days they do more than that.

So a budget that bought two hundred clicks in October buys ninety in December, for the same money and against better-funded competition.

Where a small budget still works

• Your own business name.
• A tight geographic radius.
• People who visited already.
• Long specific phrases.
• Hours you can answer.

All five work by reducing who you are bidding against rather than by outbidding anybody. That is the only strategy available at a small budget in a month like this.

Brand terms are the cheapest thing available

Which is where a small budget should start.

Somebody searching your business name has already decided, and almost nobody else is competing for that term.

Those clicks cost a fraction of a broad commercial term and convert several times better.

The volume is limited, which is exactly why it is affordable, and it is entirely wasted budget if a competitor is bidding on your name and you are not.

Check whether anybody currently is, which takes a single search.

For most small businesses this alone is a better December strategy than anything broader.

A worked example

A small retailer spent their usual monthly budget on broad product terms in early December.

It was gone in nine days and produced fewer sales than a normal fortnight.

They stopped, and put the remaining budget on their own business name, a fifteen kilometre radius, and people who had visited the site in the previous sixty days.

The second half of the month cost less and produced more orders than the first.

The broad terms had been spending against national retailers who could pay more per click than the shop's entire margin on an order.

The lesson was entirely about who they were bidding against rather than about the copy.

Existing visitors are the best value

Which is under-used by small businesses.

Somebody who has already been to your site and not bought is a considerably warmer audience than a stranger, and reaching them again costs less.

In December that gap is at its widest, since acquiring a new visitor has never been more expensive and reaching a previous one has not changed much.

The setup is a few minutes and the audience needs to have been accumulating already, which is the argument for having set it up in September.

Where you have not already done that, set it up now so that it is ready for next year.

The people who browsed in early December and did not buy are worth reaching on the eighteenth.

Advertise only when you can answer

Which is the simplest saving available.

A click at nine on a Sunday evening that produces an enquiry nobody sees until Tuesday has been paid for and wasted.

Restrict the hours to when somebody is actually available, which for a small business is a substantial share of the week removed.

That concentrates the same budget into the hours where a response is possible.

Do the same for the days you are closed over the holiday, which is a setting nobody remembers to change.

An advertisement running on the twenty-fifth is spending money at the one moment nothing can be done with it.

Consider spending it in January instead

Which is the argument worth taking seriously.

Costs fall sharply once the retail rush ends, and a budget that bought ninety clicks in December buys two hundred again in mid-January.

For a service business rather than a shop, January demand is frequently better than December demand anyway.

So the question is not how to compete in the expensive month but whether to be in it at all.

A trades business, a professional service, or anything with no gift dimension should look hard at that.

Sitting out December entirely is a legitimate and frequently a more profitable decision.

Watch it daily or set it low

Since December moves faster than other months.

A budget that would have lasted three weeks can be gone in eight days without anybody noticing.

Either check it daily, or set the daily cap low enough that a bad week cannot exhaust the month.

The second is safer for anybody who will not reliably look.

And set an end date on any campaign now, so nothing is still running in January that nobody remembered.

The landing page decides more than the bid

Which is where a small budget can genuinely outperform a larger one.

Two businesses paying the same per click get very different results depending on what the click arrives at, and in December that difference is amplified because every visitor is in a hurry.

Send the click to the specific product or service page rather than the home page, with the price, the cutoff date, and the way to proceed all visible without scrolling.

A national retailer bidding twice what you can afford is frequently sending traffic to a generic category page, which is a real advantage available to you at no cost.

Fix that before increasing any bid, since it improves every click you have already paid for.

The counter-case

Some businesses must be there.

A shop whose entire year is December has no choice but to compete, and the expensive clicks are still the profitable ones for them.

Costs also vary enormously by category, and a niche with few advertisers may see very little seasonal increase.

And pulling out entirely surrenders ground to competitors who stay, which has a cost beyond the month.

Bid on your own name, narrow the geography, reach previous visitors, restrict the hours, and consider moving the budget to January.

What to do

1. Check your own name first.
2. Narrow the radius.
3. Reach previous visitors.
4. Restrict to hours you answer.
5. Pause on closed days.
6. Set a low daily cap.
7. Compare against January.

Step seven is the question most worth asking, since a budget producing ninety clicks now produces twice that in six weeks, and for many businesses the January demand is better anyway.

The competitive framing is covered in advertising against everybody else's budget.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.