Seasonal Campaigns Planned in Advance

The timing everybody gets wrong

The phone starts ringing, somebody says we should be advertising, and a campaign goes live a week later.

By then the season is under way, competitors who planned have been running for a month, auction prices are at their peak, and the customers who decided early have already decided.

The campaign then spends four weeks learning while the season passes, and gets switched off in the quiet period.

The following year the same thing happens, because nothing recorded that it had.

Two reasons to start early

They compound, which is why the gap matters more than people expect.

Campaigns take time to settle. A new campaign spends its first week or two delivering unevenly while the system works out who responds, and that period is not representative.

And customers research before they buy. Somebody thinking about heating in September enquires in October, so an advert appearing in October has missed the thinking.

Add those together and the useful start point is typically four to six weeks before you expect enquiries, sometimes longer.

Which means the decision has to be made two months before the money is needed, and that is what a plan is for.

Find your own dates

• Chart two years of enquiries by week.
• Chart search interest for your main terms.
• Note the gap between interest rising and enquiries rising.
• Subtract two weeks for the campaign to settle.
• That is your start date.
• Write it down for every season you have.

The third is the number the whole plan depends on, and almost no small business has calculated it.

Ramp rather than switch on

How the spend should move across a season.

Start at a modest daily figure several weeks out, which lets the campaign stabilise cheaply while competition is lower.

Increase gradually as demand builds, rather than jumping, since large sudden budget changes disrupt delivery and can reset the system's learning.

Hold the peak through the period when enquiries actually arrive, which is usually shorter than the season feels.

Then reduce rather than stopping, keeping a small presence for the tail, since late buyers are frequently the least price-sensitive and face the least competition for attention.

That shape costs less in total than a flat budget and produces more, because it puts the money where the demand is.

A worked example

A firm with a strongly seasonal service started advertising in the first week of their busy period every year, and spent heavily through it.

Two years of data showed search interest for their terms rising about seven weeks before their enquiries did.

They moved the start back six weeks at a low daily budget, ramped through the two weeks before the season, held through the peak, and tapered rather than stopping.

Cost per enquiry across the whole season fell, because the early weeks were cheap and the campaign was already performing when competition arrived.

They also took bookings earlier, which spread the workload and reduced the point in the season where they were turning work away.

The total spend was slightly lower than the previous year.

Plan the whole year once

The step that makes this survive.

Sit down once, list every season or peak you have, and against each write the start date, the ramp, the peak period, and the taper.

Put those dates in the calendar you actually use, as recurring entries, with the campaign name in the entry.

That converts a piece of thinking done once into something that happens annually without anybody remembering it.

It also survives staff changes, which is when this knowledge is normally lost, and it lets you allocate the year's budget deliberately rather than monthly.

Prepare in the quiet period

The other half, and the more valuable one.

The weeks before a season are when to write the adverts, build or refresh the landing page, gather the photographs, and check the tracking works.

Doing that during the season means the campaign launches with whatever was to hand, which is usually last year's material.

It is also when to fix the operational side: who answers the phone at peak, what the response time will be, and what happens when you are full.

A campaign that works and a business that cannot answer it produces the worst outcome available, which is paying for enquiries you then ignore.

Do not go dark between seasons

A common decision that costs more than it saves.

Stopping entirely means each season starts from nothing: a cold campaign, no recent data, and a fresh learning period every year.

A small maintained presence between seasons keeps the account active, keeps some enquiries arriving, and means the ramp starts from a working campaign rather than a new one.

It also captures the people who are genuinely out of season, who exist in most trades and face almost no competition for attention.

The between-season budget can be very small. What matters is that it is not zero.

The counter-case

Not every business has a season worth planning around, and imposing one creates artificial deadlines.

There is also a risk in over-fitting to a pattern from one unusual year, which is a live concern given how disrupted recent years have been for most sectors.

Use at least two years before treating a shape as real, and be willing to conclude that demand is flat, which is a legitimate finding.

And for a capacity-constrained business already full during its peak, advertising harder into that peak is spending to create enquiries you will decline. The better use is advertising into the shoulders to flatten the year.

Which is a different plan from the one this describes, built from the same data.

The plan

1. Chart two years of enquiries and search interest.
2. Measure the gap between interest and enquiries.
3. Set a start date six weeks before demand.
4. Ramp rather than switching on.
5. Taper rather than stopping.
6. Keep a small presence between seasons.
7. Put every date in a recurring calendar entry.

Step two produces the number everything else depends on, and it takes an afternoon once.

The content side is covered in seasonal demand and what to publish when.

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.