Demand for most trades is seasonal, and the searching starts well before the calls do. A business that begins promoting in the month the phone gets busy has already missed the period when people were deciding. The calendar has to be built backwards from when the searching starts, not forwards from when the work arrives.
The gap between searching and calling
These are two different events separated by weeks, and businesses plan against the wrong one because the second is the one they can see.
You know exactly when your phone gets busy, because you lived it. You have no direct visibility of when people started looking, which is when the shortlist was formed and when being present mattered.
By the time the calls arrive, the person has usually already decided who to contact. The marketing that determined that happened earlier, and a campaign starting the same week as the calls is competing for whoever is left.
Typical lead times
These vary by region and trade, and the pattern is consistent enough to plan against.
| Type of work | Searching starts before the work |
|---|---|
| Emergency and reactive | Minutes. No lead time at all, which is why visibility has to be permanent rather than seasonal |
| Seasonal maintenance | Two to six weeks, usually triggered by weather or a calendar prompt |
| Exterior and larger projects | Two to four months, because they involve budgeting and often more than one decision-maker |
| Major renovation | Four to twelve months of research before anyone is contacted |
The practical consequence is that the content and campaigns supporting an autumn peak need to be live in mid to late summer, and anything requiring a build or a new page needs starting earlier still.
Finding your own lead time
General figures are a starting point. Your own data is better, and you already have it.
- Ask on the phone. "How long have you been thinking about this?" Twenty answers gives you a genuine figure for your trade and area, and it costs nothing to collect.
- Look at your invoices by month across two or three years. The shape of the year is more reliable than your impression of it.
- Check search impressions rather than clicks in your search reporting. Impressions rise when people start looking, which is earlier than clicks and considerably earlier than calls.
- Watch when competitors start advertising. Imperfect and free, and it tells you what the market believes about timing.
What has to be live, and when
Different work has different lead times of its own, which means the calendar has layers.
- Content needs three to six months to accumulate any authority, so a seasonal page written in August is not going to carry an October peak. It should exist from the previous year and be updated rather than created.
- Profile updates and photographs take effect quickly and can be done a few weeks out.
- Advertising can start in days and takes a few weeks to become efficient, so it should begin before the peak rather than at it.
- Anything requiring a new page or a build needs to be commissioned a season ahead, because production time sits on top of the lead time.
The two-season structure
Most trades have a busy period and a quiet one, and the useful discipline is treating them as having different jobs rather than treating the quiet one as a problem.
The busy season is for capture: make sure enquiries are answered, availability is stated, and nothing technical is broken. It is the wrong time to start projects, because nobody has the attention for decisions.
The quiet season is for building what the next peak will need: the pages, the photographs, the review backlog, and any structural work. What that looks like in practice is set out in marketing a business through a slow season.
A business running that cycle deliberately arrives at each peak with material that has had months to establish itself. One that starts each season from scratch is permanently a season behind, which compounds year on year.
The counter-seasonal question
Worth asking once a year: what could you sell in the quiet months to the customers you already have?
Most trades have something. Maintenance agreements, interior work when exterior work stops, inspections, preparation for the coming season. It rarely fills the gap entirely and it does smooth it, and it is sold to an existing list rather than bought through advertising, which makes it cheap.
The calendar and the annual plan should be built together, since the seasonal shape is what determines when the initiatives in a twelve-month plan can realistically happen.
Frequently asked questions
When should I start marketing for my busy season?
Work backwards from when people start searching rather than when they start calling, which is commonly two to six weeks earlier for maintenance work and several months for larger projects.
How do I find out my own lead time?
Ask callers how long they have been thinking about it. Twenty answers gives a reliable figure for your trade and area, and checking search impressions rather than clicks shows when interest rises.
How far ahead does seasonal content need to be written?
Content takes three to six months to accumulate authority, so a seasonal page should exist from the previous year and be updated rather than created weeks before the peak.
What should I do in my quiet season?
Build what the next peak needs: pages, photographs, the review backlog, and any structural work. It is the only period with enough attention available to make decisions properly.
Does advertising need lead time too?
It can start within days and takes a few weeks to become efficient, so it should begin before the peak rather than at it. Starting the same week as the calls means paying more for whoever is left.
What if my trade has no clear season?
Most have some pattern once invoices are compared across two or three years. Where demand is genuinely flat, the lead time question still applies to individual project types even if the annual shape does not.
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.
Always starting your season a few weeks late?
We map your demand against your real lead times and build the calendar backwards, so the work is live before the searching starts.
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