Many businesses find their work has seasonal peak times, during which it is important that their brand name is visible. Traditionally this would be achieved through standard advertising, from newspapers and billboards, to TV and press releases. Nowadays, if these are the only routes to advertising that you use, you are missing a trick. Pay Per Click advertising is a valuable tool all year round, ensuring that your brand name and website appears in front of people who are actively searching for your product or service. PPC can also be useful in seasonal advertising campaigns.
The first step is to analyse your business and determine what your busiest times of year are. For some businesses it will be immediately obvious which are the busiest times of year – companies that sell gifts or balloons can generally guarantee that their market will sky rocket each time the Christmas party season arrives. For other companies, it may be more subtle, but most industries will have peak times, so it’s worth being thorough in your analysis. Even companies that think they know when their peak times are should still spend some time doing this, as they may discover an untapped peak – for example, perhaps a certain holiday is gaining in popularity year on year and a bit of advertising at the right time may help you tap into it. For many businesses, peak times may be governed by their principle customers – for example, if your main customer’s financial year runs from January to December, then January will probably be a peak time for you.
Once you have this information at your fingertips you can maximise the amount of search traffic that is driven to your website at this time by allocating the right budgets to each Pay Per Click campaign. This can have a massive impact on your bottom line, by giving you a larger share of the peak season market. Forward planning is critical here – you need to know when your peak seasons are ahead of time so you can set the right budgets. If you wait until you’re in the middle of a peak, the chances are it will be too late and your competitors will have snatched the largest market share.
