Knowing Your Paid Search Seasons (Part 2)

Katherine Bennett - December 30, 2011

In Part 1, we discussed defining your paid search season. During the busy season, budgets should be throttled up and during the non-busy season, budgets should be slowed down. It is good to maintain a presence during the slow season, so that your products or services can be found.  It seems easy enough, but for some businesses their seasons are a little more complex due to their products, their geo-targeting, and holidays.

Businesses that offer a variety of products or services can have multiple seasons. Thus, it is important for their paid search campaigns to be built in a way that allows for easy budget adjustments.  For example a clothing store may sell winter coats and swim suits. There paid search campaign spend should be throttled up for swimsuits in spring and summer, and slowed down in winter and fall. On the other hand their winter coats campaign should be throttled up in fall and winter and slowed down in spring and summer. They should still maintain a presence for each product during the slow season, because someone up North may be going to a tropical island for Christmas and may be in need of a swimsuit.

 Another point of complexity that can impact a business’s paid search season is the geographic areas they are targeting. It is important to know your busy season in each region. For example, the clothing store could continue to maintain a throttled spend for swimsuits in South Florida during the fall season because of the temperature. However, it would be unwise to mirror those same efforts in Alaska. The temperature is not the only reason for budget changes in different geographic regions, especially when international targeting is involved.  It may be that a product that has slow sales in the United States is a good seller in England.  If this is the case, then budgets can be throttled up for the England targeted campaigns and slowed down for the United States campaigns.

Last, but not least, the holidays can affect the paid search seasons. For example: Let’s say a jewelry store gets their best sales during the winter months, but the spring months are slow. However, Mother’s day does very well for them.  They would throttle up their spend for winter, slow it down February through mid-April and throttle it back up for the latter part of April through the end of Mother’s day.  This allows them to spend their money wisely and not miss out on a holiday that is important to them.

Products, geo-targeting and holidays are factors that can affect a client’s paid search season, but they are not the only ones. Businesses should determine their busy seasons and which factors could affect them. Once season and factors are determined, adjustments can be made to best utilize the paid search budget.