Seasonal Advertising Performance

Outbound marketers panicking about getting more out-of-office replies this month are completely missing the bigger picture. July always has higher OOO rates. So does August. And June. This doesn’t mean cold email is broken or that your campaigns suddenly stopped working. This is literally just how the calendar works every single year. After running campaigns for 400+ clients across 5 years, I can tell you exactly when to expect performance drops and when to prepare for recovery. January - May: Peak performance season. Fresh budgets, new initiatives, and decision makers are actively looking for solutions. This is when you should be going hardest on outbound. June - August: Summer slowdown hits hard. Budgets get tighter, people take vacations, and response rates naturally drop. We typically see 20% decreases from May to June, and that's completely normal. September - mid-November: Performance picks back up. People are scrambling to hit end-of-year goals and often have budget they need to deploy before losing it. Mid-November - December: Holiday season brings another slowdown. Decision makers are focused on wrapping up the year, and not starting new vendor relationships. The solution isn't to panic or completely overhaul your campaigns when you hit these seasonal dips. The solution is to increase your volume during slow periods to maintain the same number of qualified responses. If your reply rate drops 20% in July, send 25% more emails. If you're running multi-channel campaigns, lean harder into LinkedIn and cold calling when email gets slower. You have to understand that outbound is a numbers game that follows predictable seasonal patterns. Plan for the dips instead of getting surprised by them, and you'll maintain consistent pipeline all year long.

The Seasonal Bidding Strategy Most Businesses Miss 📅 Is your Google Ads performance mysteriously tanking? Check your calendar. During a recent audit for a tax services firm, I discovered they were using the same bidding strategy year-round despite dramatic seasonal fluctuations in their industry. The data revealed: ➡️ CPC increased by 215% during tax season (Jan-April) ➡️ Conversion rates dropped by 40% during competitive periods ➡️ Weekend performance differed dramatically from weekdays ➡️ Certain keywords performed better in specific months Instead of fighting these patterns, we leveraged them: 🟢 Created seasonal bid adjustment schedules 🟢 Developed off-season campaigns with different messaging 🟢 Built specialized landing pages for peak season traffic 🟢 Implemented automated rules to adjust bids based on day/time patterns After implementing this seasonal strategy: 📌 Year-over-year cost per acquisition improved by 38% 📌 Lead volume increased by 52% during previously "dead" periods 📌 Budget efficiency improved by 47% during competitive seasons Is your Google Ads strategy accounting for predictable industry fluctuations, or are you treating every month the same? #SeasonalMarketing #GoogleAds #BiddingStrategy #PPCOptimization #BusinessGrowth

Here's secret few marketers know: The real opportunity isn't black Friday It's Q5: Dec 1 to Jan 1 Few brands pay attention. Fewer know how to use it. That’s where you win. Here’s the insider play: → The quiet window After the BFCM blitz, many advertisers pull back, so CPC dips But people are still researching and planning. That's the best time for you to “buy the dip”. Invest when ad costs are more favorable, and competition is less. → B2B isn’t fully offline Your audience is in the office, but not slammed. They’re receptive to ideas and learning. That's the best time to stay on top of mind for Q1. Don’t push demos. Build relationships, credibility, and relevance. → Shift the goal Q5 isn’t about conversion. It’s about engagement, list-building, and mindshare. Invest time and budget in campaigns that plant seeds for Q1, not just flash sales. ↪ How to win in Q5 - Keep campaigns alive after Cyber Monday: Move from “deal frenzy” to “last-minute gifting” or “still time to shop.” - Retarget wisely: Use post-BFCM campaigns to capture warm traffic. People who visited but didn’t convert? Retarget them with seasonal messaging. - Brand-first campaigns: Focus on awareness, education, and value-driven content. Discounts are optional. - Plan for post-Christmas dip (Dec 26 → Jan 1): People aare reflective and planning for the New Year. Your messaging should meet them there. - Use smart budget pacing: Don’t burn everything on BFCM. Save some for quieter weeks to dominate attention when others sleep. Brands who treat peak season as a cycle, not a one-off event, capture more value. If you ignore Q5, you’re leaving low-hanging fruit on the table while others burn their budget in the peak chaos. This December window isn’t a lull. It’s a strategic gap and your moment to do deep brand work, and audience build. Leverage it, and you’ll start Q1 ahead of competitors who were too busy chasing the Black Friday chaos.

In the last 60 days, we spent $290,000 on ads. The result? Only $100,000 in bookings. Ouch! Here are the 4 biggest mistakes I made (and how we’re fixing them): 1. Expecting ad spend in historically high-performing channels was scalable We were maximizing our budgets on our highest-performing campaigns in an effort to maximize leads before the holiday lull, and we ended up blowing past the limit of what our campaigns could produce efficiently. The Fix: We are going to scale spend a little each day (instead of all at once) so we can find our point of diminishing marginal returns on our campaigns without waste. This way, we will be more informed about how much spend a specific campaign can take and still be efficient for us. 2. Spending time and money where there wasn’t value While volume was improving and initial traction was made, we found that we had just spent lots of money in places that weren’t entirely driving up-market leads for our sales team. The Fix: we are regularly checking the quality leads that each campaign is getting over a certain time frame. If it is driving quality efficiently, we will give it more love. If not, we need to refactor and it has to earn the budget back in the future. 3. Not aligning on a clear testing framework. We went all-in on a few new campaigns as an experiment and didn’t give ourselves a testing framework. Tens of thousands of dollars were wasted because we didn’t treat this as a proper experiment. The Fix: Now any new channel or campaign will have a testing framework, complete with a hypothesis, execution plan, time frame, and definition of success. 4. Making ad copy with a short shelf life. We used to have ad copy with messaging around “hit your Q3 goals,” or seasonal trends which then would inherently need to be updated every 3 months (sometimes sooner), or else there’s no way it would convert. The Fix: We have shifted to making our copy have a longer shelf life. That way, we can focus on ad delivery metrics to determine ad fatigue, rather than writing ads with a predetermined expiration date. TAKEAWAY: We weren’t being proactive in our paid media planning and spending. We let the urgency of the moment make us reactive, which is a bad place to be as a marketer. Don’t let urgent work get in the way of more important things, particularly with forecasting, analyzing, and testing. P.S. Shout out to 🏔️ Sam Calhoun and Evan Fehler who fixed these issues for us.

Your BFCM strategy is backwards if you're waiting until November to start creating. After working with brands spending 6+ figures during peak season, this is what you need to pay attention to (and implement) to see an ROI: 1. The Evergreen Strategy While everyone's scrambling to create "Black Friday content" in October, smart brands are taking a completely different approach. We start the conversation with clients in August-September. They share their BFCM plans, and we begin building offer-specific creative for the Black Friday period. But we never stop making our regular evergreen content. 2. Why This Approach Dominates: People never stop buying normally from your ads (even during BFCM). If you find a winning creative during Black Friday, the results are always skewed because the whole ecosystem is focused on offers. It may not help your brand scale long-term. It's just a temporary blip. 3. The Smart Brand Blueprint: Instead of creating content that only works for Black Friday, we focus on finding evergreen winners throughout the entire year. Then, when BFCM arrives, we add seasonal branding or offers to proven performers. Have four evergreen winners that are crushing sales year-round? Launch new versions with Black Friday banners and themed elements. They become even better ads during peak season. When the season ends, remove the branding and you're back to normal scaling with proven creative. 4. The Advantage: Use BFCM as a learning opportunity rather than just a time for seasonal-specific content. The insights you gain from your evergreen content during high-traffic periods become goldmines for future scaling. Stop thinking seasonally. Start thinking systematically. The brands that win BFCM are the ones that treat it as an amplification period for already-proven creative, not a desperate scramble for new themed content.

You’re not immune to seasonal dips. No brand is. But if your revenue completely disappears outside of Black Friday, your strategy is off. Here’s how to keep cash flowing year-round without discounting yourself into the ground: 1. Sell with the seasons. The calendar gives you 365 days of opportunity, not just Q4. Tap into summer essentials, winter upgrades, fall refreshes, and spring cleanouts. Prioritize seasonal relevance. 2. Ride the wave of real-time trends. Big brands plan months ahead. Smart brands move fast. Tie your marketing to sports events, cultural moments, and trending topics to stay relevant without discounting a thing. 3. Make old products feel new. Your audience doesn’t know your catalog like you do. Reintroduce past best-sellers, highlight what newer customers missed, and give old collections a fresh spin. What feels repetitive to you is brand new to most of your list. 4. Turn shopping into a game. People love a chase. Create mystery gifts, hidden discounts, or an “Easter egg” product that’s 60% off for those who find it. If you make buying fun, customers engage without expecting discounts. 5. Borrow another brand’s audience. Stop marketing in a vacuum. Partner with complementary brands for joint giveaways, co-branded drops, or content swaps. You both win without slashing prices. 6. Educate instead of discounting. Quiet months are the best time to teach customers how to use your products, why they matter, and what makes them better. A well-educated customer doesn’t need a discount to convert. 7. Sell more to the customers you already have. Cross-sell complementary products, bundle best-sellers, and use personalized recommendations. More revenue, no extra ad spend. Stop blaming the “slow season.” Most of your audience doesn’t see every email, and even fewer remember past campaigns. Reuse successful promos, past partnerships, and old drops with a new spin.  What feels redundant to you is brand new to most of your list.

Dangerous B2B Google Ads mistake: Expecting lead volume and CPL to stay consistent year round. They won't. Demand is seasonal and you should optimise accounts accordingly. Here's a typical year for a B2B: • Quiet January • Busy season Feb to Late May/Early June • Steady decline until things go dead in August • Slightly busier October to November • End of year December surge In that busy season volume is high and CPL is low. That's what happens when demand is hot. Doesn't mean your account's broken when demand dries up in August. But many B2Bs still treat it as though it is. This causes them to blow up their accounts with over-optimisation: • Messing with bid strategies too frequently • Pausing high-value / un-pausing low-value keywords • Not allowing new campaigns to exit learning phases This actually leads to worse performance in the quieter months. You'll end up reducing lead volume and inflating CPL more than necessary. Because there was nothing wrong with your account in the first place. So, here's a gentle reminder as we head into Summer: You probably won't match your H1 performance (unless you're in hyper-growth). That doesn't mean there's a problem. If your strategy was working when demand was hot, it's probably the right approach when it's cold. Keep your cool. Spend 80% of your time on fundamental optimisations. Make sure you base them on long look back windows using offline conversion data. Make global account-level changes sparingly. And definitely don't get lost in day-to-day lead volume and CPL fluctuations. (You'll drive yourself insane) It's not what everyone wants to hear. But it is what's best for your account. – P.S. B2B performance marketers, how are you approaching account optimisation heading into Summer?

Seasonality isn’t an excuse. Every time results drop, I hear the same thing: “It's just seasonality.” But here’s the truth:  Seasonality isn’t why your ads are failing.  It’s why your strategy should adapt.  Is January slower? → Test new offers, clean up funnels, and prep for Q2.  Summer CPMs dip? → Push acquisition campaigns and grow your list before Q4.  Q4 is expensive? → Start warming up your audience in September — not during BFCM week. Smart brands don’t blame the season. They plan around it. Because every phase brings opportunity if you: ✔️ Match intent with strategy ✔️ Align offer timing with buyer behavior ✔️ Set goals that reflect context, not hope I’ve seen brands waste 4–6 weeks “waiting it out”... Instead of using that time to restructure, test, or build momentum. Don’t react to seasonality. Build with it.

Meta’s performance took a hit in January across many niches. Instead of waiting for a rebound, the smart ones are shifting budgets to YouTube and Google. Why? Because they’re more reliable, drive better returns, and outpace Meta’s instability. Seasonality, post-Q4 fatigue, and rising CPMs always make the start of the year unpredictable. Don’t just sit back and hope Meta rebounds. It’s time to make calculated shifts. We took a bit of an aggressive approach: 1. Shifting Spend to Google & YouTube. - Leveraging top-performing Meta VSLs for YouTube and optimising creatives for platform fit. - Running cold-traffic YouTube at scale aids all other campaigns’ efficiency. 2. VSL to Advertorial Funnels. - Driving traffic through VSL → pre-sale (advertorial) → sales page, using Funnelish over Shopify for better revenue per click (RPC). - Dialled in up-sells and cross-sells to boost AOV. 3. Seasonal Creative Testing. - We anticipated the January dip early across most niches. - Tested Valentine’s Day messaging in advance, leaning into self-love and personal investment angles for those not directly aligned with V-Day. - New Year, New Me for health and wellness brands. - Super Bowl for American brands with a young male ICP. 4. Positioning for the YouTube Shift. - With Demand Gen ads rolling out, we’re scaling long-form VSLs, high-retention creatives, and direct-response storytelling on YouTube. January’s performance drop wasn’t a surprise. It is surprising how many brands are still sitting on their hands, waiting for Meta to fix itself. Stop blaming the algorithm. Instead, adapt to dominate the rest of 2025.

Amazon sent 5,743 holiday email campaigns last season. Walmart sent 1,288. Guess which strategy performed better? Research analyzing holiday email performance from major ecommerce brands revealed something most marketers get backwards: More emails doesn't mean more opens or conversions. Amazon's deliverability sat at 85%. Walmart's hit 95%. That difference matters more than you'd think. For Amazon, emails with below-90% deliverability got 13% open rates. Above 90%? The rate jumped to 19-22%. But here's the real insight buried in the data: Smaller, segmented email lists consistently outperformed larger blast campaigns across every brand studied. Yet most ecommerce teams are still playing the volume game. They're scheduling dozens of holiday sends to their entire list, watching deliverability drop, and wondering why open rates tank. The brands winning aren't sending more. They're sending smarter. Clean your list constantly. A deliverability rate below 90% signals quality issues that kill your open rates before anyone sees your offer. Segment ruthlessly. Your loyal customers, potential converters, and inactive subscribers all need different messages. Treating them the same leaves money on the table. Focus on the season, not just the days. Site visits don't drop after Cyber Monday like everyone assumes. The brands that keep relevant emails flowing through December capture sales competitors miss. The irony? Most email marketers know segmentation works, but only 58% actually use it. That's not a knowledge problem—it's an execution problem. Holiday email success isn't about flooding inboxes. It's about reaching the right people with clean lists and relevant messages. Full research breakdown and holiday email tactics that work year-round in the article below.