The short answer
Most accounts run a flat monthly budget while demand is anything but flat. Weighting spend towards the weeks when enquiries actually arrive improves return without increasing total spend.
Use your own enquiry history for the pattern. Industry seasonality charts are a poor substitute for what your customers actually do.
Find your own pattern
- Plot enquiries by week over two or three years.
- Separate genuine seasonality from one-off events.
- Check whether the pattern differs by service.
- Look at day of week and time of day as well as season.
- Account for your sales cycle, since spend precedes enquiries.
Point five is the one that trips people up. If your cycle is six weeks, spending in the peak week is too late. The spend has to lead the demand.
Pace without starving the algorithm
| Approach | Risk |
|---|---|
| Flat budget all year | Wastes spend in quiet periods |
| Heavy weighting to peaks | Campaigns lose learning in the troughs |
| Pause entirely in quiet periods | Restarting costs a learning phase |
| Reduced but continuous | Usually the right balance |
The bottom row is what most accounts should do. Cutting to zero means paying for the learning phase again when you restart, which frequently costs more than the saving.
Watch the competition, not just demand
Costs rise when competitors bid harder, which is usually at the same time as your peak. The highest-demand week is often the most expensive one, and the shoulder periods can produce a better return.
Check cost per enquiry by period rather than assuming the peak is the best place to spend.
Leave room to react
Hold a portion of the budget unallocated for the campaigns that turn out to work and for unexpected demand. Fully committed budgets cannot respond to what the data shows.
That reserve also covers the occasions when something breaks and you need to compensate, which happens more often than plans assume.