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Consumer behavior changes all year long.
Buying priorities shift with holidays, weather patterns, sales cycles, and cultural events. In turn, these changes influence when and how people research products and make purchases. So, tweaking your channel spend based on marketing seasonality can help you capture customers at the right moment and improve your conversion rates.
Yet, many organizations rely on a fixed channel strategy throughout the year. Budgets are distributed across channels without considering whether those channels match the current stage of the buyer’s journey. That can leave money on the table.
A more effective approach is to adjust your media investments based on changing buyer intent so your marketing efforts align with the way customers actually behave.
What Seasonal Buyer Intent Means for Marketers
Before major purchase seasons, many buyers enter a research phase. They shop around, compare brands, read reviews, and search for product information. It often occurs weeks or months before a major buying event such as back-to-school shopping, tax season purchases, or holiday gift buying.
As those events approach, buyer behavior typically shifts. Consumers move from research to decision-making. Search volume increases. Promotional offers gain more attention. Purchase activity accelerates.
Understanding these patterns allows marketers to determine when to emphasize different stages of the buying journey. Your marketing and media mix may need to be different to reach customers as they move from awareness to consideration to conversion.
How Channel Performance Changes Throughout the Year
Many marketers focus everything on buyer intent keywords to capture the switch between education and conversion without thinking about how different marketing channels support different stages of the buying journey. However, the effectiveness of your marketing channels can change significantly depending on where your customers are at the moment.
- Display and social: Drives awareness and interest at the beginning of a buying cycle.
- Email and remarketing: Re-engages users during the research and consideration phase.
- Search and paid media: Captures high-intent demand during peak buying periods.
Awareness
Display and social media channels tend to work better early in the cycle to expose your brand and build awareness. They’re a great way to showcase your products to consumers who aren’t yet ready to buy. Tailoring your messages in advance of the buying season can help make your content stand out and start the process.
Consideration
As consumers get more serious about their intentions, email and remarketing campaigns play a different role. Here, consumers may need multiple reminders to move from simply knowing about your brand to considering making a purchase. They may also be looking for information that helps them make a decision. Remarketing lets you reinforce messaging they may have seen when visiting your website or interacting with your content.
Conversion
When consumers are ready to make a purchasing decision, search and paid media channels can capture the high-intent demand during peak buying periods. These customers are often searching online to compare offers, find promotions, or look for providers. Campaigns that target buyer intent keywords connect with customers who are actively seeking a solution.
Tips for Adjusting Your Media Mix by Season
Before you adjust your media mix by season, there are a few key considerations that can help increase your odds of success.
Review Historical Campaign Performance by Season
Taking a look at how past campaigns performed can provide you with valuable insight into:
- When certain channels performed best
- When consumers were most responsive to certain messages
Review Marketing Budget Allocations by Channel
Look beyond line-item budgets and make sure your allocations support current buyer intent. If your data shows that consumers are entering a different phase, don’t be afraid to shift your spend to follow.
Shift spend to awareness and nurturing channels early in the cycle, and then move to display and email to build interest before demand peaks. Then, during peak buying periods, assigning more budget to search and paid media channels can help capture ready-to-buy customers.
Evaluate and Adjust
The best marketers understand what a marketing channel is and what it can do for them, keeping in mind that consumer behavior shifts and channel performance changes, too. So, it’s important to regularly review campaign performance and tweak spend to what works best based on your goals and buyer intent. Marketing seasonality works best when you keep a close eye on results and refine your media mix throughout the year.
Growing Your Business With Seasonal Buyer Intent
Instead of maintaining a static strategy, successful marketers adjust their media mix to reflect marketing seasonality and evolving customer intent.
UpSwell Marketing helps businesses build integrated marketing campaigns that connect the right message with the right audience at the right time to grow your business. By combining data-driven insights with strategic channel planning, we help you reach customers more effectively throughout the year and maximize the impact of every campaign.
