While most advertisers experience some degree of seasonality, it’s a topic that often doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. In this week’s PPCChat session, host Julie F Bacchini led a discussion on how seasonality impacts the brands experts manage, how to better understand seasonality in PPC, useful tools for managing it, and more.
Q1: Do the brands for which you manage advertising have distinct seasonality in their businesses that THEY recognize? If so, what general industries are you working in?
B2B – it depends! Some of our clients have definite seasonality, while others see pretty consistent performance and demand from month to month. @beyondthepaid
Yes although different brands handle it in different ways. The healthiest relationships have campaigns oriented around seasonality. @navahhopkins
Some of the lead gen areas I have worked with definitely had significant seasonality and knew it. Examples include: home services (think HVAC where tons of calls at start of winter or summer or during major cold snaps or heat waves), education, a lice treatment company (school year) @NeptuneMoon
B2C – Finance, mortgages and credit reports specifically. Downtick in Q4; big uptick in Q1. @JeffreyHain
I should clarify that for B2B, December is pretty much useless for lead gen. @beyondthepaid
yes! resto, travel, even Gov. My wildfire ads are live already. @JuliaVyse
I think summer can be slower for B2B as well with decision maker vacations. @NeptuneMoon
One thing is for certain, seasonality and smart bidding is one of the biggest missed opportunities. Not enough people enter the seasonality settings for conversion goals and it 100 impacts the success (or lack there of) of smart bidding. @navahhopkins
@beyondthepaid And you can’t just turn advertising off in December like you could in the old days and not lose ground…@NeptuneMoon
And the other way @navahhopkins – not managing activity correctly when going into your down time and then the smart bidding keeps trying to push for more increases your CPCs looking for demand because of your prior data. @Meriem
@NeptuneMoon right – you’re kind of screwed either way in December. Stay running, get terrible results; or pause and all smart bidding starts over, ruining your January…@beyondthepaid
Absolutely, as an agency, it is also challenging to be aware, updated, and strategically adapted to each client’s specific seasonality. @Jefersonvenancio
Q2: Do you see a seasonality in the brands for which you manage advertising that the business really does NOT? And if so, how do you categorize it? What general industries are you working in for this type of situation?
Thankfully no – though it will be interesting to see if this remains true as I fully become Microsoft first. @navahhopkins
I would argue that most brands have some seasonal element. @NeptuneMoon
If you mean does the advertising show seasonality but the business doesn’t see it generally then no. The clients I work with tend experience seasonality at the same time as the ads do. @Pete_Bowen
Not every brand is aware of the more subtle seasonality. @NeptuneMoon
When I was in the mortgage space, the marketing team was aware of the Q4 downtick in quality leads, but sales wanted the same lead volume, so we ended up paying more to satisfy them. @JeffreyHain
@JeffreyHain When there is not an acknowledgement of any seasonality, it can certainly make our jobs harder. Because expectations get unrealistic, as in the scenario you described. @NeptuneMoon
Sad part @NeptuneMoon is the pattern was repeated YoY. @JeffreyHain
Right… so it should have been built into the business planning. But sometimes businesses think that PPC is a magic faucet that has eternally strong water pressure 365 days a year! It is times like that where I have my big “search captures demand – it does not generate it” talk. @NeptuneMoon
I have some B2B clients who still don’t think there is seasonality when December goes quiet. “Clearly we’re not doing something right with our ads” @Meriem
@Meriem “Yes Diane, it is a mystery as to why the click and conversion volume dips every December…” @NeptuneMoon
We have one client who insists there is no seasonality to their business, despite multiple data points showing there is (including data directly from Google). We just don’t bring it up with them anymore…@beyondthepaid
Not really, but I do wish sometimes we could take more advantage of seasonal changes in creatives and activations. @JuliaVyse
Interesting question – how could ad platforms help make this more clear for clients/stakeholders. @navahhopkins
@navahhopkins That question is coming up! @NeptuneMoon
I love you @NeptuneMoon
It started this way – with us seeing seasonality the clients wouldn’t acknowledge – but we’ve been successful using data to show them that the seasonality isn’t waht they thought, and now theyr’e more on the same page. @revaminkoff
Q3: Do you do anything special in your campaigns to account for or manage seasonality?
Budget heavy ups for holiday mostly. @JuliaVyse
Lots of budget changes. @revaminkoff
We planned Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions (heavy discounts) to spur sales and get a head start on Q1. @JeffreyHain
Offers for Ecom + Budget/Bid Controls. @alimehdimukadam
Also, we’ve started adding in ad groups for seasonal creatives, so they’re easier to compare to the control and to turn on/off. @revaminkoff
Also added promotion details and deadlines to control ads. @JeffreyHain
One of the things we do is ensure our rules are working in the feeds for stock during the big summer and January sales (and other sales too). @Meriem
Lower Q4 budgets and little to no spend in the last 2 weeks of the year. @beyondthepaid
With today’s automation, you have to make sure you have ad groups flowing where you plan to do your seasonal adjustments. You can’t just spin up a new ad group or unpause one that has been dormant for months and get peak performance in a day. I still don’t think experienced search advertising companies quite fully get that search has learning periods like social has always had. @NeptuneMoon
I think the learning periods the platforms want don’t always align with what’s realistic/possible for the advertisers and promotions though. @revaminkoff
I also think making notations in the platform or in your analytics about seasonal changes you make in the account is a good practice. @NeptuneMoon
So many clients want to use PPC to support short-term sales…@revaminkoff
@revaminkoff That is an underreported issue. Because in the “old days” you could spin up a new campaign and hit the ground running day one. Now you can’t. I had a home services client years ago and we used to turn campaigns on and off ALL THE TIME based on how far out they were booked for certain types of work. No way that would work now. @NeptuneMoon
Q4: Do any platforms handle seasonality better than others? If so, what makes it better or worse?
In my opinion, Google handles it better than Meta. Meta has had frequent issues right around peak season of overspending/some features not working, etc. @alimehdimukadam
Meta also has too long of a learning period time – makes it hard to do anything quickly. @revaminkoff
@alimehdimukadam Social media is full of PPCers talking about Meta issues during peak holiday season it feels like every year! Google Ads lets you note something as an anomaly too, which I think is helpful in this area too. @NeptuneMoon
Agreed – while Google isn’t perfect, it does have seasonality adjustments and other feature that help. @beyondthepaid
Here is how to do it on Google Ads: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10370710?hl=en @NeptuneMoon
We have a client who ideally would do a series of highly funded and efficient short campaigns, and it’s so frustrating to feel like the platforms won’t really accomodate that. (and by short, I mean a month or less, possibly even 2 weeks or less) @revaminkoff
Totally agree. We need the ability to turn things on and off quickly without being penalized by awful performance while it “learns” I mean, there’s always manual bidding, but who knows how long that’ll be around. @beyondthepaid
Or in most cases “re-learns” @NeptuneMoon
Yes – re-learns! @beyondthepaid
Q5: What do you wish clients or stakeholders understood better about seasonality and PPC?
Learning periods exist. They stink. There’s not much you can do about the fact that they exist or are easily triggered. @revaminkoff
Plan & Prepare in advance. They have all historical data. And we have Search Trends data. As marketers, we need to let them know & they need to plan for dips or scale accordingly. (Inventory, Offers, Retention, etc.) @alimehdimukadam
That search advertising of today is not the search advertising of 5 years ago. Yes, you can turn things on and off, but there are consequences that linger from doing that. You do not just jump immediately back to where you were before the pausing. @NeptuneMoon
One does not simply enable a campaign. @Pete_Bowen
And if you want a campaign to really hit during a certain period, you have to take it live sooner so it can be out of learning for your target dates. @NeptuneMoon
Right but you can’t take it live sooner if the seasonality isn’t in place yet – i.e. the offer hasn’t started or it’s not spring, etc. @revaminkoff
It is sort of seasonality adjacent, but big happenings in the world or in the world of people who buy what you sell will impact your campaign performance. @revaminkoff I think these days you almost have to have a 2 week buffer for your seasonal campaigns – which sucks and is hard to explain to businesses @NeptuneMoon
Tell me about it. I have a client in immigration law in the US. In the months leading up to the election his CPA dropped down to $30 (typically around $60) now, it’s around $80 and the volume is really constrained. @Pete_Bowen
For short burst campaigns, we launch our ‘coming soon’ messages with the promo ad groups on pause. It helps force the machine to review the whole campaign in a live state and then turn on the promo ones on the right date. no guarantees of course. @JuliaVyse
Q6: Is there anything you wish was available to help manage seasonality – either in ad platforms or in reporting tools?
A way to say, ” we need this to ramp immediately – this is a 3 day long promo” – or something to that effect. @revaminkoff
I wish there was like a “Blitz” setting for campaigns where you could get performance right away for campaigns with limited durations. @NeptuneMoon
(and no matter how well it performs, it is still only a 3 day long promo — I think Google and Meta assume if something is working you will always be willing to put more money into it, and that’s just not reality) @revaminkoff
Hindsight & Foresight – something platforms can’t really share. At times, I do like some Google Insights that point towards rising search query. @alimehdimukadam
It will be interesting to see if any of the AI being incorporated into platforms will start to surface seasonality more, particularly the more subtle variety. @NeptuneMoon
I’d love Meta to have a notation that indicates they’ve stopped serving your campaign because they think it timed out, etc. versus having to monitor impression volume every day to determine if the algorithm has had enough and needing a few days to determine the data isn’t an anomaly. @revaminkoff
Yes! a high-noise, accelerated learning period to get stuff going quick. @JuliaVyse
It would be great if the system would prompt you to consider adjusting your bidding parameters if it knows you are heading into a stronger or weaker season too. I suppose theoretically it is doing that for you behind the curtain, but asking for an active step would be interesting. @NeptuneMoon
A “how aggressive do you want us to be” scale would be nice too. Because you could almost dial that down in times where volume is already super high and dial it up when it is low if the client doesn’t understand seasonality… @NeptuneMoon
When Google provides recommendations that the budget will be limited by seasonality after x date and asks if you want to increase the budget, I wish they would be clear about whether you’d be increasing the budget immediately or whether you could set it to increase a month from now, when it’s saying the seasonality will go into effect. @revaminkoff
A “quick learn” or “promo” setting that would either make smart bidding learn faster or just let it rip – that would be nice. @beyondthepaid
Honestly, having the option for a separate learning budget would be nice too. So if you need it to take off fast, you could have a bigger learning budget and then a budget level you want for the “real” campaign. @NeptuneMoon
PPCChat Participants
- Reva Minkoff @revaminkoff
- Jeffrey Hain @JeffreyHain
- Julie F Bacchini @NeptuneMoon
- Navah Hopkins @navahhopkins
- Melissa L Mackey @beyondthepaid
- Ali Mehdi Mukadam @alimehdimukadam
- Peter Bowen @Pete_Bowen
- Meriem @Meriem
- Julia Vyse @JuliaVyse
- Jeferson Venancio @Jefersonvenancio
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