Think like a deer hunter. As I read somewhere in an article about deer hunting, "The best days to be in the woods are when the hunting season is open" In the same way, the best time to be marketing is when your customer are looking. If you are looking to optimize your advertising budget, you want to make sure you are advertising during the peak "looking and booking" season. As a Canadian outfitter or fishing lodge, your customers south of the border are prone to seasonality. Beginning with American Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday of November) and through to the beginning of January is holiday season for many Americans. This means gatherings with family and friends, a.k.a. hunting groups. Search activity for just about every species-hunting and species-fishing term peaks in the USA at this time and most outfitters and lodges we have worked with will agree with our own data.
We examine the "conversion" activity of our customers, and, almost without any exceptions, we can track about 50% of leads and bookings to the period from mid November to mid February. If you are going to spend your advertise $'s wisely, make sure to double your budget during that time. Of course there is also other seasonality, very predictable seasonality, that goes with each hunting season. Spring bear season shows a spike of activity about 1-1/2 months to a couple of weeks before the start of the season, so mid March through end of April.
Sometimes it takes some groups too long to get their schedule all aligned and they are left scrambling for available booking dates. If you have any cancellations, this is peak time to be pushing these. We have seen this happening across all seasons, regardless of species, regardless of hunting or fishing. Spring Snow Goose season. Fishing Season. Fall bear hunt season. Whitetail season. They all show a secondary peak in the "looking and booking" activity about 1-1/2 months before the season opening dates. While this post is primarily about timing your ad $'s, take the opportunity to use all your marketing channels and platforms during these times. Blog posts, website updates, social media posts. All of these should be coordinated along with your ad spend to put out a timely and consistent message to the market.
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