Should you bother advertising over the Christmas break?

It is vital for small business to continue to advertise over the Christmas break for psychological reasons, for price reasons and for 2020 reasons.

Connecting feel-good times with your brand

The first reason why advertising over the Christmas period is a good idea, is because people are generally in a pretty decent mood over holiday periods. And when people are in good moods, they’re in a pretty decent state of mind when they see your ads and come across your brand. And if you’ve done a good job of properly targeting them with things they are actually interested in, they’ll get a little dopamine hit in their brain that is going to form a small connection between feeling good, and what you do. This is what happens when you see an ad or a piece of content that interests you when you’re in a good, happy, generally stable state of mind on social media, television or even in a magazine. So you can imagine just how good that connection will be between you and that person if they keep encountering stuff they like about you over a 2–6 week holiday period.

Take advantage of cheaper rates

Another advantage to advertising over the holiday season is that, apart from major sports like one-day cricket and test matches, advertising can be a lot cheaper over this period. Because the buying habits of Aussies veers away from retail spending to food and beverage, leisure and things like fuel and holiday-related expenses, then general retail and business ads start disappearing from TV, radio and especially from Facebook and Google. While all those plumbers and electricians are closing down their offices over Christmas, there’s a good chance they’ll close down their Google and Facebook ads. That means less competition, and a much lower cost per click through to your website, your phone number of your email. In the case of TV and radio, you can negotiate much better deals over this period — unless you’re in a holiday town, then the opposite applies.

Start 2020 from the front

Finally, you’re going to want to advertise over Christmas, because this is when you start the groundwork for all the stuff you want to achieve in 2020. While everyone else wants to wait until they’re back in the office in the second or third week of January, getting your marketing together and ads being delivered from mid to late December means that your ads are really starting to get noticed around New Year, a full two or three weeks before the general run of everyone else is just starting to get going. And that head start in combination with the previous reasons above means that you’re going to at full speed when they’re all just starting their engines.

Try something new

Coming from a media background, I’ve always marvelled at why business wants to pull back advertising at a time when the opportunity to connect people with your brand is strongest, the inventory is cheapest and everyone else is asleep at the wheel. So why not mix it up a little this year and see if bucking the trend and going the opposite way to the lemmings has you starting 2020 off at full speed, rather than groggily rocking up to the office in late January wondering where all the money is going to come from.