The biggest mistake that is made in advertising is trying to “time the market”. For some industries this is easy to do (ie. springtime is a big time for basement waterproofers to advertise whereas winter is not). But for anyone that is in a business that is 24/7/365 timing the market will hurt you more than help.

You have to commit to year round advertising. Well, you don’t have to, but not doing so hurts.

There are reasons for this.

The biggest reason is the buying cycle. People become away of something, then they become interested, then they shop around, they commit to buying and then they buy. Sometimes this can take months. Sometimes it can take days or hours depending on the urgency.

For example. If you only advertise, say, at Christmas because “Christmas is the busy shopping season”, that is great. But the problem is that you are going to have lowwer name recognition and trust than the company that advertises all year.

If they have done a good job people will go to them first without even caring much about what you do. The only thing that you gather is what we call the “low hanging fruit” or people that are less likely to buy but might still be interested.

These are low potential customers and not really the best types to target.

Yes, advertising during slow times of the year might mean expending a greater percentage of your gross revenues on drawing in customers, but it is well worth the effort.

January/February are generally good times to get locked into advertising schedules for the rest of the year. Because fewwer people advertise and justify this because of lower sales. This means rates are often lower as people struggle to fill ad slots. And if you commit now for an entire year, you can usally work out lower rates than if you waited until later.

If you are in a business that is catering to people year round not advertising year round is absolutely foolish.

—————————————————————–

J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.