In most any business, various months of the year present different levels of digital marketing “activity” for your business. January might present an influx of traffic to your site on a yearly basis, while the middle of summer is your slow period. Each industry has its own unique “seasonality,” which can be explained by a number of different factors (ski resort site traffic peaks in the winter, apple orchards in the fall, etc.). The insurance industry, for example, shows peak activity in the middle of the summer – July, to be specific. After that, there is a gradual decline until a steep increase at the end of the year. With our huge reliance on search engines for information, we can comfortably use search engine keyword traffic as a proxy for “level of interest” to show seasonality:

(Source: Google Trends)

This graph confirms that search traffic for the keyword “insurance” peaks in July. From there, a “seasonality effect” comes into play as search demand wanes until the end of the calendar year.

Don’t be discouraged! Your business doesn’t have to lose revenue simply because searches within your industry historically decline until January. In fact, I would argue that this is an OPPORTUNITY for insurance agencies to smooth out seasonality trends for their business while their competitors are losing sales.

Here are two ways to keep business leads coming to your business during the “slow” periods of the year:

Increase your SEM budget

Though overall search demand is down during this portion of the year, you don’t need to settle for whatever traffic comes to your site organically. There will always be a level of interest in insurance-related searches, and paid search (Pay-Per-Click) traffic is a great source of that traffic. Increase your PPC budget to capture as many visitors and leads as possible, while targeting specific keywords (insurance products) to keep your employees busy and productive.
Is your personal lines team underused? Target an SEM campaign towards auto and home insurance keywords, generating traffic that will inject fresh leads into your business while other insurance agencies struggle through this slow period.

One of the best parts of SEM is that it is truly “performance marketing.” In other words, your budget is spent directly on “performance” – your SEM budget is only used if and when a visitor sees your ad in Google results, and then visits your site. It’s a predictable source of search engine traffic all year round – but can be especially useful during those times when organic activity is slow.

Supplement with Paid Leads

Keeping your agency busy during the summer months can be difficult. Why not give yourself a boost by supplementing your agency’s pipeline with paid leads? Apply a monthly budget that will guarantee a certain number of leads for your agency. I recommend paid leads as a great way to supplement all other digital marketing activities.

While seasonality affects every industry vertical, don’t sit around and wait for the calendar turn. Use these two other marketing strategies to grow your business during slow times of the year.