Where are all those eyes coming from?
By Leo Valiquette
Francis posted a good piece today over at Dangletech on the misperception that marketing and public relations activities are a wasted effort during the summer months when sandy beaches and boat docks beckon. Linda blogged quite handily herself on the issue a little while back.
There are, without doubt, fewer pairs of eyes available in July and August to pay attention to the news, but I contend that a greater number of the eyes that remain have more time to keep abreast of, even catch up with, the news and information that’s relevant to them.
In fact, I would even go so far as to suggest that more people will take note of your activities than at other times of the year, when the the volume of work makes it difficult to keep the inbox clear, never mind take the time to read papers and magazines.
Case in point. During my time as a reporter and editor with the Ottawa Business Journal, the paper migrated away from publishing specialty magazines and supplements between Canada Day (that’s July 1 for our international readers) and Labour Day, which is the first Monday in September. I’m not sure now how or why this came to be, but a perception had taken hold that no one’s around to read this stuff during July and August. Perhaps it was the advertisers themselves who believed, for whatever reason, that their budgets were poorly spent this time of year.
Frustrated by this summer blight, OBJ publisher Michael Curran and I reviewed the traffic numbers to the OBJ website, and the pickup rates for the print edition of the newspaper, through the summer months over the past few years. Rather than seeing declines, we saw increases. More people were coming to the website, more people were picking up the paper from the curbside box, than they were during other months of the year believed to be prime advertising periods, such as September to November.
How is this possible, when there are undeniably fewer people at work on any given day? I think the answer is a simple one. It’s summer time, it’s nice out. Who wants to stay cooped up in the office all day? Instead, people go for a walk, visit the newspaper boxes out on the street. Meanwhile, back in the office, with many staff away, fewer projects are underway and the workload eases off a bit, giving people more time to surf the web and catch up on their reading (which is no doubt all work-related ;).
My former colleagues at the OBJ confirmed this morning that this year is no different. Web traffic for July came in higher than it did for many of those “busy” months of the past year.
As Linda said in her post, why miss the opportunity to make some noise when your competitors are taking the summer off from getting their messages out?
