Seasonality

We’ve talked about being intentional about our business and planning things. One of the key things in any business is not to just let things drift. Being aware of the environment you’re operating in is fundamental. For most of us our business has seasonal peaks and troughs. In the UK there is a peak for weddings in the summer and a peak for funerals in the late winter and early spring. For those of you in the Southern hemisphere and warmer climes those seasonal ups and downs will have different cycles.

If our business has seasonal variations then our marketing activity should map those trends. Weddings have a long lead time, in many cases somewhere between a year and two years. Having said that I seem to have tapped into a seam of “quickie” weddings. Most of mine in the last year have been with less than three months notice and in one case less than two weeks!

But that aside… In order to be the celebrant who is picked one has to be the celebrant who is in the right place at the right time! If your name isn’t in front of the bride on the day she’s making the decision then there is no way she’s going to pick you. I ran some experiments with Google ads last year and the scale of the peak in searches for “Wedding Celebrant” during Christmas and New Year was much larger than I’d expected. People were getting engaged and almost immediately started searching for wedding suppliers. February the 15^th was also a very busy day after the romantic Valentine’s Day proposals the night before. If you want your diary to be full next summer then you need to be planning your marketing six months ago! Here’s a quick look at the marriage statistics from the UK government. It is clear that the majority of couples are getting married in the summer months, which isn’t a surprise given our weather here. Your marketing effort needs to be at least 18 months ahead of that.

Similarly, for funerals, in the UK the statistics are easy to find, by region, on the Office for National Statistics website. Here are the number of deaths registered for England and Wales by month, averaged over the last three years. You can see that there is a peak in January and March followed by a lull in July and August. Obviously there are annual and regional variations but if you’re trying to break in to a new funeral director then it looks like December is the time to focus on making those visits. When the January peak hits and their current celebrants are run off their feet you want to be the next in line for a phone call. August isn’t a complete write-off though. As other celebrants take holiday it is worth approaching FDs and picking up the slack.

If you’re not planning your marketing effort then you’re leaving your business to chance. Take a dig around your national statistics website and see what gems of useful information you can find and then sit down with your calendar and work out how you’re going to capitalise on that knowledge and when you’re going to do it.

As always, if you’re finding these videos useful so will your celebrant friends. Please invite them to join the group so we can share the love and bring the joy.