22 September 2026 · 5 min read · Oscar Markham
Budgeting a marketing year that is not flat
Dividing an annual budget by twelve is the default and it is wrong for a majority of the businesses we work with. Demand is not evenly distributed, so spend should not be either.
Find your actual curve
Take last year's enquiries or invoices and plot them by month. Most trades are surprised by how pronounced it is.
Stoves and chimney sweeps make most of their money in about ten weeks. Landscaping decides its year in February. Gyms peak in January and pay the most for it. Powerwashing effectively stops in winter.
Spend ahead of the peak, not during it
The instinct is to advertise when the phone is busy, because that feels like momentum. It is usually the most expensive moment to buy attention, because every competitor is doing the same.
The money is in the weeks just before, when the people who will buy are deciding and nobody else is talking to them yet.
Change the message when you fill up
Once the diary is full, availability is the wrong thing to advertise. Switch to lead times.
Saying you are booking into November is not a deterrent — it is proof, and it holds the people willing to wait rather than sending them to a competitor with immediate availability and a reason for it.
Use the quiet months for the things that compound
Content, reviews, photographs, the Google profile, the website. All of it is cheaper to do when you are not busy and all of it makes next season's spend work harder.
The alternative — advertising into a month when nobody is buying — is the single most common waste we find in trade accounts.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.