Seasonality in the garden industry: What to do when demand drops

Businesses in the garden and outdoor space naturally have strong seasonal peaks and troughs, with heightened customer demand over the late spring and early summer months, with this beginning to tail off as the weather turns.

Have you accepted your fate when it comes to performance throughout the autumn and winter months, or are you wondering how to make the most of the traditionally low season and push your performance forward?

Whilst there’s only so much you can do to generate customer demand, at Wolfenden we believe a strong seasonality analysis is key to understanding search interest for your core product categories throughout the year, and being able to make strategic, multi-channel marketing decisions off the back of this.

Below, we show you how to create a seasonality analysis for the garden industry, the metrics to include and how to apply the insights across the marketing mix.

How do I create a seasonality analysis?

• Choose several categories you want to analyse (such as ‘garden dining sets’, ‘garden seats’ and ‘loungers’, ‘outdoor lighting’, ‘water features’ and ‘garden tools’)
• Select a range of the highest-volume keywords for each core product category, (such as ‘six-seater sets’, ‘egg and swing seats’, ‘solar powered lights’, ‘fountain water feature’ and ‘garden trowels’ as examples). You may wish to go more granular with your categories should there be a high variety of terms within each
• Gather data on monthly cumulative search volumes for these core tracked keywords
• Overlay this with Google trends search interest by month for these core keywords
• Utilise your source of truth platform, be it GA4 or something else, to overlay product category sales from previous financial years (note that this is naturally impacted by elements such as historic stock levels or marketing activity undertaken)
• Consider at least a couple of years’ worth of data for accuracy where possible. We know that weather has a large impact on this data for garden businesses, was this particularly pleasant last year and therefore results may be impacted by this?
• Analyse results and draw conclusions

What to do when certain categories maintain demand beyond peak season

1. Get ahead of the game

It’s important that once you have identified focus categories for the low season, you begin to prepare well in advance.

Data telling you that certain garden features remain more popular during the end of summer/early autumn season? Look to take action for this category in the early summer months.

2. Apply this data to your individual marketing channels

Some examples of how this can be actioned are:

Paid media

• Ahead of time, ensure you have dedicated creatives for associated product sets for Paid Social and other awareness activity streams e.g. Demand Generation, overlaid with key messaging around your offering. Use your seasonality data to understand when demand begins to rise, ensuring that Prospecting activity reaches users as interest begins to climb, and customers are nurtured down the funnel through middle of funnel and bottom of funnel remarketing campaigns as interest continues to grow or sustain further.
• Consider grouping together products which fall within these higher intent categories within the feed and creating a bespoke campaign for these if you don’t have this in place already for example, a bespoke Shopping campaign for ‘Outdoor Lighting’. Bespoke budgets can then be set for this product range.
• Ensure these products are optimised within product feeds with attributes added and keyword optimised titles – remember that feed optimisation impacts both your paid and organic shopping listings!
• Ensure sitelinks are updated across branded search campaigns to further promote these seasonal categories

SEO and UX

Consider a full onsite review of the category several months ahead of the expected peak, reviewing and providing recommendations for:

• Hierarchy and navigation
• Category page content
• Product page content
• Supporting content
• Internal linking
• Page experience and technical – consider using a heatmapping tool such as Microsoft Clarity for additional insights into the user journey
• Tracking – is tracking set up effectively for this category to monitor performance?

Digital PR

• Consider additional resource for these focus categories prior to the expected or sustained peaks to build authority around these topics, consider whether there is likely to be journalist interest in these categories ahead of time. For example, whilst there may be peaks in interest for ‘Snowdrops’ or ‘Crocus’ throughout autumn/winter based on planting season, a journalist is unlikely to cover these ranges in the summer/autumn months, so building authority to these sub- categories ahead of time could be challenging. It may be advisable to focus on higher level categories such as ‘Bulbs’ overall, directing authority to the parent category.
• Ensure press releases are relevant to the category, containing keyword-rich anchor text and links to core category pages.
• Keep an eye out for product placement opportunities related to this category (being aware that these are more likely to lead to affiliate links!) – can you get bank of imagery and list of products to push ahead of time so you’re ready for reactive opportunities?

The analysis shows me all my core categories see drops, what else can I do?

1. Consider your year-round audience and tailored messaging:

Whilst time in the garden is traditionally a summer affair, consider audiences that may continue to be engaged with your products outside of peak. Garden enthusiasts may be more likely to brave the colder weather to pursue their hobby, preparing soil or protecting plants ahead of winter, whilst new homeowners may wish to develop their garden space no matter the time of year. Ensuring these audiences are a focal point of your targeting and marketing activity in low season.

2. Consider your creative and messaging:

Gardens aren’t only for enjoying the summer sun, a cosy autumn evening round the firepit toasting marshmallows can be just as enjoyable. Ensure your creative and messaging reflect the changing seasons, showing how your garden can still be enjoyed outside of peak.

3. Plan for next peak:

Now’s your time to get ahead! Think about your goals for next peak, what do you need to do in order to get there? Create a clear roadmap across services to ensure a strong peak next year.

If you’re a business in the gardening space, the autumn and winter months can be undoubtedly challenging. The good news is that with careful consideration of seasonality and clear planning there are still ways to maximise the available opportunity.

Reach out to our team for a chat if you want to better understand how to generate demand and traffic out of typical seasonal peaks.