Your Peak Season Marketing Checklist

Peak season is the most competitive time in the property market. Every January, search activity surges as buyers and renters return to the market refreshed and ready to move. The frustration of spending the holidays in a home that no longer fits often becomes the trigger for action, and Boxing Day onwards brings a sharp rise in web traffic.

Businesses that prepare in advance are the ones who capture that intent. December may feel quiet, but it’s the perfect moment to get your marketing in order so you can hit the ground running when demand peaks. This checklist covers everything you should be focusing on now to make January a success.

Plan Your Budget and Resources

January is when intent spikes, but December still offers a valuable window to build awareness. Hold the majority of your spend for the new year while allocating a small slice for awareness activity over the festive break. This ensures buyers are already familiar with your brand when they start searching seriously.

Resource planning is just as important as budget allocation. Development time and creative support become harder to secure as peak season approaches, so lining up what you need now avoids last-minute stress.

Improve the Site Experience

Your website is central to converting traffic into leads, so it pays to make improvements ahead of the rush. Focus on changes that deliver the most impact. Optimise lead forms to be simple, mobile-friendly and clear about why information is being requested. Review building and development pages to ensure imagery, floorplans and copy are up to date. Even small usability fixes now can mean more completed forms later.

Framing these improvements in terms of ROI helps stakeholders understand that each adjustment is about generating more leads for the same investment.

Create Campaigns That Stand Out

The market in January is crowded, and generic campaigns rarely cut through. Instead of relying on standard property visuals, use the quieter months to plan creative that connects emotionally. Lifestyle-led storytelling is a proven way to stand out. Show what life looks like in your development, highlight the local area, and paint a picture of the experience, not just the specification.

Campaigns built on this kind of emotional resonance are more memorable and often deliver results long after they first run.

Refresh Your Messaging

Advertising accounts can quickly become cluttered with variations that no longer perform. Now is the time to review and refresh. Match your message to the channel: sales-driven content works best on high-intent platforms like Google, while lifestyle storytelling is more effective for prospecting on social and video channels.

Retargeting should feel like a natural continuation of the user journey. If someone has already engaged with a specific piece of content, the next touchpoint should build on that interaction rather than serving a generic reset.

Review CRM Touchpoints

Workflows and cadences often go unchanged for months, but January’s fast pace makes this a good time to revisit them. Check whether your email journeys align with the buying cycle, and consider how SMS can help bring warm leads back into the funnel. Even small updates can have a big impact on engagement and conversion rates.

Strengthen Retargeting

Retargeting is one of the most cost-effective channels, and its performance improves when handled with care. Extend your windows to capture long consideration cycles, personalise ads based on the content people first engaged with, and ensure landing pages mirror the messaging for a seamless experience.

Do not forget past leads who stalled. Targeted email and SMS can bring them back into the conversation at the right moment.

Get Your Data in Order

Accurate measurement underpins every successful January campaign strategy. Audit your tag manager and remove legacy tags. Run end-to-end tests to confirm tracking is working across platforms, browsers and devices. Simplify reporting so it reflects only the metrics that matter.

Clean data means that when leads surge in January, you can measure every action and demonstrate the true impact of your marketing.

Make January Your Biggest Month Yet

Peak season is the biggest opportunity of the year to generate property leads, but success depends on preparation. Putting budgets, campaigns, site experience, data and touchpoints in place now ensures you are ready to take full advantage of the surge in demand that follows Christmas.

With a clear plan, January stops being stressful and starts being the growth opportunity it should be.

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If you want to go deeper, watch the Bricks and Clicks webinar, where Al and Kai share the digital marketing tactics to get you ready for peak season and set you up for a winning January.