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The date you start sending alerts this year, not the one you remember from last year
Walk away with the exact date you'll kick off this season's alerts, calculated backward from your peak instead of from last year's calendar.
By Yodai · Published September 6, 2026 · Updated October 12, 2026
If you know the exact day your busy season really kicked off last year, and how much more you sold during those weeks, you can answer the question that decides whether you're on time this year or running late: what day do you start spreading the word?
The answer isn't "a few weeks before." It's an exact date, calculated backward from the day you sold the most, minus however long it took people to react last year. If you put the word out the same day you noticed the surge, you're already too late for everyone who decides ahead of time.
Count backward, not forward
The peak isn't the day to start spreading the word. It's the finish line. Between the moment someone sees your announcement and the day they buy, book, or make an appointment, days go by: they search, they compare, they ask around, they wait for payday. That gap is your reaction window, and it's different for every business.
At a flower shop, a Mother's Day bouquet might get ordered just a few days ahead. At a surf school, people sign up for the summer class as soon as the weather turns warm, weeks before they ever touch the water. You don't get to pick the timeline: your own business already wrote it down last year, in your data.
To find it, don't look at the first random message that came in. Look at when the pace truly changed: the day your website visits, WhatsApp messages, or first bookings stopped looking like any other week and started climbing day after day. That date, compared to the peak day, gives you your window.
- 1Mark last year's peak
The exact day with the most sales, appointments, or orders, pulled from last year's data, not from memory. - 2Find the day the pace picked up
Not one random message: three or four days in a row above normal, in website visits, messages received, or first bookings. - 3Subtract the two dates
The difference in days is how long it took people to react last year. That number is your reaction window. - 4Apply it to this year's peak
Subtract that same number of days from the date you expect the peak this season. That day is when you start spreading the word.
Which data point you use to mark the pace pickup
- Marks the moment someone is still just looking, before deciding
- Gives you an earlier date, and one that's cleaner to count
- Requires a reliable daily visit count, not a gut feeling
- Marks the moment someone has almost already decided and reaches out
- Works if your business runs on WhatsApp rather than a website with its own traffic
- It arrives later than the visit does, so the real lead time is a bit longer than it looks.
Which one to use: If you have website visit numbers, count from there: it's the earliest signal. If your business runs on WhatsApp and you don't have that data, count from the messages instead, but add a few days to whatever lead time you calculate, because by the time someone messages you, the decision's already half made.
The mistake that makes you announce too late
Now you have something you didn't have when this lesson started: an actual date on this year's calendar, not just a feeling that "you should spread the word early." Mark it down now, before you move on.
You now know what day to turn on the announcements this year. What you'll decide in the next lesson is the number that needs to be ready behind that announcement: exactly how much stock or how many appointment slots you're opening up.
- The exact date this year when you start spreading the word, calculated backward from the peak
- Your business's reaction window: the days it takes people to go from seeing the announcement to buying
- The data point you'll use to mark the pace pickup: website visits or WhatsApp messages
- The habit of counting from this year's projected peak, not from a fixed calendar number