Your Phuket High-Season Marketing Should Have Started Already

Part of the Shark 13 Phuket High Season Marketing Series.

If you're a Phuket business waiting for high season before ramping up your marketing, I've got some bad news.

You're already late.

Not disastrously late.

There's still time.

But August and September shouldn't be when you're thinking:

"What are we going to do for high season?"

You should already be doing it.

Because by the time November, December and January arrive, you shouldn't be building your marketing machine.

You should be harvesting the demand it has already created.

High Season Doesn't Start in High Season

This is the mistake.

We think about marketing in terms of when we want customers.

December is busy.

Therefore, let's advertise in December.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

Except that's not necessarily when the customer makes the decision.

The family arriving in Phuket in December might be sitting in London right now.

The couple coming in January could currently be in Sydney researching hotels.

Someone in Dubai might already be watching Phuket videos.

A family in Singapore could be comparing Christmas holidays.

A group of friends might have booked their flights and started sending restaurants and beach clubs to their WhatsApp group.

The customer journey has already started.

Your high season hasn't.

Theirs has.

August and September Are Not Waiting Months

One thing I've noticed with tourism marketing is that businesses can mentally treat low season as the gap before the "real" business starts again.

Wrong.

August and September are incredibly important marketing months.

This is when you should be building.

SEO.

AI SEO.

Content.

Video.

Audiences.

Retargeting.

Website improvements.

Influencer relationships.

Google Business.

Reviews.

Photography.

Blogs.

Landing pages.

Offers.

Email databases.

WhatsApp funnels.

Everything you're going to rely on during high season needs to start working before high season.

Because marketing has a lag.

You don't publish something today and automatically dominate Google tomorrow.

You don't create a TikTok account in November and instantly build an audience.

You don't suddenly decide in December that you'd like AI platforms to understand your business.

You don't build trust overnight.

Marketing compounds.

And the earlier you start, the more you have working for you when demand peaks.

SEO Takes Time

Let's start with the obvious one.

SEO.

If you want to appear when someone searches:

Best family activities Phuket

Private boat tours Phuket

Romantic restaurants Phuket

Luxury hotels Phuket

Things to do in Phuket

Best beach clubs Phuket

you shouldn't start thinking about those searches in December.

Your pages need to exist.

Google needs to find them.

Understand them.

Index them.

Evaluate them.

Your website needs internal links.

Your Google Business Profile needs attention.

Your images need optimising.

Your content needs depth.

Your site needs authority.

SEO is not an emergency button you press when bookings are quiet.

It's groundwork.

And groundwork is done before you need the result.

Now We Have AI SEO Too

Then there's the new layer.

AI search.

People aren't only searching Google anymore.

They're asking questions.

"What's the best private boat tour for a family staying in Bang Tao?"

"Where should we eat in Phuket with children?"

"What are some quieter alternatives to Phi Phi?"

"Where should we stay in Phuket for a luxury jungle experience?"

This changes the type of content businesses need.

Your website can't simply contain:

Welcome to our beautiful resort in paradise.

That's lovely.

But what does it actually tell a machine?

AI needs context.

Who are you?

What do you do?

Who are you best suited to?

Where are you?

What makes you different?

What questions do customers ask?

What experiences do you provide?

The work to make your business understandable and recommendable needs to happen now.

Not when the Christmas tourists are already sitting beside the pool.

Build the Audience Before You Sell to It

This is another mistake.

Businesses often wait until they have something to sell before building an audience.

Then suddenly:

BOOK NOW!

HIGH SEASON SPECIAL!

LIMITED AVAILABILITY!

CHRISTMAS OFFER!

But who are you shouting at?

The smarter approach is to spend the months beforehand getting relevant people into your world.

Someone watches your Reel.

Then another.

They visit your website.

Read a blog.

Follow you.

Save a post.

Watch a YouTube video.

See another advert.

Read a review.

Maybe they don't book.

Yet.

But you've moved from being:

A business they've never heard of

to:

That place we've seen before.

That matters.

Familiarity reduces uncertainty.

And when the time comes to make a decision, being familiar can be incredibly powerful.

Retargeting Shouldn't Start in December

This is where paid advertising becomes much smarter.

Imagine someone visits your website in September while researching their December Phuket holiday.

They don't book.

Most businesses consider that a failed website visit.

I don't.

That's an audience.

Someone has demonstrated intent.

They've effectively raised their hand and said:

"I'm interested in what you do."

Now imagine they see your content again in October.

Then a customer video in November.

Then an advert in early December.

Suddenly you're not advertising to a stranger.

You're continuing a conversation.

That's why retargeting becomes so important.

But you need people to retarget first.

You can't retarget an audience you never built.

Make the Videos Now

Phuket high season is visually competitive.

Every hotel has a pool.

Every beach club has a sunset.

Every tour company has blue water.

Every restaurant has food photography.

Every villa has a drone shot.

If you wait until November to start creating content, you're going to end up rushing.

Instead, build the content library now.

Film:

Staff.

Owners.

FAQs.

Behind the scenes.

Experiences.

Rooms.

Food.

Tours.

Customer reactions.

Guides.

Locations.

How-to videos.

Weather explanations.

Common mistakes.

Local knowledge.

Comparisons.

Questions customers regularly ask.

Don't just create adverts.

Create answers.

Then when high season arrives, you've got months of useful content ready to distribute.

Influencer Marketing Needs Relationships

The same applies to influencers and creators.

Please don't wait until December and send:

"Hi, we love your content. Would you like to collaborate?"

along with another 400 Phuket businesses.

Identify creators early.

Talk to them.

Understand their audience.

Look at engagement rather than simply follower numbers.

Work out whether their audience actually matches your customer.

Invite the right people.

Give them genuine experiences.

Build relationships.

And importantly, think beyond influencers.

Your best creator might be:

A local mum.

A chef.

A travel photographer.

A dog owner.

A diving instructor.

A member of your staff.

A repeat customer.

A micro-influencer with 8,000 highly relevant followers could be considerably more valuable than someone with 800,000 people who couldn't point to Phuket on a map.

Fix the Website Before Everyone Arrives

Another classic.

High season starts.

Traffic increases.

Then someone realises:

The mobile website is terrible.

The prices are outdated.

WhatsApp doesn't work.

The menu is from 2024.

The booking form has seven unnecessary fields.

The photos are ancient.

The experience page doesn't explain the experience.

The website takes forever to load.

Google says you're open when you're closed.

This is the time to fix it.

Pretend you're a customer.

Go through the entire journey on your phone.

Search for your business.

Visit the website.

Try to understand what you sell.

Find the price.

Ask a question.

Try to contact you.

Try to book.

How many obstacles are there?

Every unnecessary click is friction.

And during high season, friction costs money.

Reviews Are Part of the Machine

Your reviews today help sell tomorrow.

That's another reason marketing needs to start early.

Don't suddenly become interested in Google reviews when high season arrives.

Build them continuously.

Reply to them.

Learn from them.

Look for repeated comments.

What do customers love?

What confuses them?

What do they mention without being asked?

Those aren't simply reviews.

They're marketing research.

And increasingly, they're also information that search engines, AI systems and future customers can use to understand your business.

Don't Confuse Marketing With Advertising

This is probably the biggest point.

Marketing for high season doesn't mean:

Start spending money on Meta ads in November.

Advertising is one piece.

Marketing is the machine around it.

Your website.

SEO.

AI visibility.

Reviews.

Content.

Social media.

Video.

Creators.

Email.

WhatsApp.

Google.

Brand.

Customer experience.

Retargeting.

Reputation.

If all of those things are working together, advertising becomes the accelerator.

If they're not?

You're paying to send more people into a broken system.

By December, You Should Be Harvesting

Think about farming.

You don't walk into an empty field in December and shout:

"Right! We need crops!"

You prepared the ground.

Planted.

Watered.

Looked after it.

Waited.

Then harvested.

Marketing isn't that different.

August.

September.

October.

That's when you're planting.

Creating content.

Building audiences.

Improving the website.

Strengthening SEO.

Preparing AI visibility.

Collecting reviews.

Testing adverts.

Creating videos.

Building relationships.

Learning what messaging works.

Then high season arrives.

And instead of frantically trying to create demand from scratch...

You harvest it.

The High-Season Customer Is Already Out There

This connects with something I keep coming back to in this series.

Your December customer doesn't magically appear in Phuket in December.

They're already somewhere.

Planning.

Searching.

Watching.

Saving.

Asking.

Comparing.

Imagining.

They may already know which hotel they're staying at.

They might already be building their restaurant list.

They might already be deciding whether they want Phi Phi or Phang Nga Bay.

They might already be following Phuket businesses.

The opportunity exists right now.

So if you're sitting in Phuket waiting for high season before you start marketing...

Don't.

Your high-season marketing should have started already.

Because when December arrives, that's not the time to start building the machine.

That's when the machine should already be making you money.

Jay Leshark

Shark 13 Productions