When Taiwan Searches for Business Card and CRM Tools: 14 Keywords, 8 Years of Seasonal Data

February is the month when people in Taiwan search least for business cards and CRM, and March bounces straight back. That conclusion comes from eight years of search data: we laid out the monthly Google search volume for 14 business card and CRM keywords in Taiwan, and the same shape kept showing up. This article covers the numbers, how we calculated them, and what you can do with them.

Where the data comes from and how we calculated it

The figures are monthly Google search volumes from DataForSEO, with the location set to Taiwan and the language set to Traditional Chinese. Each keyword has six to nine years of monthly data.

Our original keyword pool had 216 terms. Most of them had too little volume, and with small numbers, noise can pass for seasonality. So we kept only keywords that met all three of these conditions:

• At least 90 searches per month
• At least 3 full years of data
• A gap of at least 0.3 between the index of the peak month and the index of the slowest month

How the seasonal index works: first divide each month's volume by that year's own average, which strips out long-term growth or decline. Then average the same calendar month across years. A value of 1.0 means the annual average, and 1.25 means that month runs 25% above normal. Removing the trend first matters. A keyword that shrinks every year would otherwise look like it "peaks at the start of the year."

We also calculated year-over-year change: the average of the most recent 3 months compared with the average of the same 3 months a year earlier. Because it compares the same months, seasonal effects are already removed. Search volumes come in steps (10, 20, 30 ... 90, 110), so for a keyword at 90 searches a month, one step is a change of over 20%, and for a keyword at 20 a month, one step is 50%. Read the year-over-year figures for direction only, not for the exact digits.

This dataset is the demand pool Card2Gold uses to choose topics, and we normally use it to decide what to write on our blog. We thought the seasonal part would be useful to sales and marketing people, so we wrote it up.

February is the coldest month, and March bounces back

Of the 14 keywords, 8 bottom out in February and another 2 in January. In other words, 10 keywords hit their low around Lunar New Year.

The other 4 have their low point somewhere other than the start of the year, and they are worth a look. "iPhone scan business card" (iphone 掃描名片) and "business card management app" (名片管理app) bottom out in June, "free business card management app" (名片管理app免費) in May, and "CRM software" (crm軟體) in August. "CRM software" has an index of 1.04 in February, with no holiday dip at all. "Free business card management app" is only 0.68 in February, but May is even lower. So "February is the coldest month" holds for most keywords, not all of them. Check your own keywords before applying it.

The most extreme case is "what is CRM" (crm是什麼). Its February index is 0.58 and its March index is 1.25, so March search volume is more than double February's. "CRM system" (crm系統) sits at 0.76 in February and recovers to 1.07 in March.

February is short, with only 28 days in most years, about 10% fewer than a 31-day month. But the index drops by 20% to 40%, so the day count explains only a small part of it. We suspect the rest comes from the Lunar New Year holiday: companies take long breaks, and the weeks before the holiday go to closing the books and paying year-end bonuses, so nobody is researching new tools. The data itself cannot prove the cause. This is our guess.

CRM peaks in March, digital business cards in autumn and winter

The two groups of keywords peak at different times.

CRM terms cluster in March. "What is CRM" and "CRM software" both reach 1.25 in March, and "LINE CRM" (line crm) reaches 1.19 in March, each one its highest month of the year. "CRM system" is a bit different: it peaks in May (1.17), and March, May and June are all above average. One reasonable reading is that after the holiday, with work back underway and the new year's budget just set, managers start thinking about getting customer data organized. That is also a guess.

Business card terms peak in the second half of the year:

• "Electronic business card" peaks in September (1.12) and stays above 1.1 from September through November
• "Make an electronic business card" (電子名片製作) peaks in October (1.24)
• "Digital business card," "NFC business card" and "LINE free electronic business card" (line免費電子名片) all peak in November
• "Electronic business card generator" (電子 名片 產生器) peaks in December, with an index of 1.54
• "iPhone scan business card" hits 1.78 in November, the strongest seasonality of all 14 keywords

Demand is shrinking, but not evenly

Year-over-year change tells a different story: most keywords are declining.

Almost every business card keyword is heading down. "Electronic business card" is down 30%, "digital business card" down 33%, "NFC business card" down 34%, "LINE free electronic business card" down 40%, and "business card management app" down 37%. "Electronic business card generator" (down 65%) and "iPhone scan business card" (down 75%) fell hardest.

CRM terms held up. "CRM system" is up 6% and "what is CRM" is down 3%, roughly flat versus a year ago.

This data cannot say why business card searches are falling. Maybe the way people look for answers has changed, with some asking AI instead or looking for recommendations on social media. Maybe the card features built into phones mean people no longer need to search. We have no data to tell these explanations apart, so we only report what we see.

One thing is certain: fewer searches does not mean fewer people need these tools. It only means the path of "they find you through a Google search" is getting narrower.

How sales and marketing teams can use this

Get the timing right and the same effort buys a bit more exposure. Three adjustments you can make directly:

First, schedule CRM content, trial campaigns and training sessions for late February through March. Anything you publish in February reaches the fewest people.

Second, have content about electronic business cards and card design ready before the end of August. The peak starts in September and lasts through December. For a keyword like "electronic business card generator," which only peaks in December, pushing it in November still works.

Third, use February to prepare, not to publish. Before the holiday, write the articles, lead lists and cold emails you plan to use in March, so you can go the moment everyone is back at work.

If you sell software or sales tools, you can also use this data to plan your prospecting rhythm. Customers actively look up CRM online mostly in March, which means the problem is already on their minds then. A call or email at that point should do better than calling in February and getting brushed off with "let's talk after the New Year." We have no closed-deal data to prove this. It is simply what the search timing suggests.

If you have keywords for your own product, you can run the same method: get the monthly search volume, divide by that year's average, then average the same month across years. Don't draw conclusions from less than 3 years of data, and the same goes for keywords with very low volume.