How to Ensure Your Marketing Plan Peaks When Pest Season Does

JIM FREDERICKS, Executive Director, PPMA

The summer season evokes thoughts of sunshine, popsicles, and bright blue skies; however, for most pest control professionals, long, hot days spent solving pest problems may be the first visual that tends to come to mind. Sure, the summer season is often considered peak pest season, but marketing your pest control services should be a year-round effort because pests can be a nuisance at any time. Fortunately, there are plenty of tactics business owners can use to ramp up for peak pest season and fire on all cylinders when it really matters.

While you never want to turn your marketing "off," your business may have cycles, or peaks and valleys. From planning ahead and analyzing your efforts in real-time, to providing consumers with around-the-clock accessibility, these tips can help bolster your business’ marketing program to ensure you’re maximizing time and efforts throughout the year and, perhaps most importantly, positioning your business for the utmost success when pest infestations rise during the summer months.

Plan Ahead

As the saying goes, "a goal without an action plan is a daydream." During months when business is slower, use this quiet time as an opportunity to prepare for the forthcoming inflow of client calls during the busy pest season.

With the arrival of summer pests, residential and commercial customers will start their search for a local, reliable pest control company, making it more crucial than ever to ensure folks know where to find you. Some marketing efforts like SEO can take months to come to fruition, and they’re a tried-and-true tactic to capture your target audiences during both busy and slower months. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a fancy term for how customers can find your site when using search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. When revenue and sales are trickling in, set aside some time to audit your website and social media channels. In today’s world, consumers can be just one click away from finding your business and services, and investing in SEO can be the difference between consumers stumbling upon your website versus your competitors.

Some tips to ensure you’re ranking high in online searches include using the right keywords—in this case, terms like "pest infestation" and "pest control services"—that clients are likely to use when looking online for services. Other strategies include publishing high-quality content for your readers, which serves as a win-win as it positions your company as a thought leader in the pest control field. Last but certainly not least, be sure to stay active on social media as now more than ever, folks are utilizing social media platforms as search engines of their own.

Measure Your Efforts in Real Time

Without collecting and measuring data, it’s hard to determine what’s working and what isn’t. That’s where data analytics comes in handy.

In a predominantly digital world, data analytics are any business’s saving grace as they help to measure the impacts of your marketing campaign, making it easier to determine which marketing channels you should prioritize as well as any tactics that should be placed on hold. In other words, data analytics are a helpful tool to allow you to work smarter, not harder. In addition to shining a light on which strategies are successful versus those that aren’t producing ROI, measuring your efforts in real-time can increase efficiency and productivity across your business.

In line with working smarter, cross-promotion is another time-efficient way to amplify your content and services without spending more time, effort, and resources. As far as social media goes, we’re living in the world of short-form video. If your business is established on multiple social platforms, use your short-form video content across video-sharing apps like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to gain added visibility with new audiences without burning the midnight oil.

Running a business is a full-time job, and the thought of adding any additional work to your plate may be overwhelming. With the help of tools like Google Analytics and Tableau, collecting data is a simple lift that can lead to more informed conclusions to make better marketing decisions. With more data readily available, the more effective your analytics will be. In fact, according to the Think with Google Podcast, marketers who deploy five or more tools in a marketing analytics stack are 39% more likely to see overall marketing campaign improvement.

Stay Engaged

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in our continued endeavor into the digital marketing world, it’s that consumers have grown accustomed to immediate accessibility to the brands and companies they use. As such, make it a habit of regularly checking on your website and social media presence to ensure they are up to snuff, and aim to provide quick responses to customer inquiries to ensure their questions and feedback are heard in a timely fashion.

A good customer experience leads to your customers spending more and, more often than not, returning for additional services. And to support that notion, a study from SuperOffice states that 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.

To summarize, utilizing your company’s off-season is a great way to help improve sales, increase clientele and to place all your ducks in a row so your business is set for an even more successful busy season when the time comes. To maximize your budget and increase your marketing efficiencies, concentrate your efforts in the weeks leading up to and including your busiest time.