Pest Control Marketing: What Works and Where to Start

Pest control marketing works when you do two jobs at once. You show up on Google the moment someone finds bugs, and you keep your name in front of the neighborhoods you already service through referrals, partners, door hangers, yard signs and your trucks. Then you keep every customer you win, because recurring service is where the money is.

Two ways customers find you

Most new customers come to a pest control company one of two ways. Something is crawling across the kitchen floor and they search Google right now, or they already know your name because a neighbor, a realtor, a truck or a yard sign put it there.

Good marketing covers both. Google customers cost money every time, and word of mouth tops out at however many people you and your techs can talk to in a week. Owners I see growing steadily usually have a few of each running.

Whether you call it pest control marketing or exterminator marketing, the job doesn’t end at the first service. In 2025, 85.4% of residential pest control service revenue came from recurring services, according to NPMA’s annual industry analysis. A customer who stays for years is worth far more than one who cancels after the initial, so I judge every channel by what it costs to land a customer who sticks around, not by cost per lead.

Show up on Google when people go looking

Search “pest control near me” and Google usually shows Local Services Ads first, then Google Ads, the map pack of Google Business Profiles and the website results. Many searches also get an AI Overview near the top.

All of it is connected. Your Google Business Profile feeds your Local Services Ads, your website backs up your profile, and reviews help every one of them. Google is also moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns that still charge per lead, starting with a limited group of US advertisers in August 2026.

A Google Business Profile is free, but it needs real photos, the right categories and hours, and a steady flow of reviews. Local Services Ads and Google Ads can bring calls this week, and you pay for every one. SEO is the slow one. If you’ve barely done any, it can take about 6 months to see real results and up to 12 to see a return, but then the calls keep coming without a bill per click.

My guide to digital marketing for pest control covers the setup order, tracking and how the channels feed each other. If the profile is where you’re stuck, that’s what our Google Business Profile service handles.

Referrals from the customers you already have

Your happiest customers already talk about you. A referral program gives them a reason to do it on purpose.

Keep it simple. Offer a credit or cash bonus for every referred customer who gets serviced, bring it up right after a good visit, and pay it on time. Log who referred whom in your CRM, whether that’s FieldRoutes, PestPac or something else, so no payout falls through the cracks. A customer who sent you a couple of neighbors and never got the credit won’t send another.

Reviews sit right next to referrals, because what a referred homeowner finds on Google either backs up the referral or talks them out of it. I’d aim for about one new Google review a week for each profile, asked for by text the same day as the service.

Referrals cost almost nothing, but they depend on techs who do great work. People only recommend a company they’d hire again.

Partnerships with realtors, builders, movers and property managers

A partnership is a referral program with another business on the other end, one that serves the same homeowners and can send you people every month.

My partner Jake Sheldon sets these up first in every service business he gets into, and he walked me through how he does it on the podcast. He likes lawn care companies because they already serve the customers you want. He puts the deal in a written agreement. Then the lawn care company texts its customer list to say it just partnered with you, and anyone with bugs can reply “pest.” Across dozens of companies, he told me, 5% to 15% of people commonly reply. Spread those texts over a week or two so your office can keep up.

Movers are his other favorite. The crew hands the family a card with your offer after spending hours in their new house, and a tracking number on the card tells you which calls came from it.

Realtors and builders take longer. Tony Carder, who grew his family’s company to $24M a year before selling it, told me people start trusting you after about a year of showing up to every chamber event. When we talked, TruNorth was spending about $30,000 a month on realtor marketing across 5 locations, and Tony will even take new construction pre-treats as a loss leader to get in front of the new homeowner.

Property managers work the same way and can hand you whole buildings of recurring service. Most of what these partnerships cost you is time, plus someone who likes people enough to keep showing up after the first lunch goes nowhere.

Pest control marketing ideas that work offline

Owners call these old school, usually without ever tracking what they brought in.

Door hangers and yard signs

Tony’s techs hang a door hanger on the houses on both sides of every customer and put out a yard sign at each stop. He figures a door hanger costs him about 4 cents, against around $100 for a Local Services Ads lead. I cover how he runs it, and what to put on the piece, in my post on pest control advertising. Give each piece its own tracking number so you know what it brought in.

Door-to-door

Lenny Gray, who built Rove Pest Control on door-to-door, told me he’d start with the next-door neighbors of every current customer, since you can truthfully say you already take care of the house next door. He also thinks almost every technician just wants to be a technician, so don’t plan on turning your techs into salespeople.

It isn’t cheap. Tony has heard the cost runs 80% to 110% of the annualized contract. Lenny would build and train your own team rather than hire an outside crew, which he says can leave you in the hole on those accounts for years.

Trucks and uniforms

A wrapped truck is a sign that drives through your service area all day, and a tech in a clean company shirt backs it up at the door. Keep the wrap simple and settle your logo first, which I go into in pest control branding.

Mailers

USPS Every Door Direct Mail lets you pick mail routes around your best neighborhoods. One drop rarely does much, so plan several through the year, time each to the season and put a different tracking number on each design.

Facebook, Nextdoor and seasonal offers

Facebook reaches people who weren’t looking for pest control yet. They’re less ready to buy than someone who searched Google, so the offer and how fast you follow up do most of the work.

Jake told me to run an offer nobody else in town is running. When every company around him advertised $50 off, he charged $67 for the initial to anyone who signed up for the year, and the leads came in for years. Once competitors copy an offer, it stops working, so you change it. Lenny once had five groups of reps pitch five different discounts and found that the rep’s energy mattered more than which discount they pitched.

Seasonal offers give people a reason to call now. Think mosquito add-ons before summer, rodent exclusion when it cools off and termite inspections when swarmers show up. Local Facebook groups and Nextdoor are worth a few minutes a week if you answer real questions and follow the group rules instead of posting ads. More lead sources, paid and free, are in my post on pest control leads.

Keep and grow the customers you already have

Some of your cheapest new revenue is already in your CRM. When Tony buys a small route, his first move is to offer every customer whatever they don’t have yet, whether that’s termite, pest or mosquito, because the easiest sale is someone who already trusts you.

Keeping customers counts as marketing too. Answer the phone and leave room on the schedule. TruNorth keeps routes at about 80% of capacity so it can try to get out the same day when someone signs up before noon. Every cancellation you prevent is a customer you don’t have to pay to win again.

A few habits help. Reach out before each annual agreement renews, explain a price increase before the invoice does, and have techs mention one add-on when it actually fits the house. If closing is the weak spot on your team, start with how to sell pest control.

How to prioritize pest control marketing by company stage

You can’t run all of this at once. Which pest control marketing strategies make sense depends on where the company is right now.

Still on the truck

Your time is cheaper than your cash at this stage. Knock on your customers’ neighbors, hang door hangers and put out a sign at every stop, and ask every customer for a Google review. Set up your Google Business Profile properly, find one lawn care partner and turn on Local Services Ads once you can afford to pay per lead.

Off the truck, under about $500K

Under about $500K a year, most of your marketing money and attention should go to your Google Business Profile and Local Services Ads. Post on the profile once a week, keep reviews coming and answer every LSA call. Get call tracking in place before you add another channel, start a referral program and show up at chamber and realtor events. A simple, clean website is enough for now.

Past about $500K

Now you can start on Google Ads and put real money into your website. Build service and city pages, start SEO if you can wait 6 to 12 months for it to pay off, and run Google Ads next to your Local Services Ads. Then rank in every town you serve, wrap the fleet and look at a door-to-door team or a builder program that brings in volume without you personally. Somebody, an employee or an agency, should own the numbers every month.

At every stage, give a channel long enough to judge it fairly, keep the ones that bring in customers who stay and cut the rest.

What I see when owners say marketing isn’t working

When an owner tells me marketing isn’t working, I don’t start by adding channels. I look at what’s already running, and the same few leaks show up on almost every audit.

The website has almost no authority, and most of the links it does have come from spammy directories. Local links from the chamber of commerce, sponsorships, home inspectors and realtors fix that, and they come from the same relationships as the partnerships above, so that work pays you twice. Reviews come in too slowly to keep pace with competitors. A second office’s Google Business Profile links to the homepage instead of the page for that location, and business details don’t match from one listing to the next. My pest control SEO tips walk through fixing each of those.

You can fix all of it without a bigger budget. It helps your offline marketing too, since people look you up even when a door hanger or a realtor sent them.

Tracking matters for the same reason. Each channel needs its own number in a tool like CallRail and each new customer needs a lead source in the CRM. Otherwise it’s easy to cut the door hangers that were quietly working and keep paying for ads that weren’t.

If you want an expert to go through what you’re running now, that’s what a paid consulting hour is for. If you’d rather hand the online side to us, book a discovery call.

Questions pest control owners ask

What’s the best marketing for a new pest control company?

Start with the cheap, personal things, like knocking on your customers’ neighbors, door hangers, yard signs, friends and family, and a Google review from every customer. Set up your Google Business Profile on day one and add Local Services Ads when you can afford to pay per lead.

How much should I spend on pest control marketing?

Work backward from what a customer is worth to you. Recurring customers pay for years, so decide what you can afford to pay to land one, then track what each channel really costs per new customer and shift money toward the cheapest ones.

Does door-to-door still work for pest control?

Yes. It’s one of the fastest ways to fill routes in one area. It’s also expensive and depends on recruiting and training a team, so it fits owners who can carry the cost until those accounts pay off.

Should I hire a marketing agency or do it myself?

Do the relationship work yourself, because nobody else can be you at a chamber lunch. Websites, SEO and ads are usually worth handing to someone who does them every day, as long as you own the website, the Google Business Profile and the ad accounts. If you’re comparing agencies, here’s what a pest control marketing agency should do for you. Our monthly plans have no contract and clients own all of it. If you’d rather keep the work in-house with guidance, that’s what paid consulting is for.