What Top Pest Control Owners Look for in a Marketing Agency

The best pest control owners I’ve interviewed want a marketing agency that brings in customers, not just rankings, with work built for their company and their towns instead of a template. They learn enough to hold the agency accountable, judge it on what each new customer costs and keep every account in their own name. They also know when to bring the work in-house, and when it’s too early to hire anyone.

Those lessons come from Pest Control Legends, my interview show with some of the best operators in the industry, a few of whom run agencies. I run one too. My agency does pest control SEO, so I’m not neutral, and I’ll tell you when a guest has a stake. If you want a checklist, our page on hiring a pest control marketing agency has a short list of questions to ask any agency, mine included. This post covers the lessons behind those questions.

My partner Jonas Olson built Pest Badger to $10M, and he learned this one in small markets. Agencies would white-label one winning ad and run it for every client. In his markets, people saw the same ad so often that his cost per lead climbed.

Jonas was fair about it. He said some agencies are really good. But that frustration is a big part of why he teaches owners to run their own marketing in Pest Control Millionaires, the coaching program I’m a partner in with him.

Jake Sheldon, our third partner, saw the same thing with offers. When he started his first pest control company, everyone he saw on Nextdoor, Facebook and Google was offering $50 or $100 off.

“Do something different that no one else in town is doing and be willing to do something that other companies aren’t and you’ll get leads.”

Websites work the same way. A copy-paste city page with the town name swapped almost never gets traffic in the audits I run. So ask any agency which parts of your marketing will be written for your company and your towns, and whether they run the same ads, offers or pages for other companies near you.

Ask what the rankings turned into

Greg Young sold his first company for over $4M and has built Natura Pest Control in Reno back to roughly $7M. He told me where his SEO money used to go.

“We would hire cheap SEO providers that would help us rank but didn’t help us convert leads.”

I’m biased here, since SEO is my whole business, but a ranking that doesn’t turn into booked calls doesn’t pay the bills. Ranking is step one. Your Business Profile still needs reviews and photos, and your website has to make calling easy, before a ranking turns into a customer.

And with AI Overviews, Local Services Ads, Business Profiles and paid ads all on the page now, you can rank #1 on a great keyword and still barely get traffic.

So when an agency sends you rankings, ask what they turned into. You want calls and forms by source, how many were real leads and how many became customers. My call tracking guide shows how to set that up.

Learn enough that nobody can take advantage of you

Chad Louk started Prodigy Pest Solutions with about $7,000 and built it into an 8-figure Florida company. He sat in on every presentation BASF and other suppliers gave his techs, and he holds marketing to the same rule.

“If you’re hiring out a company to do SEO and you don’t understand how any of that works, you’re going to get taken advantage of 100%.”

You don’t need to do the work yourself. You need to know what good work looks like. Mat Rogers, who now runs Lizard Marketing, wants your agency to have a real handle on schema and how your content is organized. If the pitch feels like a sales smoke screen, his advice was “Eject those jokers.” Mat and I are technically competitors, and friends.

A simple test is whether an agency can explain what it’s doing, and why, in plain English.

Judge cost per customer, and own your side of it

Mat told me some companies came to Lizard with reports from whoever ran their marketing before, showing $200, $300 or $400 per qualified lead. One was paying more than $500. On a $750 contract, he pointed out, you won’t see that money back until the next year.

Then he put part of the number back on the owner.

“Cost per qualified lead is not solely a responsibility of your marketing team. That’s on your sales team. That’s their closing ratio. Write it in pen.”

An agency controls the leads. Your office controls what happens when the phone rings. Brent Agee, CEO of AXN Growth Partners, sometimes doubles a new brand’s marketing budget from 5% to 10%, and within about a week he sees the leak, whether that’s response times, communication or the closing ratio at the door. AXN dials it back, trains the team and turns it back up. Don’t buy more leads than you can close.

Sometimes the leak is the phone itself. Aaron Shishilla, whose agency, WolfPack Advising, competes with mine, has had owners say they weren’t getting the leads in their reports. The calls were going to someone’s cell phone, where AT&T or T-Mobile sent them to spam. He tells those owners to check their phones.

Cost per customer is the number I’d watch, as long as you look at your closing ratio next to it, so you know which side needs fixing. Jake judges Facebook ads by cost per customer, not cost per lead, and when we recorded the show’s first episode, $75 to about $150 for a general pest customer was a number he liked. You only get that number when every source has its own tracking number and every new customer has a lead source in your CRM. I go further into judging each source in pest control leads.

Stay involved after you sign

Aaron’s biggest advice was to stay engaged. Every week or so, look at the metrics and talk to whoever does your marketing, whether that’s you, your kid, a consultant or an agency. Too often, he said, an owner hires someone, stops tracking and decides 3 months later that it isn’t working.

“We can’t quit on the goal. That’s where we need to go foot on the gas and say what are the metrics telling us, because the metrics don’t lie.”

Jake has watched owners do the same thing with ads.

“If you started a pest control business and only tried it for three months, you wouldn’t quit. But for some reason, people when they advertise, they’ll try it for three months and they’ll quit.”

How long is long enough depends on the channel. Ads can bring calls this week. With SEO, if you’ve barely done any, it can take about 6 months to see real results and up to 12 to see a return. Mat’s closing advice was to make sure you’re confident your marketing partner is actually doing the work on your company’s behalf.

Keep every account in your name

Your Business Profiles, phone numbers, website and landing pages are assets, and buyers treat them that way. When Chase Goodeill of Pest Control Consultants buys a company, he buys its phone number and Google listings too. One Chicago company he bought had 6 Business Profiles, each with 250 or more five-star reviews. For every customer who canceled, his team signed up 3 new ones from the free leads those listings and the website kept bringing in.

Where your ad landing pages live matters too. Lizard used to host clients’ landing pages in HighLevel, outside their websites. Mat told me that after his team moved them onto each client’s own domain, along with some other work, client conversion costs plummeted and quality scores went up.

So set up the website, domain, Business Profiles, ad accounts, analytics and call tracking in your company’s name, and give your agency access. Google expects the phone number on your profile to be under your direct control, and when an agency or lead seller owns your tracking numbers, the calls go with them when you leave.

Bring it in-house when someone can really own it

Dave Bradford runs Certus Pest, a $100M company. When Certus hired Juan Rezk in 2023, it was using an outside firm and wasn’t doing what it should have with Local Services Ads. Juan, now the CMO, made a huge impact right away. Dave doesn’t think owners are overspending on marketing. SEO, SEM, LSAs and now AI are complicated, and you need people who really understand them.

Greg is headed the same way at Natura. An SEO specialist on his team now manages the vendors, and when we talked, the plan was to bring it all in-house over the next 12 to 18 months.

That doesn’t mean every owner should build a marketing department. David Poplin, who runs CDS Services and Legion Pest Management, tells owners to outsource marketing, bookkeeping, social media and anything else they’re not best at. “The money you think you’re saving, you’re losing in revenue,” he said.

Dave’s rule covers both choices.

“Every person you hire, every system you implement, every partner, whether it’s in-house marketing or outsource marketing, make sure it lines up to whatever your goal is and what you’re trying to achieve.”

Wait on an agency until you’re ready for one

It’s almost heartbreaking, but I turn down a lot of owners who aren’t big enough for SEO yet, because it won’t work right away. I told Kendall Hines of Clicki that on his episode, and I point those owners to strategic partners and free Google reviews first.

Allan Draper co-founded Proof Pest Control and founded Lizard Marketing. He told me he’d most likely put a new company’s first $10,000 into Google Ads, because SEO doesn’t fit a stage where every dollar has to turn into revenue. Early on, he said, marketing is “like the black hole of a company,” and the returns come over the long run.

My line is a little different. Under about $500K a year, I recommend Google Business Profile and Local Services Ads, and an owner who isn’t technical can run both. Past that, add Google Ads and real investment in the website and SEO. My Local Services Ads guide covers the setup. In the meantime, partnerships, referral campaigns, upsells and price increases pay you back right away.

That’s why I say you generally don’t need to hire any agency before $500K a year. You should be able to generate leads on your own and own your own marketing. And never rely only on an agency for your leads. It should add to what you’re already doing, not replace it.

My default is to tell owners not to work with an agency at all, because so many of them are bad and I constantly hear nightmare stories. Learn how to do it yourself through the Pest Control Millionaires program instead. If you really want to go hard on SEO, then you can hire us.

What I’d hold any agency to, mine included

Most of what’s above comes from my guests. This part is from my side of the table.

The complaint I hear most about other agencies, SEO agencies or any other kind, is a lack of results. An owner works with an agency for 6 months, 12 months or even several years and never really gets a return. Maybe they kind of break even. The agency isn’t focused on results. It isn’t tracking calls and leads, or making sure the business is actually growing because of what it’s doing.

Owners also get upset about getting locked into contracts, poor communication and a lack of expertise. Sometimes they get handed off to an account manager who doesn’t know much.

One of my clients fired their agency and realized their leads and revenue didn’t go down at all. The agency wasn’t really driving any revenue. That ties right back to the complaint I hear most.

At the end of my first conversation with Mat, I told him I think we’re in a trust economy now. Owners should hire people they trust, and be the company their own customers trust. Kendall was talking about building software with AI when he said this, but it’s the same test I’d use on an agency.

“The technical part is not the hard part anymore. It’s the relationship with the customer. Do they trust you? Do you have good taste? Can you deliver?”

If I were in your seat, I’d want these from any agency, and you should hold mine to them too.

Every account is set up in your name
You see calls, real leads and new customers by source every month, and whether the business is growing because of it
You’re not locked into a long contract
You talk to someone who knows the work, not an account manager who doesn’t
The ads, offers and pages are written for your company and your towns
They can explain what they’re doing, and why, in plain English
They’ll tell you when not to spend the money, even if it means you don’t hire them yet

If you’d like a second set of eyes on a proposal or report you’ve been handed, that’s the kind of thing I do in a paid consulting call.

Questions pest control owners ask

When should a pest control company hire a marketing agency?

Generally not before about $500K a year. Until then, put your effort into your Google Business Profile and Local Services Ads, which you can run yourself. Past that, an agency can take on Google Ads, your website and SEO, as long as it adds to the leads you already bring in instead of being your only source, and every account stays in your name.

How do I know if my marketing agency is working?

Look at calls, real leads and new customers by source, and what each customer cost. Compare each month with the same month last year, since pest control is seasonal. Give a new channel about three months before you judge its cost per customer, and give SEO longer.

Should I bring my marketing in-house?

Do it when you can hire someone who really understands it, or at least someone to manage your vendors, the way Greg Young did at Natura. Until then, make one person on your team own the numbers every month.