You don’t need the best fulfillment or the lowest prices to grow the fastest.
In fact, you’ll beat the competition every single time by being better at what many don’t do well in the pest control industry—organic digital marketing.
If you’re a struggling or new pest control company looking to grow your business, this guide will help you.
This 7-step marketing guide for pest control companies will walk through all the basics of setting up an online marketing campaign and leveraging traditional/online marketing strategies to find new customers.
Basics of Organic Online Campaigns for Pest Control Companies
The first steps to beginning your pest control marketing campaign should include:
Determining Your Marketing Goals:
For most pest control clients, the goal is to get more customers. However, the plan to reach that goal can take many different forms, including building a brand over social media, finding customers online, or contacting local businesses for referrals.
Choose your target marketing channels and select several important KPIs (key performance indicators) to help you track your progress as you reach your goal.
Setting a Budget:
The extent of your marketing efforts will be capped by your budget.
Determine how much available money you have to put into various marketing channels and track the return on investment (ROI) you receive from each of those channels over time.
Defining Your Target Audience:
Pests may be indiscriminate regarding whatever house they infest, but it doesn’t mean everyone is a potential customer.
Reduce your targeting to homeowners, landlords, people with enough disposable income to afford pest control services, and other demographic factors that will drive your business. There are several SEO and content analysis tools designed to help you understand your audience.
Researching Competitors: There is no greater resource for pest control knowledge than your competitors. Luckily, there are several competitive analysis tools we’ve listed below that allow you to spy on your competitors’ digital presence and see what campaigns are driving them the most leads/customers.
Developing a Unique Selling Proposition (USP):
Determine what makes your business special and communicate that through your USP. Beyond a catchy tagline, determine if your business will be competitive on pricing, service, or add-ons that give customers added value.
Creating a Website:
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as putting your phone number in the Yellow Pages to have people contact you.
No service-based business can survive without a website or even just a formal listing with relevant contact information.
Create Social Media Profiles:
Social media may not be as crucial for pest control companies as other industries, but it’s still an excellent place for customers to find out about your work and contact you directly.
The Importance of Pest Control SEO and Digital Marketing
As previously mentioned, having an online website is absolutely essential to launching a business, especially without an established customer base.
But Pest Control SEO goes beyond just creating a website and encompasses many important factors, including business listings, keyword research, and more.
Below, we’ve listed a few ways a local SEO or digital marketing campaign can benefit your pest control business.
Establishing a Local Presence
Whether you’re a new business, a struggling business, or seeking to move into another location, you need a way for people to contact you.
According to a survey by BrightLocal, 98% of customers used the internet to find information about local businesses in 2022.
People use the internet to both find new businesses and search for information on existing ones. Creating an engaging web platform with a website and a Google Business Profile will give users several options to research, click, or call your business for a quote on service.
Providing Customers Additional Value
Pest Control SEO is far more than just providing a telephone number for people to call. Your website can also be an informational center to educate and educate users from your local area.
Do you deal with seasonal rodents, ticks, or cockroaches in your area? Provide blogs to help users prevent, inspect, and deal with an infestation as it occurs.
These blogs may be why someone checks their house for a pest and then calls you to help them get rid of it.
Massive Search Volume Opportunities
B2C and pest control companies, in particular, benefit from high-volume keywords that are highly informative in intent.
Plug in a keyword search for “bed bugs” on any keyword tool, and you will see that very basic questions garner tens of thousands of searches a month, which is incredibly high for such a specialized field.
Providing a Competitive Edge
We’ve used a combination of local SEO tactics and other traditional strategies to help local pest control companies near us increase their leads by as much as 10-20x more.
In one case, we took a website from 0 visitors a month to over 126,000 through the strategies we’ve outlined below. Along with those increases have come a substantial increase in customers, leads, and a 5x increase in revenue.
To learn more about how we did this, read our 7-step marketing guide for pest control companies below, with real actionable insights based on what has worked for us.
See More: Northeast Pest Control Case Study.
Our Proven 7-Step Local Marketing Strategy for Exterminators
1. Optimize Your Google Business Profile Listings
Many businesses probably have a Google Business Profile but don’t use the platform to its full extent.
Fundamentally, you’ll need to provide customers with a way to contact you, such as your:
- Name
- Phone Number
- Address
- Business Hours
However, the platform allows you to add substantially more information about your business, which aids customers in their research. For example, if you go into your Google Business Profile account, you can add the following to your profile:
- Products with pricing
- Updates
- Company information
- Online service booking
- Q&As
Creating Profiles for Multiple Locations
One way we’ve helped many local pest control businesses is by creating multiple profiles for businesses with multiple locations.
Instead of condensing all contact information through one profile, having multiple profiles allows businesses to populate search results for “near me” searches in specific regions.
For example, in Northeast Pennsylvania, we’ve created additional accounts for a pest client in Scranton, Wilkes Barre, Hazelton, the Poconos, and more, which allowed them to substantially increase their traffic.
Note: Only create multiple listings if you have multiple locations with different phone numbers and addresses.
2. List Your Business in Local Directories
Another massive source of traffic you need to take advantage of is directory sites.
While many people don’t have a physical copy of the Yellow Pages in their house, people still use online directories to find local companies. Some examples in the pest industry include:
- Pest World
- Angi
Even review sites like Yelp are still a strong traffic source for many local businesses.
The key here is to provide basic contact information and a place to aggregate reviews for traffic.
Upload your contact information manually to each directory you need or use a local citation development software like Moz to complete the task.
3. Develop Location-Specific Pages
Let’s say your company services clients within one to two hours of your location. To rank for local searches one to two hours away, you can create a location-specific page that will populate for location-specific searches.
We used this approach with a company from Wilkes Barre to create a service page for a location almost 2 hours away. Now, it ranks on the first page and in the local map-pack results for searches conducted in Montgomeryville.
However, to rank for all of the little surrounding towns and cities, we listed them all on the service page.
Now, if you search for pest control in each of these areas, this company will show up in the results.
4. Create Content with Local Keyword Focus
Next, you want to optimize most of your high-level content, including your homepage and service pages, with local keywords.
For example, a common strategy many people use for their homepage includes:
Brand Name | Pest Control (Insert City)
This formula can be repeated for all title tags across your service pages, using the service (city) before the brand name.
To research keywords, you’ll need to pay for a keyword tool or use Google Ads, which provides a free Keyword Planner upon signup.
Filter your location to your area, type in any relevant services to your area, and see which keywords get the most volume.
Using these keywords, we can create blog topic ideas around specific cockroach species and palmetto bugs and incorporate these species onto our service pages.
Website Meta Data
Use your keywords to optimize the following elements to make your website more search-friendly.
- Title Tags: The clickable headline in a Google result. (Max character length is 60)
- Meta Descriptions: The 160-character description under the title tag that explains the page content.
- Headers: The headings on a page that break up content. These offer great opportunities for supplementary keywords and answering questions.
Read More: Advanced Keyword Research Strategy To Supercharge Your Online Presence.
5. Engage in Online and Offline Advertising
Advertising is a particularly useful tool for new businesses looking to spread the word about their services.
Some traditional avenues we see a lot of our clients take include:
- TV advertisements
- Billboards
- Radio advertisements
- Newspaper clippings
However, one advantage of digital advertising is the ability to narrow down your audience for research.
Using tools like Facebook and Google, you can create sophisticated audience segments based on demographic and psychographic data to reduce your spending and increase conversions.
Google advertising, also known as pay-per-click, lets your business bid on specific keywords, such as “pest control company Boston,” that people search when making a buyer’s decision.
Social media advertising puts your business directly on user feeds for additional visibility but requires some fine-tuning to find the right prospects.
6. Collect and Respond to Online Reviews
Online reviews are a very important part of local SEO and directory algorithms.
According to an article from Search Engine Land, not only do reviews impact Google’s local ranking algorithm, but having 4.0 stars or above qualifies your listing to show up for “best” results.
So if you search “best pest control near me,” and your business has positive reviews, you’ll show up in the local 3-pack results.
Surveys also show that ~95% of online shoppers read reviews before purchasing.
Be sure to create a review management system designed to collect reviews. Ideas include:
- Texting customers after an appointment with a link to a review site
- Asking technicians to leave a card with a link to a review site
- Adding a link to a review site in your customer invoice
Once you gain more reviews, respond to them, whether they are positive or negative, to form more connections in the community. Other users will also view that through a positive lens.
In sum, the more positive reviews you get, the more likely you will appear on “near me” searches and the more customers you’ll receive.
7. Acquire Backlinks for Regional Presence
Finally, this last step is often overlooked but very important for establishing regional partnerships.
In the realm of pest control SEO, links have a major influence on keyword rankings. Drive more links to a website or a piece of content, and the more likely that page will rank for that target keyword.
Link building may not always be affordable in the traditional sense, but there are lots of things you can do to acquire more links.
- Build resource content, such as studies, surveys, or guides that people link to naturally.
- Reach out to local businesses for promotional opportunities and provide a link between each business.
- Host local events that acquire links naturally through the media and local bloggers.
- Donate to local charities or organizations to acquire links on their website.
- Help local reporters looking for info on a news story using the HARO system (filter inquiries for pest-based topics).
These links can offer a great source of traffic and brand exposure. But even more importantly, they offer a creative way to network and build more relationships within your community.
Learn More: Local SEO Checklist 2023: Top 11 Tips For Increased Revenue.
Professional Pest Control Marketing Services
Need help to grow your pest control company? The experts at Content Mender are here to help.
We take a personalized approach to every client, offering them hands-on services designed to expand tier web presence and conquer their local area. There are no copy-and-paste services; we take the time to help all of our clients grow based on the existing opportunities we identify in your market.
All campaigns incorporate SEO-driven content marketing with expertly crafted lead funnels that drive more qualified leads to your business.
We’ve helped several pest control companies grow their leads by 10X as much simply by optimizing their web presence. Find out how ContentMender can help your pest control company grow.
