Houston homeowners call an exterminator when they see the bug, so the way to get more pest control customers in Houston is to advertise each pest in the weeks it shows up, then offer every one-time caller a quarterly plan before the technician leaves the driveway. Termites swarm in spring. Mosquitoes and fire ants run from May into fall. Rats and mice move into attics after the first real cool front.
Below is that calendar turned into a working plan for a residential shop north of Houston: what to push each month, where to spend, how to keep the phone busy in February, and one Texas advertising rule that a lot of borrowed ad copy breaks.
How to get more pest control customers: follow Houston’s pest calendar
Pest demand here comes in waves, and the waves arrive on roughly the same dates every year. Texas A&M’s entomologists have already mapped most of them.
- March and April: native subterranean termite swarmers show up, usually in daylight, according to Texas A&M AgriLife’s termite fact sheet. Homeowners find wings on a windowsill and panic.
- Late May and early June: Formosan termites swarm at night and are drawn to lights, per Texas A&M’s urban entomology program. Formosans were first found in Texas near the Houston Ship Channel in Pasadena back in 1956, and a single colony can top a million termites.
- May through October: Harris County Public Health says mosquito activity typically peaks in these months, and the county has 56 mosquito species.
- November through February: mice, rats, squirrels and raccoons move into attics and walls as it cools, which AgriLife Extension warns about every year.
- After any big storm: flooding brings floating fire ant colonies and, a few weeks after the water drops, a wave of mosquitoes.
Here’s how we’d turn that into a working plan for a shop covering The Woodlands, Spring and Conroe.
| Months | What customers notice | What to push | Where to spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan to Feb | Rodents in the attic, roaches indoors | Exclusion and rodent plans | Search ads, reviews, renewal emails |
| Mar to Apr | Termite swarmers in daylight, ants | Termite inspections, quarterly plans | Search, LSA, realtor outreach |
| May to Jun | Formosan swarms around porch lights | Termite treatment, mosquito pre-sales | Heaviest search budget of the year |
| Jul to Sep | Mosquitoes, fire ants, storm damage | Mosquito programs, fire ant lawn treatments | Search, Nextdoor, door hangers |
| Oct to Dec | First rodents, fall invaders | Rodent exclusion, annual plan renewals | Search, email to past customers |
Shops that run the same ads on the same budget twelve months a year overpay in December and run dry in May.
How to get more pest control leads in termite season
Termite work is the highest-ticket job most residential pest companies sell, and Houston gets two swarm windows. For many shops, March through June pays for the rest of the year.
Get ready in February
- Write a termite page for your site that answers the questions people ask after they find wings: “Are these termites or flying ants?”, “Do swarmers mean my house is infested?”, “What does treatment cost?” Give a real price range or a clear inspection offer.
- Add “Termite inspection” and “Termite treatment” as services on your Google Business Profile, with a short description of each.
- Line up three or four photos of real swarmer evidence from your own jobs: wings on sills, mud tubes on slab edges. Post them to your profile during swarm weeks.
- Build a separate termite campaign in Google Ads with its own budget so it can’t be starved by general pest clicks. We walk through that in our pest control Google Ads setup guide.
Work the swarm nights
Formosan swarms happen at dusk and after dark around lights. That means the searches happen at 9 p.m. on a muggy evening in late May, when the homeowner is standing on the back patio in Kingwood or Spring watching a cloud around the porch light. If your ads shut off at 6 p.m. and nobody answers the phone, you hand those calls to whoever does.
During swarm weeks, run ads until 10 or 11 p.m. and route after-hours calls to a person or an answering service that can book a morning inspection. A 9 p.m. caller who reaches a human usually books; one who reaches a recording usually calls someone else.
Summer: mosquitoes, fire ants and the post-storm spike
Mosquito service is the easiest recurring program to sell in Houston because nobody needs to be convinced the problem exists. Price and sell it as a season of visits. A monthly or every-three-weeks program from spring into fall lines up with the county’s May to October peak.
Fire ants are the other summer seller. Mounds pop up in every new-build yard from Magnolia to Katy, and a lawn treatment plan is easy to bundle with mosquito service for the same visit.
Storms change everything for a few weeks
After Harvey in 2017, Texas A&M AgriLife entomologists warned about fire ant colonies floating in floodwater as living rafts, and said nuisance mosquitoes would surge a few weeks after the water receded. Hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, and Beryl in July 2024 showed how fast a storm can reshuffle everyone’s week.
Have a short storm plan written down before you need it:
- A pre-written Google Business Profile post and Nextdoor post about fire ants and standing water, ready to publish once roads are open.
- A budget bump for mosquito and fire ant campaigns for the two to four weeks after flooding.
- A rule for your team: help first, sell second. People remember who was useful after a storm.
Fall and winter: rodents and the renewal push
When the first real cool front comes through, rodent calls start. Rodent exclusion is a good winter product because it has a clear before and after, it often leads to attic cleanup work and the customer is usually ready for a plan once they’ve heard scratching above the bedroom.
Winter is also when you should be most active with customers you already have. Send renewal reminders. Ask for reviews from everyone you serviced in the summer. Call last spring’s one-time termite and mosquito customers and offer a quarterly plan starting in January. That list costs you nothing to market to, and it’s usually the cheapest new revenue you’ll find all year.
Turn one-time jobs into quarterly plans
Pest control is a subscription business, and a lot of small shops still run it like a repair business.
Say you charge $175 for a one-time general pest service and $125 a quarter for a plan (illustrative numbers; use yours). The one-time customer is worth $175. The plan customer is worth $500 in year one, and if they stay three years, $1,500. The same ad click bought both.
Ways to raise your conversion from one-time to recurring:
- Offer the plan on the first call. Quote both prices side by side. Many people pick the plan once they see the per-visit math.
- Credit the first service. “Your $175 today becomes your first quarterly visit if you sign up this week.”
- Give technicians a script and a reason. A small bonus per plan signed on site gets more results than a sales training video.
- Follow up within seven days. A text with a one-tap sign-up link catches people who said “let me talk to my wife.”
- Make cancel and pause easy. It sounds backwards, but customers sign up more readily when leaving isn’t a fight.
Once you know your plan conversion rate and average customer lifetime, you can work out what a new lead is really worth, which tells you how much you can afford to pay for one. Our guide to understanding cost per lead shows the math.
Google Business Profile and reviews: your free lead source
When someone in Tomball searches “exterminator near me,” the three map results get most of the calls. Google’s own local ranking guidance says plainly that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business rank locally, and it recommends replying to them.
What we’d do on a pest control profile:
- Pick “Pest control service” as the primary category and add secondary ones you truly offer, like termite control.
- List every service you sell, with a sentence each: termite inspections, mosquito programs, rodent exclusion, fire ant treatment, bed bugs.
- Set your service area to the cities and ZIP codes you actually drive to, not all of Greater Houston.
- Post weekly in season. Short and timely beats polished: “Formosan swarms are starting around Lake Conroe. Here’s how to tell them from flying ants.”
- Ask for a review after every first service and every plan sign-up, by text, with a direct link. Technicians who ask in person get the most.
For the full process, see our guide to Google reviews and how to rank in the Houston map pack.
Pest control marketing in Houston: lead with your TDA license
In Texas, the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Structural Pest Control Service licenses pest control businesses. Each business location needs its own license, the commercial license costs $300, and the state says you can’t conduct business or advertise until it’s issued. Every commercial licensee also has to name a responsible certified applicator and carry at least $500,000 in bodily injury and property damage coverage with a $1,000,000 aggregate.
Most homeowners have no idea any of this exists. Tell them. Put your TDA business license number on your site footer, your Google Business Profile description, your truck and your door hangers. Explain in one line that the state keeps public records of licensed businesses (it publishes them in TDA’s current license reports). Fly-by-night operators can’t match that, and it’s a better trust signal than a stock photo of a smiling tech.
Watch your claims, though. The Texas advertising rule for pest control licensees (4 TAC § 7.152) lists “safe,” “harmless” and “non-toxic to humans and pets” among the prohibited claims, and adding “when used as directed” doesn’t fix it. It also lists “environmentally friendly,” “organic” and “contain all natural ingredients,” and it requires every ad to include your business name as it appears on your license. Plenty of franchise and national templates say “pet-safe treatments.” In Texas, that line has to go.
Local Services Ads, search ads and Nextdoor
Pest control is one of the categories in Google’s Local Services category list, and you pay for leads instead of clicks. Local Services Ads sit above everything else on many “pest control near me” searches, and they lean hard on reviews and responsiveness. If your review count is decent and you answer the phone, start there. Our comparison of Local Services Ads vs. Google Ads explains how the two work together, and our post on the Google Verified badge covers the screening.
Search ads give you what LSA doesn’t: control over which pests you promote, which hours you run and which landing page people see. That’s where your termite and mosquito seasons get their own budgets. If you want help with that side, it’s what our search marketing team does every day.
Nextdoor is worth a test for recurring plans because neighbors talk about bugs constantly, and one happy customer’s recommendation in a Woodlands village group can bring several calls. We wrote an honest take on whether Nextdoor advertising is worth it if you’re weighing paid posts there.
Real estate termite inspections and door-to-door, done right
Every home sale in termite country is a chance to meet a new customer. Texas requires wood destroying insect reports in real estate deals to be issued on a state-prescribed form by the licensed business (see 4 TAC § 7.176), and many buyers, agents and lenders ask for one. The inspection itself is a small ticket. The customer who just bought a 1990s house in Spring and hears “we found old tube activity” is a treatment and a plan.
How to build the referral side:
- Make a list of the 20 most active listing and buyer agents in your area, plus the home inspectors they use.
- Offer a real service promise: report back within 48 hours, photos included, online scheduling.
- Drop off a one-page explainer on Formosan versus native termites agents can forward to buyers.
- Send a thank-you and an update after every referred job. Agents keep sending work to people who make them look good.
Door-to-door works better with digital behind it
Summer door knocking still sells plans across Montgomery County subdivisions. It works better when the homeowner can look you up on the spot and see 200 reviews and a TDA license number. Before a door team hits a neighborhood, make sure your profile is current, run a small search campaign in those ZIP codes and leave a door hanger with a short web address that goes to a page built for that offer. Then track sign-ups by neighborhood so you know which streets to revisit.
Work backward from the next swarm
Open a calendar to the next swarm window or the next big storm and count back four weeks. That’s your deadline for the termite page, the separate campaign, the evening call coverage and the review texts. Put the next season’s deadline on the same calendar while you’re there.
Then look at last spring honestly. If your search budget was gone by the third week of May, right when Formosans were swarming, our free Ad Spend Leak Check will show where it went. We record a 10-minute walkthrough of your Google or Meta account and send it within 48 hours. We work with home service companies across Conroe, Spring and the rest of the north Houston suburbs.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best pest control marketing ideas for a small company?
Start with what costs little: a complete Google Business Profile, a review request after every service, and calls to past one-time customers offering a quarterly plan. Then add seasonal search ads for termites in spring and mosquitoes in summer, a realtor and home inspector referral program for termite inspections, and door hangers in neighborhoods where you already have customers. Measure each idea by booked jobs, not by clicks or likes.
What pest control marketing strategies work best in Houston?
Strategies that follow Houston’s pest calendar work best. Push termite inspections from March through June, mosquito and fire ant programs from May through October, and rodent exclusion once the weather cools. Keep a storm plan ready for flooding, show your Texas Department of Agriculture license everywhere, and convert first-time callers into recurring plans so each new customer is worth several visits.
How do I grow a pest control business?
Growth in pest control comes mostly from recurring revenue. Get more first calls through Google, reviews and referrals, then turn as many of them as you can into quarterly or monthly plans and keep them with good service and easy renewals. Once your plan conversion rate and customer lifetime are known, you can spend more confidently on advertising and add technicians, routes and new service areas.
How much should a pest control company spend on marketing?
There is no single right number, but many small home service companies budget a share of revenue and adjust by season. A better method is to start from what a new customer is worth over their lifetime, decide what you can pay to win one, and set ad budgets to hit that cost. Spend more in termite and mosquito season and less in slow winter weeks.
Do I need to show my license in pest control ads in Texas?
Texas rules say you can’t advertise structural pest control services without a license, and every ad must include your business name as it appears on your license. Showing your license number on your site, profile, trucks and printed pieces is also a smart trust signal. Avoid claims like safe, non-toxic or organic, which the state’s advertising rule prohibits.
Sean Melton is the founder of First Byte, a digital marketing agency in The Woodlands, TX. A former global CMO of a $250M software company, he has spent his career inside the businesses he markets. His team runs paid social, search, CTV and creative for brands like Equinox, Kroger and Viceroy, and shares what works here.