Pest Control Marketing That Actually Works

Most pest control owners think they have a lead problem. They have an answering problem.

One of our pest control clients took more than 500 calls last quarter. Miss just one in four, and that's about $4,000 a month going to the next company on Google. In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante are joined by Emily Porter, Cube Creative's web project specialist, to talk about how website chat catches the leads your phone drops, and how to set it up so it doesn't create new problems.

In this episode:

Missed-Call Math. Adam walks...

Here's what nobody tells you about marketing calendars: the plan is almost never the problem. Pest control companies build great calendars in January. By March, most of them are dead, because the busiest week for marketing is also the busiest week on the trucks.

In Episode 41 of Pest Control Marketing That Actually Works, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante of Cube Creative Design break down why marketing calendars fail. They explain how to build one small enough to survive peak season.

Your three key takeaways:

How many leads does it take to land one customer? Adam and Elisabeth say that's the wrong question. The number that matters is how many leads you're losing after the phone already rang.

In our second Listener Q&A, we answer five real questions from pest control owners. We cover lead leaks and close rates, why review recency matters as much as review count, how long SEO really takes, what happens to your rankings when you move your office, and what to add first when your business runs on referrals.

Three Key Takeaways<...

Most pest control companies close one sale and move on to chasing the next lead. Meanwhile, the customer they just served is five to seven times cheaper to sell to again than a stranger.

In this episode, Adam, Elisabeth, and Chad break down the math behind revenue per customer and show you exactly how to grow it.

Three key takeaways:

We built a tool to grade pest control websites. Then we ran seven real sites through it and found out it was wrong about the two most important ones.

Chad Treadway has audited over 200 pest control sites. In this episode, he walks through what happened when we put seven of them through the Cube Score, our proprietary grading tool that measures Identity, Authority, Proof, Transparency, Structure, and Visibility on a 0-to-600 scale.

The headline finding: a five-location Southeast operation with over 1,500 reviews across their markets scored 136. A small Midwest company with 58 reviews, whose...

Most pest control companies want commercial accounts but have websites built entirely for homeowners. In this episode, Adam Bennett, Elisabeth Pallante, and Hannah Kilpatrick unpack why that gap exists and how to close it.

The team shares Cube Score data from a dozen pest control sites pursuing commercial work. The finding: commercial-facing pages averaged 185 out of 600 on the Cube Score while the same companies' residential pages averaged 380. The biggest gaps showed up in Authority and Transparency, the two dimensions commercial buyers weight most.

The episode walks through five content layers a property manager...

A pest control company came to us after another agency redesigned their website. Beautiful site. Conversions dropped 40%. Same traffic, fewer calls. That is the most expensive website mistake in pest control.

In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante break down the Conversion Stack, the five layers between a visitor landing on your site and that visitor picking up the phone. Most owners skip straight to changing button colors. This episode shows you why that is the wrong starting point.

Three key takeaways:

Everybody in this industry calls fall the slow season, so everybody spends less in the fall. That's the mistake.

Adam Bennett, Elisabeth Pallante, and Chad Treadway on why September through November is the highest-leverage window on your calendar, and what to build in it.

What's in this one:

Fall demand doesn't drop, it moves indoors. Rodents, spiders, stink bugs, boxelder bugs, cluster flies. Every pest control site in America has a mosquito page and a termite page. A lot of them have no rodent page at all, which is backwards on ticket size...

Most pest control owners can quote their cost per lead to the dollar and can't tell you what a customer is worth.

In this episode, Adam Bennett, Elisabeth Pallante, and Chad Treadway run the numbers that change marketing budgets. Not lead volume. Lifetime value, churn, and what it actually costs to replace a customer you already had.

What's in this one:

The lifetime value math, three numbers deep. Annual revenue per customer, average years retained, gross margin. Chad walks a standard quarterly plan out to lifetime gross profit, and Elisabeth points out that...

Your pest control trucks are on the road every day. Are they selling for you or just driving? In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante are joined by Cube Creative CMO Chad Treadway to break down why your truck is the cheapest and most underused marketing asset you own.

You'll learn that a single wrapped truck generates 30,000 to 70,000 impressions per day at a cost of under a dollar per thousand views, making it 10 times more cost-efficient than billboards.

You'll hear why the truck parked in your customer's driveway is doing...

Most marketing advice is generic. This episode isn't. We pulled the real questions pest control owners keep asking us and answered six of them straight.

Your ads are working. Traffic is landing on your site. And then 40% of those visitors leave because your only visible contact option is a phone number they don't want to call.

In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante are joined by web project specialist Emily Porter to break down the contact methods that catch the leads your site is leaking. You'll learn why most pest control contact forms convert at half their potential because they have too many fields, how to set up a chat widget as a lead capture tool in about two hours...

Your marketing worked. The phone rang. And then 35 to 40% of those callers never booked. Not because the marketing failed. Because the phone call failed. In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante are joined by Cube Creative CMO Chad Treadway to break down the phone skills that turn inbound calls into booked inspections.

You'll learn why the first 15 seconds of every call decide whether you win or lose the lead, the three-part greeting that puts you in control from word one, why quoting prices over the phone turns you into a free estimate machine (and...

Five service pages used to be a normal pest control website. General pest, termites, mosquitoes, rodents, maybe bed bugs. A paragraph on each, a stock photo, and a phone number.

That was fine in 2018. In 2026 it tells AI and buyers the same thing: this company doesn't go deep. In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante break down the Authority side of the Cube Score framework and why content depth, organization, and freshness now determine whether AI recommends your business or your competitor's.

You'll learn why a company with 28 updated content...

Your organic traffic is down. Your rankings haven't moved much. The phone is quieter. What changed? AI search has rewritten the rules for how pest control buyers find you, and most of the metrics you've tracked since 2020 don't measure the things that actually matter now. In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante from Cube Creative Design break down the six categories of trust signals that decide whether ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity recommend your business: Identity, Authority, Proof, Transparency, Structure, and Visibility. They explain why 90%+ of companies have hidden NAP inconsistencies, why 92-93% of pest control sites still hide...

Your home market is humming. You're at six or eight trucks. The next city over looks like the obvious move. So why do most pest control companies lose money for six months when they expand?

In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante break down why service area expansion is a brand-new business problem rather than a marketing problem, how to pick the right expansion market using density and drive time instead of raw population, and what a real city page looks like compared to the thin service-area pages that hurt more than they help.<...

92 to 93 percent of pest control websites don't show pricing anywhere on the site. Not a starting range. Not a service-by-service breakdown. Not even a "most customers pay between this and this." Just nothing.

Meanwhile, the number one question pest control buyers have when they hit your site is "what is this going to cost me." The gap costs you leads you never even knew were looking.

In Episode 26, Adam Bennett, Elisabeth Pallante, and Chad Treadway break down why hiding pricing actually protects your competition rather than your margin. You'll hear the three objections pest control...

70 to 80 percent of pest control leads don't book on the first contact. They fill out a form, get a quote, then go quiet. Most pest control companies have no system for recovering those leads. They sit in a spreadsheet until someone gives up on them.

In Episode 25, Adam Bennett, Elisabeth Pallante, and Chad Treadway walk through the three email automation sequences every pest control company should have running.

Sequence one: the new-lead nurture. Four to five emails over two weeks for leads who filled out a form but didn't book within 24 hours. Open...

Your Google Business Profile is verified. You've added photos, picked the right categories, and you post a few times a month. So why have your map rankings stopped moving?

In this episode of Marketing That Actually Works, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante break down what comes after GBP. The plateau most pest control operators hit isn't a Google Business Profile problem. It's a signal problem. Google cross-checks your profile against the rest of the web, and when the rest of the web is messy or thin, your rankings can only go so high.

...

Did you spend $800 on Facebook ads and get zero leads? The problem probably isn't Facebook. It's what you asked Facebook to do. In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante are joined by Hannah Kilpatrick, Cube Creative's Social Media Manager, to break down what social ads actually do for pest control companies and why most pest control owners are measuring them wrong. You'll learn why Facebook and Instagram are farming, not hunting, why creative matters more than targeting, the three ad shapes that work consistently for pest control, how much a 5-truck company should spend per month, and the...

Summer is when most pest control operators make their biggest marketing mistake. The trucks are full, the phones are ringing, and it feels like the right time to pause marketing and save the budget. But that pause creates a revenue cliff that hits hard in September and October.

In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante break down why going dark on marketing during busy season is the most expensive cycle in pest control, and what to do instead. They walk through the real cost of stopping and restarting: Google Ads campaigns that lose their optimization data...

Most pest control companies treat termites, bed bugs, and wildlife like afterthoughts on their website. One paragraph each, buried under a generic services page. Then they wonder why the calls don't come in.

In Episode 21, Adam Bennett, Elisabeth Pallante, and CMO Chad Treadway break down why specialty services need their own marketing playbook. These services often pay far more per job than recurring pest control, but most operators spend almost nothing marketing them on purpose.

What you'll learn:

Is your website fast enough to keep the leads you're paying for? If your site takes more than three seconds to load, nearly half your visitors are leaving before they see your phone number. That's not a tech problem. That's a lead problem.

In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante sit down with Cube Creative web project specialist Emily Porter to break down website speed and performance for pest control companies. Emily walks through exactly how to test your site speed using free tools, what the scores mean, and which fixes make the biggest difference.

Video converts better than any other content type across every platform pest control companies use. And right now, most of your local competitors have no video presence at all. That's a first-mover advantage—but it won't last forever.

In this episode, social media manager Hannah Kilpatrick breaks down the four video types every pest control company needs and how to film them without a production budget.

The four types and what each one does:

Company Overview Video. This is your homepage video—60 to 90 seconds. The owner or a key team...

Episode Summary

If you can't tell which marketing channel produced your last ten customers, you're not managing your marketing — you're guessing at it. Most pest control operators are. They keep channels running because cutting anything feels risky, and they can't double down on what's working because they don't know what that is.

This episode fixes that. Adam Bennett, Elisabeth Pallante, and Cube Creative CMO Chad Treadway walk through the three metrics that matter — cost per lead, cost per acquisition, and customer lifetime value — and explain why comparing channels by cost per click leads to bad...

Instagram Reels are getting 5-10x more reach than photos right now—and pest control companies are perfectly positioned to take advantage. In this episode, social media manager Hannah Kilpatrick breaks down exactly what's working on Instagram for pest control operators in 2026.

Here's why this matters: when you post a photo, Instagram shows it mainly to your existing followers. When you post a reel, the algorithm pushes it to people who've never heard of you. A pest control company with 300 followers can post a reel and get 2,000-5,000 views. That same company posts a photo and gets 50-1...

If your pest control company has fewer than 50 Google reviews, you're losing customers to competitors before they ever reach you. Research shows 93% of consumers say online reviews influence their buying decision — and companies with 50 or more reviews convert at two to three times the rate of companies with fewer than 10.

The problem isn't that operators don't know reviews matter. It's that they have no system. They rely on customers to leave reviews on their own (most won't), ask at the wrong time, or depend on individual techs to remember (they don't, consistently). This episode fixes all three.

Google Ads for Pest Control: Stop Wasting Money

Most pest control companies running Google Ads are paying for clicks they'll never convert. In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante from Cube Creative Design break down exactly where that budget is going — and how to stop the bleeding.

Elisabeth walks through the three most common waste patterns: broad match keywords that serve your ad to people searching for pest control jobs and DIY products, a missing negative keyword list that lets Google match you to searches you'd never want to pay fo...

Google Ads for Pest Control: Stop Wasting Money

Most pest control companies running Google Ads are paying for clicks they'll never convert. In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante from Cube Creative Design break down exactly where that budget is going — and how to stop the bleeding.

Elisabeth walks through the three most common waste patterns: broad match keywords that serve your ad to people searching for pest control jobs and DIY products, a missing negative keyword list that lets Google match you to searches you'd never want to pay fo...

Creative Marketing Tactics on a Small Budget

If you're a small pest control company competing against bigger budgets, you have an advantage: you can be creative, nimble, and hyper-local in ways big companies cannot.

A national pest control company spends $50,000 on a regional TV campaign. Thousands of people see it, but it's generic and forgettable. Meanwhile, a local operator spends $200 sponsoring the Little League team in their target neighborhood. Every parent at every game for an entire season sees your company name on the jerseys. That's 20 to 30 families who will remember you when...

If your only lead generation method is a phone number, you're losing 30-40% of potential customers before they ever contact you. Younger homeowners - now the largest group of home buyers in America - prefer to text, chat, or book online rather than call. And even customers who would call can't reach you at 9 PM when they spot a pest problem.

This episode breaks down the five lead capture methods every pest control company should have, how to manage them without adding chaos to your day, and the exact order to implement them if you're starting from...

Episode 12: Landing Pages That Convert: Design and Copy That Works

If you're running paid advertising without dedicated landing pages, you're lighting money on fire.

That's the blunt truth from Emily Porter, Cube Creative's website and project specialist, who joins Adam and Elisabeth to break down exactly what makes a landing page convert—and why sending paid traffic to your homepage is costing you 40-60% of your leads.

The math tells the story: Send $5,000 in monthly ad spend to your homepage and convert at 2%—that's 100 leads at $50 each. Send that same traffic to d...

Seasonal Marketing: How to Own Your Spring Rush

If you're waiting until March to start your spring marketing, you've already lost. Your competitors started in January, and by the time spring shows up on the calendar, they've captured the early bookings and the mental real estate of your potential customers.

In this episode, Adam, Elisabeth, and Chad break down the 90-day preseason marketing timeline that dominates your market. You'll learn exactly what to do in January, February, and March to fill your spring schedule before your competitors even start advertising.

The...

Email Marketing That Brings Customers Back

Email marketing delivers $36 back for every dollar spent—the highest ROI of any marketing channel. Yet most pest control companies send zero marketing emails to their customers.

In this episode, Adam, Elisabeth, and Chad reveal why email works so well for pest control and exactly how to set it up. You'll learn the four automated email sequences that generate revenue while you sleep, plus six ways to build your email list from scratch.

The math is simple: send a monthly email to 500 customers promoting a $150 se...

Social Media for Pest Control: What Actually Works in 2026

Social media is one of the most misunderstood marketing channels for pest control companies. Most operators either ignore it completely or waste hours posting content that generates zero leads.

In this episode, Adam and Elisabeth bring in Hannah Kilpatrick, Cube Creative's social media manager, to break down what actually works. You'll learn which platforms deserve your time, which content types get engagement, and how much ROI to realistically expect from social media.

The hard truth: social media is a supporting actor, not...

Episode 8: Word-of-Mouth Marketing Isn't Enough Anymore

Referrals got you to $500K. But they won't get you to $2M. In this episode, Adam Bennett, Elisabeth Pallante, and Chad Treadway explain why the same word-of-mouth strategy that built your pest control business is now holding it back.

Word-of-mouth is the best marketing channel that exists. Referred customers close at 50-60% compared to 20-30% for cold leads. The acquisition cost is basically zero. So why isn't it working anymore?

Because it's not scalable. And the math proves it.

Your three key...