A marketing plan for home service companies that runs on a weekly rhythm
Key takeaways
- Your season sets the calendar. Work back eight weeks from every peak.
- Every campaign gets a one-page brief, one owner and a launch date.
- A 30-minute weekly meeting keeps the plan moving while the phones are busy.
Say your AC season runs 16 weeks, from mid-May to the end of August.
An AC campaign needs an offer, a landing page, new ads, an email to past customers, review requests and a script for your CSRs. Done well, that takes about six weeks.
If you start when the phones start ringing, you launch in late June.
Six of your 16 best weeks are gone before your marketing shows up.
Put a number on it. Say a peak week is worth $40,000 in booked work, and the campaign would add 15%. That is $6,000 a week. Six late weeks cost you $36,000.
Nobody decided to start late. The owner was running jobs. The office manager was on payroll. The agency was waiting for someone to approve the offer.
Everyone was busy, and no one owned the date.
Your season writes the calendar
Home service demand is predictable. Two years of booked jobs show you when it rises and when it falls.
So you write the plan backward. Find each peak. Eight weeks before it, the campaign brief is done. Four weeks before it, the pages, ads and emails are done. Two weeks before it, the campaign is live and your CSRs have the script.
The slow months get a plan of their own. Maintenance memberships, review requests, emails to past customers, and the smaller jobs that fill a schedule between peaks.
The excuse: "We're too busy to plan"
Every owner says it in April. In April, it is true.
That is why the planning happens in January, when the phones are quiet. It takes an afternoon. The weekly meeting takes 30 minutes.
Compare that with the $36,000 in the example above.
The pieces of the rhythm
- A 12-month demand map. Booked jobs by week for the last two years, by service line. Mark the peaks and the valleys.
- A one-page brief for every campaign. The offer, who it is for, the channels, the budget, the number it has to hit, one owner and the launch date. If it doesn't fit on a page, it isn't decided yet.
- One owner for every piece of work. A name, never a department. "Marketing" can't be late. A person can.
- A 30-minute weekly meeting. Last week's booked jobs by source, this week's launches, anything blocked and who will clear it. Same day, same time, every week.
- A review after each season. What booked, what didn't and what to change next year. Write it where next year's brief will find it.
My team and I helped a home service company go from 1 location to 11, and it now sells franchises. A business can only add locations when its work runs without the owner in the room. For marketing, that starts with a calendar and a name on every date.
Frequently asked questions.
What should a home service marketing plan include?
A 12-month demand map from your own booked jobs, launch dates worked back from each peak, a one-page brief for every campaign with one owner and a target number, a 30-minute weekly meeting, and a written review after each season. The slow months get their own plan for memberships, reviews and past customers.
When should HVAC, plumbing or roofing companies start seasonal campaigns?
Work back from your own peak. Have the brief finished about eight weeks before demand rises, the pages, ads and emails ready about four weeks before, and the campaign live two weeks before the phones pick up. Your last two years of booked jobs show when your peak starts.
How do you market a home service business in the slow season?
Sell maintenance memberships, ask happy customers for reviews, email past customers about smaller jobs and tune-ups, and use the quiet weeks to plan and brief the next peak. The slow season is when the next busy season's marketing gets built.