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I’ve seen just about everything when it comes to advertising pest control companies in my almost 25 years in the business. Inevitably, when a pest control business owner looks to start growing their business, in most cases, the immediate response is “we need more leads”.
What if I told you there are less expensive and faster ways to jumpstart your pest control company’s growth? Not saying leads aren’t essential, but below I’ve compiled 5 Marketing Automations proven to work for pest control, helping you to close more business.
Pest control has become an extremely expensive endeavor when it comes to purchasing leads online. Here at City Ranked, we manage hundreds of pest control companies’ advertising efforts across the US, and lead costs have risen sharply over the last 5 years. Increased competition, brands merging through M&A activity, and 3rd-party lead-generation companies have all begun competing for the same leads, significantly eroding the returns on investment from traditional paid advertising channels. Many pest control operators are now paying more than they will make on an account the entire first year, just for the chance at renewing that customer for subsequent years, a situation no pest control business owner wants.
Using AI & Marketing Automation to Grow Your Pest Control Business
I get it, implementing new technology and software into your business can be a challenge for any pest control owner. Likely, you’re already using a pest control CRM like PestPac, Gorilla Desk, Pest Routes, or something similar, so why the need to layer on another software? The short answer is that everyone will have to at some point, whether you’re an early adopter or part of the late majority. AI and Marketing Automation are here to stay, and those who implement early will reap the rewards of these efforts for many years to come.
- I’m reminded of how many pest control owners didn’t embrace getting reviews back when Google started pressing for them hard in 2014, and by the time these same folks realized it was important, many local competitors were already dominating local search with hundreds, sometimes thousands of reviews. The acceptance and implementation of AI & Marketing Automation is no different.
Following the pandemic, just about every business owner now knows the importance of representing their business online, so the question now is how to differentiate their business in such a crowded landscape.
Enter Marketing Automation paired with Artificial Intelligence
First, so we’re on the same level, let’s discuss the purpose of marketing automation and how it relates to your business when paired with a CRM.
The core purpose of marketing automation is to streamline, automate, and optimize repetitive marketing tasks to save time, build efficiencies, and deliver personalized experiences to your most valuable prospects at scale. Primarily, Marketing Automation focuses on the top and middle parts of the sales funnel by attracting, nurturing, and qualifying prospects until they are ready to speak with someone on your sales team.
Platforms like City Ranked’s Marketing Automation platform Skout act as a Pre-CRM, or a newer term in the marketing industry PRM, short for Prospect Relationship Management. While a traditional CRM focuses on the customer and the sales and service process, a Pre-CRM, or PRM focuses on the prospect’s lifecycle, the experience you deliver before the sale through awareness, discovery, and nurturing.
Having a Pre-CRM – PRM helps align your marketing team’s ability to deliver highly-qualified prospects that have indicated they are sales-ready to your sales teams. This closed-loop system ensures all prospects are accounted for, regardless of their stage in the sales cycle. The result is a process-driven environment that uses mathematical calculations against your system data to forecast new sales and revenue growth effectively, and to automate and optimize teams for further growth.
Gemini on the benefits of a Pre-CRM
Some key benefits to connecting your Marketing Automation to your CRM,
- Centralized Prospect Data – Most notable Pre-CRMs automatically start building prospect profiles as they engage with your business online. An example of this would be someone engaging with a chat widget on a website. Most times these widgets will request the persons first and last name, email, and cell number. This information is stored as a potential prospect in the system and tracks this person as they engage with your business.
- Converting Cold Leads – Pre-CRMs focus on converting visitors into qualified marketing prospects by managing activities such as: email sequences, SMS campaigns, reactivation campaigns, and more.
- Protects Your CRMs Data Integrity – Gone are the days of having to rely on sales representatives on entering leads into your CRM. With a Pre-CRM, you, as the business owne,r decide what you consider as a MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) and those leads are automatically populated to your CRM once your conditions have been met. Imagine having the real closing rates of your sales teams and what you could do with that information as a business owner.
- Pre-Sales Engagement Tracking – Your CRM undoubtedly tracks activities such as phone calls, proposals, closed sales, and more. Imagine having insights into lead scoring and lead engagement to decide who is worth the effort of personalized outreach.
5 Marketing Automation Flows to Jumpstart Your Revenue Growth
1. After Hours & Weekend Lead Automations – Never miss an after-hours lead again. Many pest control companies will outsource their after-hours and weekend phone calls and form submissions to companies that charge a premium to engage these leads. With Marketing Automation and AI this can all be done automated. Form submissions can be answered using SMS messaging letting the prospect know their inquiry was received, and can even engage in conversation with the prospect to gather key information regarding their situation. The system can even remind the prospect the next day that someone from your company will be calling to address their inquiry. Platforms like Skout offer fully autonomous AI phone answering services that are trained on your specific business and can be deployed to answer phone calls on evenings and weekends.
- Sample Interaction:
- Prospect: submits form on your website after hours.
- Skout SMS: Hello [Prospects Name], this is [Your Company] responding to the form you just submitted on our website. Our office is closed right now, but if you can tell me in a few sentences what you need help with, I can make a note of it and let our office staff know what we can help you with as soon as they get in.
- Skout automatically creates a prospect profile with first name, last name, email, and cell number.
- Prospect: Oh thank you for the quick response. We’re having a bad issue with little black ants in our kitchen, is that something you guys can help with?
- Skout SMS: I’m sorry to hear you’re dealing with ant issues. We can definitely help with that. Can I get the address for service to ensure we service your area?
- Skout automatically updates their target pest.
- Prospect: Yes, the address is 1234 South Main Street, Anytown, State, Zip
- Skout automatically updates the service address and checks against records to verify your company serves that area.
- Skout SMS: Great. I checked, and we do service your area. I can have one of our customer service representatives contact you first thing when we open, if that works for you? Should I tell them to ask for [First Name] [Last Name] at this number [Cell Number]?
- Prospect: Yes, that would be great. Can you ask them to call after 9:00 am as I need to drop my kids off at school in the morning?
- Skout SMS: Yes, absolutely. I have noted our system with your pest concerns and have asked our customer service team to contact you after 9:00 am tomorrow. We will send you a reminder text around 9:00 am so you know to expect our call. Unless you have any other questions, thank you for your time, and we look forward to helping you address those ants for you.
- Skout automatically creates notes about the conversation, creates a time-sensitive task, assigns to one of your CSRs, and even sends the prospect a text in the morning to ensure the prospect remembers you’re calling.
2. Offer SMS (Texting) as a Communications Option – According to recent studies, upwards of 90% of consumers would rather text with a business when compared to placing a phone call. 71% of consumers report that they wish they could have a real conversational exchange with a business, as opposed to just automated alerts, and over 60% of consumers rate texting as the most effective channel for getting a response from a business. Clearly, SMS is a popular communication channel with consumers.
3. Speed to Lead – When it comes to lead generation, speed is one of the most critical factors in securing the opportunity for a sale. Here at City Ranked we’ve completed studies that show a pest control company has the best chance at closing a new lead in the first 5 minutes; after that, closing percentages drop drastically.
- 2026 Hint: 60 Second Responses are the new achievable metric for response times. Responding within one minute can increase lead conversions by as much as 391%. In contrast, waiting five minutes or longer can result in an 80% drop in lead qualification rates.
4. Quoted But Not Sold, 2nd Chance Offer – What are you doing with prospects that have been quoted, but not sold? If you’re using a CRM, likely it will send a few reminder emails, maybe even a text or two, encouraging the prospect to complete their agreement, but what happens if those go unanswered? If you’re like many pest control business owners, these leads just float around in your CRM until they’re marked as not sold, then they’re off into oblivion. There is a better way:
- Sample 2nd Chance Offer:
- CSR Marks Prospect as Not Sold in CRM
- Skout SMS – (1 to 2 day wait): Hello [Prospect First Name] this is Samantha at [Your Pest Company]. I’m reaching out as my manager asked me to see if you might be interested in a $100 off coupon as we have a few left over from our last new customer event. I have 6 of them left if you’d like one. Just let me know and I can send one over text.
- Prospect: Yes that would be great. Please send it over. Life has gotten the best of me and I haven’t been able to look at the agreement you guys sent last week.
- Skout SMS: No problem. I’ve attached the coupon and offer code here (compelling coupon graphic attached). You can use this offer on new pest control service. If you’d like, I can have one of our customer service team members reach out to schedule your service now.
5. One-Time Services to Recurring Pest Control: How many one-time services are you selling? Ever thought about reengaging with those customers at the end of their warranty period asking if they’d like to switch to all-year guaranteed pest control? Marketing Automation can do that when connected to your CRM.
- Sample One-Time to Recurring Pest Services Offer:
- Your CRM: Connected to Skout understands your service codes and your warranty period.
- Skout SMS & Email: Hello [Customer Name]. This is Samantha at [Your Pest Control Company]. I’m contacting you to let you know your warranty period on your One-Time Pest Control service expires today. I just wanted to reach out and let you know we offer All-Year Pest Protection to keep your home pest-free. It’s a guaranteed service, for one low [monthly, quarterly] [price]. Since we’ve already serviced your home, there would be no initial service charge, saving you [amount of savings]. Would that be of interest to you?
- Prospect: Yes, the service has been great, your technician was great as well. I would be open to discussing this if someone can give me a call and explain your warranty.
- Skout SMS or Email: I’m glad to hear that. I have asked one of our customer service representatives to give you a call and go over any questions you may have. Someone will be calling you shortly.
- Skout automatically assigns prospect to a team member, creates a task for follow-up, and sends needed team notifications.
The Risk of Waiting
For growing pest control operations, Marketing Automation is no longer a luxury; it is rapidly becoming the standard operating procedure for every competitive local service business. By integrating a platform like Skout, you are not just patching today’s communication gaps; you are actively building a foundation of processes for scalable, sustainable growth. You are investing in a scalable lead-generating system that turns unqualified leads into real sales opportunities on autopilot, freeing your team to focus entirely on closing new sales and service delivery.
Don’t wait until your competitors are so far ahead in operational efficiency, lead capture, and customer experience that catching up becomes an impossible endeavor. Start small, start smart, but most importantly, start now. Your business and your future P&Ls will thank you.
