Adam: Welcome to Marketing That Actually Works, the podcast for pest control operators who want real growth, not empty promises. I'm Adam Bennett.
Elisabeth: And I'm Elisabeth Pallante. We're from Cube Creative Design, and for 20 years we've helped pest control companies stop wasting money and start growing.
Adam: Today's episode: Marketing Your Specialty Services: Termites, Bed Bugs, and Wildlife. We've also got Chad Treadway, our CMO, with us today. Here are your three key takeaways. First, specialty services need their own dedicated marketing. A buried subpage won't cut it. Second, match your marketing to each service's customer mindset. Termite shoppers research, bed bug customers panic, wildlife callers want it gone now. And third, track each specialty as its own profit center. The economics are different from your recurring pest control work. Let's dive in.
Why Specialty Services Get Marketed Wrong
Adam: Chad, you and I have been on plenty of sales calls where the operator says, "Yeah, we do termites and bed bugs too, but most of our work is general pest." Then we look at their website. Termites get one paragraph on a services page. Bed bugs gets the same. Wildlife is a footnote. That's the problem we want to dig into today. These services pay a lot more per job. They have completely different customer journeys. And most pest control companies are missing them because they treat specialty work like an afterthought in their marketing.
Chad: That's exactly right. When I look at a pest control company's revenue mix, specialty services often punch way above their weight. A single termite job can equal six months of recurring quarterly pest treatments. A wildlife exclusion project with repairs can be two or three thousand dollars. But the marketing budget split rarely matches that revenue split. Owners pour everything into general pest and hope the specialty work shows up. Sometimes it does, but you're leaving real money on the table when you don't market each specialty on purpose.
Elisabeth: And the customer search behavior is the giveaway. When we look at search data for our pest control clients, the people typing "termite inspection near me" are not the same people typing "pest control near me." Same county, same demographics, totally different intent. Termite searchers are often homeowners thinking about a real estate transaction, or they spotted something concerning. Bed bug searchers are panicked. Wildlife searchers can hear something in the attic at midnight. If your website answers all of them with the same generic services page, you lose all of them.
Termites
Adam: Let's start with termites because it's the biggest ticket item for most operators. What makes termite marketing different, Chad?
Chad: Termites have the longest sales cycle of the three specialties. People research. They get multiple quotes. They want to understand the difference between liquid treatments and bait systems before they spend two or three thousand dollars. So your marketing has to do more education up front. A page that just says "we do termite treatments, call us" is going to lose to a competitor who explains the inspection process, shows treatment options, and answers the questions that homeowner is already typing into Google. The inspection is your real lead magnet here. Get the inspection booked and you control the rest of the sale.
Elisabeth: On the content side, termites are one of the easier specialties to build authority on because there's so much homeowner curiosity. We've built termite content libraries with pages like "signs of termite damage," "drywood vs subterranean termites," "what to expect during a termite inspection," and "do I really need a termite bond." Each of those answers a question a real shopper is asking. Each of them ranks on Google with consistent effort. And each one ends with a call to schedule the free inspection. You don't need fifty pages. You need eight to ten pages that cover the questions your customers actually ask.
Adam: I want to add the WDIR angle since this comes up a lot with our clients. The wood-destroying insect report market is its own lane inside termite work. Real estate agents drive that volume. If you do WDIR reports for closings, that needs its own page, its own messaging, and ideally a separate intake process. Realtors don't want to wait three days for a callback. They want a fast turnaround, and they'll send you repeat business if you deliver. That's a relationship marketing play, not a Google Ads play. We've seen operators double their termite revenue just by getting more organized about the real estate referral side.
Bed Bugs
Adam: Let's move to bed bugs. This one has the strangest marketing dynamics of the three.
Elisabeth: Bed bugs are emotional. There's shame, panic, urgency, and often embarrassment. People don't want to admit they have them. They search at two in the morning. They call from a hotel parking lot. The marketing has to match that emotional state. Generic "we handle bed bugs" copy does not work. What works is content that reassures. We tell our clients to write content that says things like "you are not alone, this is not a cleanliness issue, this is a common problem, here is exactly how we treat it." When you reduce the shame, you increase the calls. That's a content decision, not a design decision.
Chad: And the channel mix shifts too. With termites, forms work fine because there's no rush. With bed bugs, the phone dominates. People want to talk to a human right now. So if your bed bug page buries the phone number or pushes a contact form first, you're losing calls to whoever lists their number bigger at the top of the page. We also tell operators to think about how the call gets answered. The first thing a bed bug caller needs to hear is calm and competence, not a sales pitch. That training piece matters more than people think.
Adam: One thing I've noticed on the sales side is that bed bug customers don't shop around the way termite customers do. They call one or two companies and book. Whoever picks up first and sounds capable usually wins the job. So speed to lead matters more here than almost any other service category. If your phones ring through to voicemail after six PM, you're giving away bed bug jobs to your competitors every single night.
Elisabeth: Marketing should also include photos and process transparency. Show the heat treatment equipment. Show what a typical job looks like. Take video of your tech walking through the prep instructions. Bed bug customers want to know what they're paying for because the prices look high to people who don't understand the work involved. A two thousand dollar quote feels insane until you see the equipment and the multi-hour treatment. Transparent content closes that gap.
Wildlife
Adam: Let's move to wildlife. This one's interesting because the regulatory side actually shapes the marketing.
Chad: Wildlife is the most fragmented specialty. Some operators do it themselves. Some sub it out. Some won't touch it. And the licensing varies a lot by state. In some states, wildlife removal requires a separate license, sometimes from the wildlife agency, not the structural pest board. So step one for any operator marketing wildlife services is to be clear about what you're licensed to do and what you're not. The marketing has to match the legal reality. Listing "raccoon removal" on a site where you can't legally trap raccoons is a fast way to get complaints.
Adam: Wildlife is also the most seasonal of the three specialties. Squirrels in the attic peak in late winter when they're nesting. Bats peak in spring and early summer. Rodents push indoors when temperatures drop in fall. If you market wildlife services year-round with generic copy, you miss the seasonal demand spikes. We've helped clients build seasonal campaigns that time content and ads to those patterns. Your March squirrel content should be live by January. Your fall rodent push should start in August. Get ahead of the search volume, don't chase it.
Elisabeth: Wildlife is a content gold mine for video. The work itself is visual. Sealing entry points, setting one-way doors, attic restoration, damaged insulation removal and replacement. That stuff plays well on social media because people are curious about it. We've had pest control clients get tens of thousands of views on simple phone videos of a tech sealing a soffit gap or removing a raccoon family. That kind of content builds local authority faster than almost anything else. Wildlife also leads naturally into repair and exclusion work, which is higher margin than the trapping itself.
Chad: The other thing about wildlife is the ticket sizes vary widely. A simple rodent exclusion might be three hundred dollars. A bat removal with guano cleanup and attic restoration can run five to eight thousand. Your marketing has to set expectations or you'll spend a lot of time quoting jobs that go nowhere. We tell operators to put price ranges on their wildlife pages, even rough ones. It pre-qualifies leads and saves your phone team hours of dead-end calls.
Tracking Each Specialty as Its Own Profit Center
Adam: Last piece I want to hit, which ties back to the third takeaway. You have to track each of these specialties as its own profit center. Not lumped into general pest. Not lumped into each other. In HubSpot or whatever CRM you use, every lead should be tagged by service type. Every closed job should be tracked back to its source. The math is so different. A termite lead that costs forty dollars to acquire and books a two thousand dollar job is a totally different business than a recurring pest lead that costs fifteen dollars and books an eighty dollar quarterly service.
Chad: That tracking changes how you spend. Once you see that termite leads convert at thirty percent with an average ticket of eighteen hundred, you can justify spending way more per click on Google Ads for termite searches than for general pest searches. Most operators run one ads budget across all services and wonder why the ROI looks mediocre. Break it apart by specialty and the picture changes. Some specialties deserve double or triple the spend they're getting.
Elisabeth: The same logic applies on the content side. If wildlife is your highest margin work, your content calendar should reflect that. Don't write fifty general pest blog posts and three wildlife posts. Match the content investment to the revenue contribution. We help our clients build content plans that reflect their actual revenue mix, not just what's easiest to write about.
Adam: Good place to wrap. The big idea is that specialty services deserve specialty marketing. Different pages, different content, different ad strategy, different tracking. Treat them like the businesses they are, not like side notes on your services page.
Outro
Adam: Alright, let's recap those three key takeaways. Number one: specialty services need their own dedicated marketing. Don't bury them on a generic services page. Number two: match your marketing to each service's customer mindset. Termites need education, bed bugs need reassurance, wildlife needs speed and seasonal timing. Number three: track each specialty as its own profit center. The economics are different, and your marketing investment should reflect that.
Adam: If you want help implementing what we talked about today, visit marketingthatactuallyworks.ai to get your free pest control marketing audit. We'll show you exactly what's working and what's costing you money.
Elisabeth: While you're there, download our Pest Control Marketing Checklist. It's the same 20-point checklist we use with every client.
Adam: Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you don't miss next Tuesday's episode on website speed and performance with Emily Porter.
Elisabeth: And if you got value today, leave us a 5-star review. It helps other pest control operators find the show.
Adam: Thanks for listening to Marketing That Actually Works. See you next Tuesday.
