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You want to know the real secret to making money in pest control? It’s not fancy software. It’s not some magic pricing strategy. It’s route density.
I actually have a shirt upstairs that says “Route Density” right on it. That’s how important this concept is. This is literally how we make our money in this industry.
What Route Density Actually Means
Route density is pretty simple. You’ve got to try to keep your routes as dense as possible, which means the more neighbors you sign up, the better off you are.
Why? Because we make our money on less drive time. When your routes are tight, everyone makes more money. Technicians make more money. The company makes more money. Everyone takes home more money.
The name of this game is route density.
It All Ties Back to Your Customer Avatar
This all connects to something we talk about constantly: your target demographic. Who is the exact customer avatar that you’re looking for?
If you don’t know your customer avatar, stop reading this and go figure that out first. Seriously.
For us at Pest Badger, it’s 67% women in our area. We’re targeting $300,000 to $2,000,000 homes. That’s our sweet spot.
And demographics go deep. It goes into race, political beliefs, all kinds of things. You can get really, really deep into this. But we’re looking for moms, catering to families with kids, young families, pets, animals, things like that. That’s just the customer avatar that we’re searching for.
Why This Matters for Your Marketing
Here’s where route density and efficiency really connects with everything else. If you find those neighborhoods where your customer avatar lives, stick to those markets.
We deploy every marketing strategy you can think of. Door to door. Every Door Direct Mail postcards. Door hangers. Door knockers. Facebook campaigns. Google paid campaigns. All of these things.
And you want to target these same people over and over again.
The Biggest Mistake I See
I run into a lot of people who don’t understand what route density is because they’re so spread out in their routes. They have 20, 30, sometimes even an hour of windshield time between jobs.
I get it when you first start out. You’re just taking everything that comes at you.
But I’ve been there before. You run across town to do four jobs. So much drive time. You work eight hours, you get four jobs in, and your revenue is like $450 or $500 a day. It’s just not scalable.
Building out route density using these techniques will help you avoid all that pain and stress to begin with.
How to Actually Build Route Density
So what do you actually do? Do you need to do Every Door Direct Mail? Door hangers? Facebook ads? What should you do?
I’d say all the above.
You’re going to find one thing that works better than others. But it’s all these strategies that help that one thing do even better.
The Power of Repetition
Let me break it down with easy numbers. Let’s say you have 1,000 postcards and an area of 200 people.
I’d rather see you hit those same customers five different times throughout the year with those 1,000 postcards than send out 1,000 at one time to all different people.
You’re not casting a wide net here. You’re not trying to get everyone. That’s not the focus.
These strategies have been working since the early 1900s. This stuff actually still works today.
The Full Marketing Blitz
Here’s what full market saturation looks like:
Do your postcards in those neighborhoods. Do your door hanger strategy there. Do your nine rounds or door knocking strategy there. Do your Facebook ads targeting that same area. Google ads, very strategic on those same exact neighborhoods over and over and over again.
You’re just top of mind with them all the time. They’re seeing your truck. Your technicians rolling through in your colors. Your sales guys rolling through there.
On average, it takes somewhere between 7 to 20 times of them seeing you to actually make a conversion. So you need total market saturation in a very specific area.
Advanced Tactics That Work
You can put lawn signs in every single lawn. You can put lawn signs at the entrance of the neighborhood. You can do a video in front of the neighborhood sign and say, “Hey, XYZ neighborhood, I’m out here doing this” and direct your video campaigns and Facebook campaigns directly to just those neighborhoods.
That’s when you get really precise marketing. And that’s when things start to take off.
The Cloverleaf Strategy
When you become so well known in a neighborhood, it’s very easy to get referrals. And if you’re not getting referred, your technicians can do door knocking using the cloverleaf method.
Cloverleafing is two houses to the left, two houses to the right, and then five across the street. Focus on those few places.
Let’s say you have ten people in a neighborhood and they all have nine neighbors. That’s 90 people, right? If you close one on every street, you’ve got ten more clients just by doing that.
Not all of them are going to be home when you knock. But there’s a good chance one will be home that day because they’ve seen you so many times already.
Don't Give Up Too Soon
Here’s what I see all the time: people will go to one area, maybe go cloverleaf, send out some door hangers, and then they’ll quit. Then they’ll go to another neighborhood when they haven’t hit that first neighborhood enough.
There’s so much more juice to squeeze.
I see someone do one mail campaign to 200 people, get little to no response, and say, “Oh, that stuff doesn’t work.”
Create yourself a budget. Have a marketing calendar throughout the year with specific dates for certain offers at specific times.
Timing Matters
Watch the weather when you send these things out. Make sure the weather is going to be nice because weather will affect these campaigns.
You’ll notice in the office you’re getting 700 to 800 calls a day, and then you have a rain day and you have half the call volume. It’s crazy how much the weather will impact our industry.
Don’t give up on the strategy. You’re going to have to do it two, three, or four times before it all starts to work together. Then the phones start ringing and ringing and ringing, and then it goes crazy.
Why One Thing Isn't Enough
People ask me this all the time: “Jonas, what’s the best thing to do? Is it knocking or is it Facebook?”
Early on, there’s probably not a problem with not doing them all because, let’s be honest, you might not have a lot of cash.
But let’s just say you have $1,000 to work with. Go buy yourself some cheap door hangers. You can design them yourself. Get some postcards made. Door knocking is free, it’s just more time than money. Facebook, you can spend a little bit of money and you don’t have to go crazy.
You can do this all at once.
Starting with Zero Money
If I’m starting out with zero cash and nothing but time, I’m going door knocking.
It’s the Law of 100. You do 100 things a day, whether it’s door knocking, postcards, door hangers, emails, text campaigns, whatever. If you just do 100 times per day, at some point you’re just going to be really good at it, and it’s going to pay off.
These are the things that still work. It’s old school marketing that really, really works. It’s consistent effort.
The Competitive Advantage
Here’s something we’ve learned as a competitive advantage: everyone else in town focuses on the entire city with all of their marketing efforts.
If you can get focused on the route density side of things and target your efforts, it’s so much more effective and actually more cost effective to really niche down.
A lot of people think, “Oh, I should be everywhere because I want to expand everywhere.” But your customer acquisition costs go through the roof because you’re showing it to everyone with a broad audience. And your drive times are going to be through the roof because your jobs are all over the place.
This is just how most people start. They don’t know what they don’t know.
How Route Efficiency Affects Your Pest Control Technicians
Especially if you’re paying performance-based pay or commission for your technicians, route density is a game changer.
They don’t have to drive anywhere. They can sit in one location literally all day, drive less than two miles, and knock out 25 jobs. They’re crushing it that day too.
Every single person makes more money. Less fuel, less overhead, less everything.
That’s how you make your money in this business.
Ready to Take Your Business to the Next Level?
If you want to dive deeper into strategies like this, join our free Facebook group, Pest Control Millionaires. We’ve got over 2,000 active members sharing what’s working in their businesses right now.
And if you want the complete blueprint for dominating your local market, grab a copy of Zip Code Kings. It’s the pest control marketing bible, and it’ll show you exactly how to implement everything we talked about here.
Route density isn’t complicated. It’s just focused, consistent effort in the right places. Do that, and you’ll print money.
