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.

• How much should you actually spend on ads before it stops paying off? Hint: watch your cost per lead, not your total spend.
• Are Local Services Ads still worth it now that Google killed manual disputes and replaced them with an automated credit system?
• How do you know where your leads actually come from when every customer just says Google?
• Why do you show up in the map pack but not in regular search results
• Why are people clicking your ads but never calling? And
• does Facebook actually bring in pest control jobs?

Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante from Cube Creative Design give practical answers built from 20 years of working with pest control companies, including the one client who was spending 40% of his ad budget on a channel producing 12% of his booked jobs.

Plus the new segment: One Thing to Fix This Week, a five-minute action you can knock out before next Tuesday. See where your marketing stacks up free at thecubescore.com. Get your free pest control marketing audit at marketingthatactuallyworks.ai.

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 what to say instead), and the two-option close that lifted one client's phone-to-appointment rate from 40% to 60%.

Plus the follow-up text system that rescues 20 to 25% of leads that didn't book on the first call, and the one action step that takes 30 minutes and shows you exactly where your phone process is breaking. See where your site scores free at thecubescore.com. Get your free pest control marketing audit at marketingthatactuallyworks.ai.

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 for under $60 a month, and the full contact method stack that covers every type of visitor from the ready-to-buy caller to the repeat customer who just wants to schedule.

Emily walks through how to take your site from one contact method to four in a single weekend without spending a dollar on ads. Plus the response time benchmarks that separate a 20% close rate from a 40% close rate, and a new segment, One Thing to Fix This Week, with one change you can make before next Tuesday.

See where your site's Structure score stands, free, at thecubescore.com. Get your free pest control marketing audit at marketingthatactuallyworks.ai.

Pest Control Marketing That Actually Works is produced by Cube Creative Design. New episodes every Tuesday.

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 pages outscored a competitor with 5 generic service pages by 50 points on Authority alone, why reorganizing existing content into hub clusters increased one company's pest-specific organic traffic by 40% in 90 days, and the exact playbook for building 15 to 25 pages of content that proves you know pest control.

Plus the one-weekend project that builds more Authority than most pest control sites have total. See where your Authority score stands free at thecubescore.com. Get your free pest control marketing audit at marketingthatactuallyworks.ai.

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.

You'll learn why the cost per acquired customer in a new market is typically 2 to 3 times what it costs at home for the first six months, why review velocity is the leading indicator of whether you're going to win, and the 90-day launch playbook that gets you from zero presence to a credible local foothold. Plus the one filter that talks most owners out of the wrong expansion before they spend a dollar.

Get your free pest control marketing audit at marketingthatactuallyworks.ai. Score your website's AI search trust signals free at thecubescore.com.

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 rates typically run 35 to 50 percent on the first email and settle around 20 to 25 percent by email four.

Sequence two: the quote follow-up. Four emails over two weeks for leads who got a quote but didn't sign. Cube Creative clients pull an additional 18 to 25 percent close rate on quotes they would have lost.

Sequence three: customer reactivation. Three emails over three weeks for past customers who haven't booked a service in 12 months or more. Response rates run 12 to 18 percent, which is wildly higher than acquisition because the relationship already exists. The math is brutal in the best way: 800 past customers, 15 percent reactivation, $400 ticket equals $48,000 from a sequence you set up in a weekend.

You'll also learn what actually goes in the emails. The subject line patterns that work for pest control. Why 80 to 150 words beats a 600-word narrative every time. Why personalization beyond the first name matters. And the clear-next-step rule that turns reads into replies.

Then Chad pushes back on the episode title. The "forget it" part is where most pest control companies lose ground. Automations set up two years ago reference last year's pricing, link to deleted pages, and were written by a marketing intern who's been gone for 18 months. You'll get the monthly and quarterly check-ins that keep your sequences working.

If you only have time for one, Chad recommends starting with the quote follow-up. Highest leverage, easiest to justify, one afternoon to build in HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, or any modern email platform.

Get your free pest control marketing audit at marketingthatactuallyworks.ai

Score your website's AI search trust signals free at thecubescore.com

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 owners raise about transparent pricing and why each one is wrong:

• "My competitors will see my prices and undercut me." (They already know what you charge.)
• "My pricing is too variable." (80 percent of your residential jobs fall within a tight band.)
• "I want them to call me so I can sell them." (The sale happens before the phone call.)

Then they walk through the four formats pest control companies can use to show pricing without committing to a rigid price list: the starting range, the most-customers-pay range, the treatment-by-treatment breakdown, and the estimator. You'll get the exact language that works and the language that doesn't.

You'll also hear about a Southeast pest control company that added starting pricing to its service pages last fall. No other changes. Their form conversion rate went from 3.1 percent to 7.4 percent over four months, and their cost per lead from Google Ads dropped 41 percent. Same traffic, same ad spend, completely different outcomes.

The episode closes with transparency beyond pricing. Policies, the humans behind the company, and your point of view. Plus Chad's one-sentence change you can make on your highest-traffic page this week that will measurably move your form fill rate within 30 days.

Get your free pest control marketing audit at marketingthatactuallyworks.ai

Score your website's AI search trust signals free at thecubescore.com

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 pricing (and what it's costing them), and why your structure can be quietly broken without you knowing. Then they introduce The Cube Score, a free tool that grades your site across all six sides on a 600-point scale in about 60 seconds. You'll learn how to read your score, which side to fix first, and how to set a 90-day target that puts you ahead of 80% of your local competition. Get your score at thecubescore.com. Get your free pest control marketing audit at marketingthatactuallyworks.ai.