A one-time treatment is $150 to $350. The recurring plan behind it is worth $1,800 to $2,400 over three years. Almost every pest control account we look at sets its cost per lead ceiling against the first number, then wonders why it loses the auction to companies bidding against the second.
Pest control is the only home service where the first job is not the product. It is the acquisition cost for a subscription. Price the lead against the job and you have priced yourself out of every keyword worth having.
That number comes from a $200 one-time treatment. It is a defensible ceiling for a one-time customer and completely wrong for a lead that signs a quarterly plan, which is what the campaign is supposed to be buying.
Bed bug clicks run $14 to $28. Against an $800 to $1,500 ticket that is fine. Against a blended CPL target set for general pest it looks insane, so the campaign gets throttled and you never see the work.
General pest, bed bugs, termites, wildlife, mosquitoes and commercial in a single ad group means one bid strategy serving six different economic realities. The cheapest lead wins the budget and the most valuable lead never gets served.
If the only conversion you record is a phone call, Google optimises toward calls. It has no idea which of those calls became a recurring plan, which is the one outcome the account exists to produce.
The same handful of things, in almost every account, regardless of who was managing it.
One number applied to campaigns whose published lead costs range from $35 on general pest to $180 on bed bugs and $150 on commercial. Fix: separate campaigns, each with a ceiling derived from its own ticket and close rate.
Plan terms are the cheapest inventory in the category at $10 to $18 per click while producing the highest lifetime value. Sitting inside a general pest ad group, they compete for budget against $4 clicks that never sign anything.
Commercial contracts are worth 4 to 10 times a residential annual plan and carry a $80 to $150 lead cost. Blended with residential, they are systematically underbid.
Quality Score and conversion tracking discipline are what separate $35 CPL accounts from $120 CPL accounts at the same monthly spend. Without plan signup as a tracked outcome, Smart Bidding optimises for the wrong thing.
Budget sits flat through the year while demand does not. Spring ant and termite swarms, summer mosquito and wasp, autumn rodent: each has a window, and a flat budget underfunds all of them in turn.
Eco friendly pest control runs $5 to $11 per click with a 35 to 50 percent close rate on the right landing page. It is the cheapest qualified traffic in the category and most accounts do not bid on it at all.
Everything on this page follows from one comparison. What you are pricing against decides what you can afford to pay, and pest control operators almost always pick the smaller number.
| What you price the lead against | Value | What it lets you bid |
|---|---|---|
| One-time treatment ticket | $150 to $350 | A $50 to $70 CPL ceiling, which is where most accounts sit |
| Year one of a quarterly plan | $400 to $800 | Roughly triple that, on the same lead |
| Three-year plan relationship | $1,800 to $2,400 | A $100 to $120 CPL that still produces a strong return |
A quarterly plan customer paying $550 a year who stays three years is worth $1,650. Published plan signup rates on the right campaign run around 55%. So the question is not whether a $110 lead is expensive against a $200 treatment. It obviously is. The question is what share of those leads become plan customers, and what that cohort is worth across three years.
This is the single most consequential decision in a pest control account, and it is made once, usually by accident, when somebody sets a target CPA based on the price of a spray. Work your own version out in the contractor profit margin calculator, which carries labour burden and overhead so the margin behind your ceiling is a measurement rather than a guess.
These cannot share a bid strategy. The published figures for each are far enough apart that one blended target guarantees you overpay in one place and go unserved in another.
| Campaign | Click cost | Lead cost | Ticket or value | Why it is separate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring plan | $10 to $18 | Lowest in category | $550/yr, $1,650 over 3 yrs | Cheapest clicks, highest lifetime value. Deserves its own budget and its own landing page. |
| Bed bug | $14 to $28 | $90 to $180 | $800 to $1,500 | Books at 60 to 78%. Urgent, high ticket, and worth every cent of the click. |
| Termite | Inspection-led | Absorbs $150 to $200 | Around $2,500 | Inspection first, treatment second. A different funnel from a same-day spray. |
| Commercial | Contract terms | $80 to $150 | 4 to 10x a residential annual plan | Restaurant, warehouse and property manager searches behave nothing like homeowners. |
| General pest | Lowest | $35 to $140 | $150 to $350 one-time | Volume. Valuable only if it feeds the plan campaign rather than ending at one visit. |
| Eco friendly | $5 to $11 | Low | Varies | 35 to 50% close rate on the right page. Self-selecting, cheap, and usually ignored. |
Separation is not an organisational nicety. It is the mechanism that lets a $180 bed bug lead and a $35 general pest lead coexist in one account without the cheap one starving the profitable one.
HVAC has two seasons and everyone knows when they are. Pest control seasonality varies dramatically by region and by pest type at the same time, which is why a single flat budget underfunds every window in turn.
| Pest | Peak | Regional reality | What the account should do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Termite | Spring swarm | Spring in most markets | Raise bids during daytime hours, when homeowners actually spot swarmers and search immediately |
| Mosquito | April to October | Hits hard in the South, barely registers in the Northwest | A dedicated campaign and its own landing page. Seasonal urgency converts far better on a page built for it |
| Rodent | Autumn and winter | Peaks everywhere, no regional exception | The one reliable cold-weather window. Budget should move into it, not out |
| Bed bug | Year-round, summer spike | Roughly +15% June to August | Travel season raises both spread and discovery. Hold budget rather than cutting in summer |
| Ants and general | Spring into summer | Broadly national | Volume window. Best time to feed the recurring plan campaign |
Two operating rules follow from that table. Set seasonal bid adjustments four to six weeks before each pest's peak, not during it, because by the time the search volume is visible in your reports the auction has already repriced. And shift budget toward Google Ads in spring and summer, when plan conversion rates are highest and the seasonal campaigns are doing their best work.
Running the same bids in February as in May on a mosquito campaign wastes money in the off-season and underbids during the peak. It is a moderate-severity mistake that quietly costs a full season.
Everything above assumes the first treatment converts into a recurring plan. That conversion is not a marketing event. It happens on the phone and at the door, and it is the reason a campaign built on plan LTV either works or does not.
An ad that sells a single cheap spray attracts people who want a single cheap spray. Copy that frames the treatment as the first visit of an ongoing service pre-qualifies for the plan before anyone picks up the phone.
Showing plan pricing structure upfront means prospects are not surprised by it later. Hiding it until the technician is standing in the kitchen is how a 55% signup rate becomes a 20% one.
No bid strategy survives an intake process that books a one-time treatment and never mentions the plan. This is where most of the gap between a good account and a bad one actually lives.
Plan signup returns to Google Ads as its own conversion with its own value. Without that, Smart Bidding is optimising toward the cheapest phone call it can find, which is precisely the wrong customer.
If your plan signup rate off a first treatment is well under the published 55%, fix that before raising a single bid. Raising CPL ceilings against a plan LTV you are not actually capturing is how a campaign goes from underbidding to losing money, and it happens quickly.
This is not an either-or, and running only one of them is why a lot of pest control accounts have a hole in them.
| Local Services Ads | Google Ads | |
|---|---|---|
| Position | Above standard Google Ads, above the map pack, above every organic result | Below LSA, above organic |
| You pay for | The lead | The click |
| Best at | Urgent one-time demand: exterminator near me, rodent removal, ant treatment, wasps | Plan acquisition, termite, commercial contracts, eco friendly, anything needing keyword control |
| Weakness | Little keyword-level control, so plan intent and one-time intent arrive mixed together | Sits below LSA on the highest-urgency searches |
| Where it wins | Speed and placement on emergencies | Anything with a longer payback than one visit |
The practical split for most pest control companies: LSA carries urgent one-time demand, where paying per lead matches the shape of the work, and Google Ads carries plan acquisition and commercial, where you need to separate campaigns and bid against lifetime value. Neither channel does the other's job well.
Not a discovery script. These four answers determine whether we can help you and what the account should be doing, and you will learn something from working them out whether or not you hire us.
This sets every ceiling in the account. If the answer is a guess, that is the first thing to fix, because a guess here makes every bid downstream a guess too.
Published campaigns built for it run around 55%. If you are well below that, the constraint is intake, not media, and more budget will make the problem more expensive rather than smaller.
Most operators have a clear answer and an account that contradicts it. Bed bug and termite work is worth chasing at prices that look alarming next to a general pest lead, and commercial is worth four to ten times a residential plan.
The best-structured campaign in the category cannot survive an intake that books one visit and never mentions the plan. We would rather know this on the first call than three months in.
Before touching a bid we work out what a plan customer is worth to you specifically: plan price, signup rate off a first treatment, and how long they actually stay. Every ceiling in the account derives from that number rather than from a category average.
Recurring plan, bed bug, termite, commercial, general pest and eco friendly each get their own campaign, budget and target. That is what makes value-based bidding possible at all.
Plan signup becomes a distinct conversion with its own value, so Smart Bidding optimises toward the outcome that pays rather than toward whichever call is cheapest.
Spring ants and termite swarms, summer mosquitoes and wasps, autumn rodents. Budget moves ahead of each window instead of reacting a month late.
LSA takes the urgent one-time demand where paying per lead suits the work. Google Ads takes plan acquisition, commercial and everything that needs keyword-level control.
Lead rating is what drives LSA credits and ranking. It is also the first thing that gets skipped by an agency carrying too many accounts, which is why the cap below exists.
Published 2026 figures. If your account sits outside these, that is the conversation, not a generic report about impressions.
| Metric | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| General pest cost per lead | $35 to $140 | The spread is account quality, not market luck |
| Bed bug cost per lead | $90 to $180 | Books at 60 to 78% |
| Commercial cost per lead | $80 to $150 | Contracts worth 4 to 10x a residential plan |
| Recurring plan click cost | $10 to $18 | Cheapest inventory, highest lifetime value |
| Plan signup rate | Around 55% | On a campaign built to convert to a plan |
| One-time treatment ticket | $150 to $350 | The number that wrongly sets most CPL ceilings |
| Plan customer value | $400 to $800/yr | $1,800 to $2,400 across three years |
The gap between a $35 CPL account and a $120 CPL account on the same general pest keywords is not the market. It is Quality Score, conversion tracking discipline and campaign separation, in that order.
“ You will own your Google Ads account, Local Services Ads account, tracking systems, landing pages, and conversion data from day one. Your accounts stay in your name. Your billing stays on your card. Your data stays yours. If you decide to leave, everything stays with you. No account transfers. No hostage situations. No starting over from scratch. ”
The most useful question to ask any marketing agency is not how big the company is. It is how many active accounts the person actually managing yours is carrying right now.
The cap exists so account managers have time to rate LSA leads weekly, review search terms and move budget when a pest season turns. Above 20 accounts, weekly lead rating is the first thing to break.
Setting ceilings against a $1,650 three-year plan instead of a $200 treatment is the entire difference in this category, and it requires campaign separation and value-based bidding rather than one blended target.
Flat monthly management, month to month, no percentage of spend. Running both channels puts LSA management at $300/mo alongside the $695 Google Ads fee.
No handoff from a salesperson to someone you have not met. Whoever walks you through onboarding is the person adjusting bids when termite season opens.
It depends which campaign produced it, which is why one blended number is the wrong tool. Published ranges put general pest at $35 to $140, bed bug at $90 to $180 and commercial at $80 to $150. A single target across all three overpays for the cheapest work and underbids on the most valuable.
Almost always because your ceiling was set against a one-time treatment ticket of $150 to $350 while the competitor set theirs against a plan worth $1,800 to $2,400 over three years. They are not braver than you. They are pricing a different asset.
A recurring quarterly or monthly plan customer runs $400 to $800 a year, and $1,800 to $2,400 across a three-year relationship. A $550 a year plan held for three years is $1,650 from a single acquired lead.
Recurring plan terms at $10 to $18 per click, which is also where the highest lifetime value sits, and eco friendly pest control at $5 to $11 with a 35 to 50 percent close rate on a page built for it. Both are routinely left unbid.
Both, for different jobs. LSA sits above the results and charges per lead, which suits urgent one-time work. Google Ads gives the keyword-level control that plan acquisition and commercial campaigns need. Most pest control companies should run LSA for urgent demand and Google Ads for everything with a longer payback.
No. Month to month. You own the Google Ads account, the LSA account, the tracking, the landing pages and the conversion data from day one, and all of it stays with you if you leave.
We work with single-truck operators through to multi-crew companies. The plan-LTV logic on this page does not change with size; what changes is how much budget the calendar can absorb in each season.
Thirty minutes, operator to operator. We look at your account, tell you what we would change and why, and you decide whether to continue. There is no deck.
Eight operator-level playbooks covering every section above at three to five times the length:
Same approach, different economics. Each page carries the cost per lead and job value data for that trade.
30-minute call, operator to operator. We look at your pest control account, tell you what we would change, and you decide whether to continue. No pitch deck.
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