How Pest Control Companies Scale to $400M (And What You Can Steal)
Door-to-door canvassing, termite bonds, and realtor pipelines. The pest control growth strategies that actually scale.
In 2012, a college student in Utah started a pest control company with summer door-to-door sales teams. By 2020, Aptive Environmental had crossed $400 million in revenue, making it one of the fastest-growing companies in American history.
The playbook was not complicated. It was three things executed with maniacal consistency: door-to-door canvassing, immediate conversion to annual contracts, and relentless neighborhood saturation. Every one of those tactics is available to a one-truck operation. You do not need venture capital. You need a clipboard and a willingness to knock.
Most pest control owners hate this truth. They want to believe that a great website and some Google Ads will build their business. Those channels work. But the companies that scale fastest all share the same foundation: they go to the customer instead of waiting for the customer to come to them.
Door-to-Door Is Still #1 (And the Math Proves It)
Google Ads for pest control keywords run $40-$80 per lead in most markets, and that lead is shared with every other company bidding on the same term. Door-to-door canvassing costs $30-$50 per acquired customer, and that customer is exclusively yours.
The technique that converts best: reference an existing customer by name. "Hi, I'm with ABC Pest Control. We just treated your neighbor Mike's home at 418 Elm for carpenter ants. This time of year they tend to spread through the neighborhood. Would you like a free inspection?"
This works because pest problems are neighborhood-wide. If one home has ants, the homes within 200 feet almost certainly do too. You are not cold-selling. You are delivering genuinely useful information.
The best time to canvass: immediately after treating a home on that street. Your truck is visible, the neighbor can verify you are legitimate, and the pest threat is real and present. Canvass 20 homes around every service call. Even a 10% conversion rate means two new customers per day from work you were already doing.
Termite Bonds: The Closest Thing to Printing Money
A termite bond costs the homeowner $150-$300 per year. Your annual cost to service it: 15 minutes of inspection time and a piece of paper. Renewal rates exceed 90%. Do the math on 200 termite bonds and you have $30K-$60K in annual revenue that requires roughly 50 hours of labor.
The entry point is the WDI (Wood Destroying Insect) report required for most home sales. Build relationships with real estate agents and offer fast-turnaround WDI inspections. Every report is a chance to sell a termite bond to the new homeowner.
The pitch writes itself: "Your inspection came back clean. A termite bond guarantees it stays that way. If termites ever appear, we treat at no cost." New homeowners are already spending money and already anxious about protecting their investment. The close rate on termite bonds at the point of sale is 40-60%.
One active realtor generating 30 transactions per year can feed you 15-20 new termite bonds annually. Five realtor relationships and you have built a $100K recurring revenue stream that barely touches your daily schedule.
Google Ads for Emergency Pests Only
Paid search works for pest control, but only if you target the right keywords. Generic terms like "pest control near me" attract price shoppers comparing five companies. Emergency terms like "bed bugs in my house" or "rat in kitchen what to do" attract people who will pay whatever it costs to solve the problem today.
Emergency pest leads convert at 2-3x the rate of general inquiries and tolerate significantly higher pricing. A homeowner with a rat in their kitchen at 10 PM is not comparison shopping. They are calling the first company that answers.
Set up campaigns targeting emergency-specific keywords in your market. Bid aggressively. And most importantly, answer the phone. If your Google Ad runs at midnight but nobody picks up, you just paid $60 for nothing. A 24/7 answering service ($150-$200/month) turns those after-hours clicks into booked jobs.
The Neighborhood Saturation Play
When you treat a home for a visible pest problem, the 50 surrounding homes are warm leads. Ants, termites, mosquitoes, and rodents do not respect property lines.
The system: after every service call, leave door hangers on 20-50 nearby homes. The message should name the specific pest, not generic "pest control services." "We just treated a home on your street for fire ants. Fire ant colonies spread up to 100 feet underground. Free inspection for your property this week."
Specificity converts. "Fire ants on your street" is 5x more compelling than "pest control services available." The homeowner looks at their yard, sees a mound they had been ignoring, and picks up the phone.
Pair the door hangers with a direct mail piece to the same 50 homes one week later. The combination of two touchpoints roughly doubles response rate compared to either tactic alone.