A twelve-month marketing calendar for a pressure washing company
The spring rush, the pre-holiday window nobody works, what to sell in January, HOA bid season, and how to spend ad budget in the months that actually need it.
Pressure washing has the sharpest seasonality of any exterior trade and the least planning around it. The pattern in most of the country is the same: a violent March-to-June rush where you cannot answer the phone, a decent July and August, a strong and badly underworked October and November, and a January and February where the truck sits.
The mistake almost every owner makes is spending marketing money in exactly the months when they are already booked, and going silent in the months when they are not.
The shape of the year
- January and February. Weather-limited in most states. This is bid season for commercial and HOA work, and pre-selling season for spring. The cheapest advertising of the year.
- March through June. The rush. Pollen, spring cleaning, graduation parties, house listings going on the market. Ad costs peak, often 40% to 70% above February on the same keywords.
- July and August. Steady. Decks, fences, pool decks, patios. Heat limits roof work in the afternoon.
- September through mid-December. The pre-holiday window. Strong demand, low competition, and the second-cheapest advertising of the year.
- Mid-December. Dead for two weeks. Take it off.
Your marketing budget should be close to the inverse of that curve.
January and February: sell the spring you have not worked yet
Three plays fill the winter and they all pay in March.
Pre-sell spring at a deposit-held rate. Text and email every past customer in the second week of January: "Booking April now. $50 off your house wash if we lock the date this month, $100 holds it, nothing else due until we are finished." A customer with a deposit down does not answer a knock in April. Deposits are covered in the pricing guide.
Bid the HOA and property management work. Most communities re-bid exterior cleaning between January and March for spring execution. Call, do not email, and ask one question: "What month do you take bids for sidewalk and breezeway cleaning?" Then get on the list. A 400-unit community on a twice-yearly walkway and dumpster-pad contract is worth more than 30 driveways and it does not cancel for rain.
Sell the year-round commercial work. Dumpster pads, gas station forecourts, restaurant drive-thrus, grocery entrances and parking garages get washed in January in most of the country because they are grease and traffic driven, not weather driven. This is the revenue that carries a crew through the winter and it is sold by walking in and asking who handles it.
Meanwhile, run Google Ads at a low daily budget through February. Clicks are cheap, your competitors are off, and the calls you take in February book work for March. Details on the account setup are in the Google Ads guide.
March through June: stop buying leads you cannot serve
When you are two weeks out, more leads are not an asset. They are cancellations and one-star reviews waiting to happen.
What to do in the rush:
- Cut the Google Ads daily budget rather than turning it off, so the account keeps its history. $10 a day maintains it.
- Raise prices for the season, in February, before the wave hits. An 8% to 12% increase in April costs you almost nothing in bookings.
- Push route density hard. Yard sign at every job, 20 door hangers on the neighbors with the address written on them, and a $10-a-day two-mile radius ad around the house you just did. This is the cheapest way to add jobs when you are already busy, because it adds them to a street you are already parked on.
- Ask for the review at every single house. April and May are when you build the review count that carries you all year, and the median company in this trade sits at just 9 reviews.
Summer: sell the second surface
Your spring house-wash customers already trust you. In July, text the ones whose decks, fences or pool decks you saw:
"We washed your siding in April. Your back fence is going grey on the south side. $260 to clean it while we are in the neighborhood next Thursday."
That is a booked job for one text, no acquisition cost, and it is the highest margin work you will do all year. Commercial flat work also runs well in summer at night, when lots are empty and heat is manageable.
September to December: the window nobody works
This is the most underused period in the trade and the reason is psychological. Owners believe the season ends in August, so they stop advertising in September, which is exactly when a specific and reliable buyer appears.
From roughly October 10 to December 15, homeowners are thinking about people arriving at their front door. Thanksgiving, holiday parties, family visiting. They look at the walkway, the front steps, the porch and the driveway with a stranger's eyes.
Sell that directly:
- "Driveway and front walk cleaned before your guests arrive. $189 to $325. Booking through December 12."
- Front-entry packages: porch, steps, walkway and front door surround for $225.
- Gutter cleaning and gutter brightening, which stacks with the leaf drop.
- Holiday light installation, if you want it, which uses the same ladders and the same customers and fills December entirely.
Cost per lead on Meta in November is frequently lower than in April in the same account, because your competitors have gone quiet. The creative that works is the same before-and-after clip described in the Meta ads guide.
The northern versus southern calendar
In Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and the Gulf coast, which is where the largest share of listings in our dataset sits, you can wash close to year-round and the winter dip is a slowdown rather than a stop. Roof algae is a permanent problem there and sells in January.
In the north and mountain west, December through February is genuinely closed for exterior residential. That makes the commercial and interior-adjacent work the difference between a winter with income and a winter without, and it makes the January pre-sell campaign non-optional.
Set the budget by month
A simple annual allocation for a one-truck company spending $600 a month on average:
- January and February: $900 a month. Pre-sell campaigns, commercial and HOA outreach, low-cost search clicks.
- March to June: $300 a month. You are full. Keep the account warm and spend the effort on route density and reviews instead.
- July and August: $600 a month. Second-surface campaigns to your own list.
- September to early December: $900 a month. The pre-holiday push.
- Mid-December: off.
That inversion is the single biggest change most washers can make to their marketing, and it costs nothing extra over the year.
Frequently asked
Should I lay off crew in the winter or find work? Find work first. Commercial flat work, gutters and holiday lights keep a good tech employed, and re-hiring a trained tech in March costs more than carrying him through February.
Does the pre-holiday push work in warm states? Yes, and often better, because outdoor entertaining continues. The message shifts from "before the snow" to "before your guests arrive."
What about winter storm and salt work? In salt states, spring salt and grime removal on walkways and storefronts is a real March campaign. Sell it as the first job of the year rather than as a general wash.
If you want the seasonal campaigns built and turned on and off at the right times, ads management is one of the services in the free 14-day trial. Text or call (385) 832-6175.