Business Strategies for Making the Most of Tick Season

Although tick services accounted for only 9 percent of pest management company revenue on average in 2022, business leaders recognize its profit potential as upward momentum for the service continues. The question is how to best capitalize on this dynamic opportunity.

Many companies find that bundling ticks with mosquitoes and/or fleas enables them to streamline their services, make the most of each service call and offer an appealing program to customers. In fact, just over four in 10 PMPs (42 percent) say that they are bundling these services; that’s a sizable jump from 2022, when just 28 percent were bundling.

“We combine tick and mosquito services and sell it as a ‘double protection plan,’” says Todd Simpson, HTP Termite & Pest Control. “Selling tick control under the mosquito program makes sense because people in our western Tennessee markets are very tuned in to the health risks of mosquitoes — they hear about them in the news all the time. We’re able to give them the extra value of tick protection without needing to add service calls.”

Daniele Collinson explains why Blades of Green decided to bundle ticks, mosquitoes and fleas. “The treatment method and products we use for these three pests are the same, so offering our customers this complete ‘yard protection program’ enables us to provide better value to the client than if they had to purchase multiple programs or services separately,” she says. “Many of our clients who are concerned about pet- related ticks are also concerned with fleas, so we found it made sense to combine all three pests into a single program.”

Program flexibility is a key strategy as well. Companies that are agile enough to scale their tick services up or down to meet fluctuating demand are better able to capture the business when demand is high, while building strong relationships with customers.

Collinson shares, “In the nine years leading up to last year, our program ran from April through October. Then we started seeing an increase in calls from clients who still had concerns in November. So last year we added a November application to our program, and now we sell it as an April-through-November program. This year, we added specialty applications in March as clients called in, and we’ll be reevaluating our program again if we continue to see a rise in those early calls next year. The longer tick season is unfortunate for our clients, but great for our business as we continue to stretch the season in response to the needs of our customer base.”