Tack-On Ticks to Your Service

May was Lyme Disease Awareness month, and Steve Gurin let customers know with an email campaign to promote tick prevention services. “We got a lot of good response,” he says of Mosquito Hunters’ marketing and educational effort. “We provided information about different diseases ticks can carry and spread that affect pets, humans, everybody.”

Pet owners are “definitely” most interested in the service, says Gurin, who owns the Manhasset, N.Y.-based location. “They are more conscientious about ticks and want to take more precautions,” he says, adding that the topic can crop up during a veterinarian appointment when flea/tick preventive pills are advised. Treating the outdoor spaces where pets romp around — particularly along wood lines, shrubbery and tall grasses — is extra insurance for four-legged loved ones.

At Quality Pest Control, ticks work into conversations about general pest control and preventing disease. “It starts with educating our customers who call,” says Carl Braun, president of the Omaha, Neb.-based business. “If you know the show ‘Columbo,’ you’ve seen how star Peter Falk starts to walk away and turns around, ‘Oh, by the way.’ That has been our approach to selling tick services,” he says. “But now, we are being way more intentional about it.”

David Navarro Jr. and Jay Groat are part of the camp that relies on word-of-mouth to “market” services, which is also perhaps the case for 30 percent of PCT Tick Control survey respondents. “It’s mostly pet owners who reach out,” says Navarro, manager at David’s Pest Control in McAllen, Texas. “In our region, we are blessed in abundance with pests, so there is never a dull moment and we have our work cut out for us.”

Groat says repeat customers pass the word that his company, Bug Bee Gone, offers tick control. And he picks up customers from the app Nextdoor, where residents around his office in Delmar, N.Y., post questions and referrals. He’ll sell a one-time, seasonal or bundled service. “I actually do not give people contracts, and I think they appreciate that,” he says.

Regular email blasts with “did you know?” insights and reminders promote the service at Pest-End Exterminators, says Adam Carace, CEO of the Plaistow, N.H., business. He says, “There is not a lot of cost in getting those customers, because they see [the information] and come to you.”