Spring marketing checklist, counted back from your first busy week

What is spring marketing supposed to do?

Spring is when demand comes back all at once. For months the phone was quiet, and then one warm weekend half your market remembers the gutters, the lawn, the dirty siding and the AC that rattled last August. The companies that win spring are not the loudest. They are the ones whose past customers were already on the schedule, whose phones got answered on the first warm Saturday, and whose Google listing looked alive when a stranger compared three of them.

So this checklist has three jobs. Get the systems working before demand arrives. Fill the first weeks with people who already know you. Then protect speed and reviews while the work is heavy. It is organized by weeks counted back from your first busy week, with tasks for the website, Google Business Profile, phones, CRM, email and texting, and the crew. For which campaign to send in which month, use our seasonal marketing calendar. This page is the to-do list that makes those campaigns land.

When does spring start for your business?

Spring arrives on different dates across the country, and for different reasons. The table is a rough guide only. Your own records are better: pull last year's completed jobs by week and find the week the count jumped. That week is your opening day, and the checklist starts six to eight weeks before it.

If you run more than one service, you may have two openings. A lawn company in the snow belt opens with cleanups in April and again with aeration in late summer. Run the checklist for the service that matters most first.

Eight to six weeks out: get the machine ready

Nothing goes to customers yet. This is the stretch where you test every path a customer will take, because the first warm weekend is a bad time to learn the quote form has been emailing an old address since October.

Website

• Open every spring service page on your phone. Replace last year's photos with recent jobs, update the service list, and fix anything that reads like winter.
• Submit your own quote form. Confirm it reaches the CRM, sends an alert to whoever responds, and sends the customer a confirmation.
• If you publish price ranges or minimums, update them now so the email you send in three weeks matches the site.
• Plan one home page change for launch day: the spring service, the booking window, one button. See what a contractor website needs if the site is missing basics.

Google Business Profile

• Check hours, phone number, service area and services. Add any spring service that is missing.
• Upload a handful of real photos from the off-season or last fall, with crews and trucks visible.
• Reply to every review that never got an answer. Our Business Profile guide covers the settings that matter.

Phones

• Ring the business line from a personal cell, during work hours and after. Note how many rings, who answers, and what the voicemail says.
• Set up a missed-call text back; that way a call you can't take on a roof becomes a text thread instead of a lost lead.
• Decide who picks up when the owner is on a job. If nobody can, that is what an AI receptionist is for.

CRM

• Pull everyone who bought a spring service last year, by service and by town.
• Pull open quotes from last fall that never closed.
• Mark who has agreed to marketing texts and who hasn't. Those lists drive everything in the next section.

Email and texting

• Write the prebook email and a short text version. One service, one booking window, one link or phone number.
• Check that your sending domain has SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up, or the email lands in spam. Our plain-English explainer walks through it.

Crew

• Bring back returning crew members and post any open jobs now, before every other company in town is hiring.
• Service equipment and wash the trucks. A clean lettered truck parked on a street is advertising.
• Agree on the two habits you want on every spring job: before-and-after photos, and a review ask at the door.

Four to two weeks out: book your own customers first

Now the list goes to work. A customer who used you last spring is the cheapest job you will book all year, and every one of them who books early is a slot nobody else can sell them.

1. Four weeks out: send the prebook email to last year's spring customers. Offer them first pick of dates before the schedule opens to everyone.
2. Three weeks out: send a second, shorter email to the people who didn't book, with a different subject line. Send the fall leftovers a note about their open quote, with current pricing.
3. Two weeks out: text the customers who agreed to marketing texts and still haven't booked. Keep it under 160 characters and include opt-out wording. Our guide to texting rules explains why consent comes first.
4. Two weeks out: call your twenty best customers personally. A phone call from the owner books people who ignore email.

Alongside the sends:

• Website: switch the home page to the spring offer. If you take online bookings, open the first weeks.
• Business Profile: post the spring service with a real photo and the towns you are booking.
• CRM: group early bookings by town so the first weeks are tight routes, not crisscrossed drives.
• Phones: give whoever answers a two-line script for the questions you know are coming: when is the first opening, and what does it cost.
• Crew: build the first two weeks of schedules from the prebooked list, with room for new customers.

The first four weeks of the rush: a weekly checklist

Once the season opens, marketing is mostly speed and follow-through. Run the same short list every week until the volume settles.

• Every day: every call answered or texted back within minutes, and every web form answered the same day. Thumbtack's own refund policy tells pros that the quickest, most helpful reply often wins the customer, and your own phone line works the same way.
• After every job: photos into the CRM, and a review request sent that day while the customer is still looking at the result. See how to get more Google reviews for wording that stays within Google's rules.
• Monday: count last week's leads by source, missed calls and quotes still waiting. Follow up on every quote older than three days.
• Midweek: one Business Profile post with a job photo and the town name.
• Friday: check how far out you are booked. If it is three weeks, say three weeks on the website and in the phone greeting. Honest lead times keep people from booking a competitor out of frustration.
• When the schedule is full: stop sending promotions and stop any discounting. Spend the effort on reviews and on quotes for later in the season.

What changes in a Sun Belt or Pacific Northwest spring?

Sun Belt. Spring is short, and the heat ends it. The window for AC tune-ups, pool openings and maintenance plan sign-ups closes when the first hot week arrives and every call becomes a repair. Push plan sign-ups early. Coastal companies should also use late spring to get storm plans ready: the National Hurricane Center lists the eastern Pacific hurricane season as starting May 15 and the Atlantic season June 1. Our storm response guide covers what to prepare.

Pacific Northwest. Rain decides the schedule. Tell customers in the booking confirmation how you handle weather days, and keep a ready-to-send reschedule text so a wet Tuesday costs you a few minutes instead of an hour of calls. Roof and moss work, gutters and exterior painting cluster into dry stretches, so keep a short waitlist of customers who said they can be flexible.

Snow belt. Spring starts late and arrives fast. Leave snow services visible on the site until the real end of the season, then switch the home page in one move. Mud season can delay yard and concrete work, so promise date windows instead of single days.

How do you know spring worked?

Count booked jobs and revenue, split two ways: from past customers versus new customers, and by lead source. If past customers filled most of April, the list did its job. If new customers came mostly from one paid platform, that is something to fix before next spring. Also check missed calls (our missed call calculator puts a rough dollar figure on them), reviews gained, and how many weeks out you were booked at the peak. Write the three biggest lessons in the CRM or a shared note now, while they are fresh. Next year's checklist starts from that note, and the summer checklist picks up where this one ends.

Our email and SMS marketing service can run the list, the sends and the tracking for you, using customer data you own.

Frequently asked questions