Fence season is four months out. Build these five things before February.
A fence company's winter checklist: the five systems to set up between now and February so the spring rush produces booked jobs and reviews instead of missed calls.
The last full install month in most of the country is ending. By the second week of November the northern phone goes quiet, and it stays quiet until a warm weekend in February sends everyone outside to look at the yard. That gives a fence company about sixteen weeks of relative calm. Most owners use them to catch up on paperwork and repairs. The better use is to build the five things that will decide how spring goes.
Here they are, in the order to do them.
1. A written quote template with a drawing
Pull up the last ten quotes you sent. If any of them were a number in a text message, this is the first fix. A one-page PDF with a sketch of the run, the footage, the style and spec, gates as line items, what is included (tear-out, haul-away, 811 locate, permit, HOA packet), the timeline, the warranty and the deposit. Build it once in whatever tool you quote from, with good-better-best columns, and in April it takes five minutes per estimate instead of twenty.
The pricing guide has the full layout. While you are in there, reprice. Material costs have moved again this year, and January is when the new sheet should go live, not the middle of March after you have quoted forty jobs at last year's numbers.
2. Missed-call text-back
In April you will miss calls. Everyone does. The question is what the caller hears. Set up an automatic text that goes out seconds after a missed call: who you are, that you are on an install, and a question that keeps them talking. Then a follow-up schedule for open estimates: day 2, day 5, day 10, day 30, each with something useful in it.
This is a few hours of setup in December and it runs itself all season. Put your numbers in the missed-call calculator first to see what it is worth. At fence ticket sizes it is usually the best return of anything on this list.
3. The install-day review ask
Write the script. Give it to every crew lead. Decide what you pay per review that names a crew member, somewhere between $10 and $20 is normal. Set up the short review link so it can be texted from the company phone during the final walkthrough.
The median fence contractor on Google has 16 reviews and 40.5% have fewer than 10. A company that asks on every install from March to October can add 40 to 60 reviews in one season, which moves it from the middle of the pack to the top quarter, which is 47 reviews or more. That shows up in the map pack and on Local Services Ads next spring.
4. The website style pages with price ranges
Winter is when the gallery gets updated, because the crews took photos all year and nobody posted them. Sort them by style, label each with the style and town, and build or rebuild one page per fence type with a per-foot range at the top. Wood privacy, vinyl, aluminum, chain link, gates, repair, commercial. Add the permit and HOA page while you are at it.
22.8% of fence contractors list no website at all. Companies with one show a median of 23 reviews against 3 without. If your site is from 2017 with a slider and a contact form, this is the winter to replace it. The website guide lists the seven things it has to do.
5. The February launch, scheduled now
Decide today what turns on the first week of February: the Google Ads campaigns with the negative list already loaded, the Meta before-and-after creatives already shot and approved, the early-bird offer to last year's unclosed estimates ("sign by March 1, lock an April install at this year's price"). Build the campaigns in January so February is a switch, not a project.
Northern companies that wait until the first warm week to turn ads on pay spring click prices with no reviews, no posts and no landing pages built up. The ones that launched in February have a full March calendar before the competitors notice the phone is ringing.
What about the south
If you install year-round in Florida, Texas or the Gulf, your calendar is flatter and the dip is Thanksgiving to New Year, not November to February. The same five items apply; the window to do them is just shorter. January is already a strong month for pool fence, so the systems need to be in place by the second week of December.
The order matters
Quote template, then text-back, then review ask, then website, then launch. Each one makes the next one worth more. Ads sent to a site with no prices and a phone nobody answers is the most expensive version of marketing there is. The same ads sent to a site with ranges, a phone that texts back and a company with 80 reviews is the cheapest.
Any of the five can be done for you inside the free 14-day trial, and winter is the easiest time to run one, since nothing is on fire. Text or call (385) 334-3643.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, fence companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor