The Transparency Problem: Why 93% of Pest Control Sites Are Hiding the One Thing Buyers Want

Adam Bennett: Welcome back to Pest Control Marketing That Actually Works, the podcast for pest control operators who want real growth, not empty promises. I'm Adam Bennett. Elisabeth: And I'm Elisabeth Pallante We're from Cube Creative Design and for over 20 years we've helped pest control companies stop wasting money and start growing. Adam Bennett: Today's episode, the transparency problem, why ninety-three percent of pest control sites are hiding the one thing that buyers actually want.

And Chad Treadway's with us again today. Here are your three key takeaways. Elisabeth: First, pricing is the number one question buyers have, and about ninety-two to ninety-three percent of pest control sites still don't answer it. Hiding the price doesn't protect your margin, it actually protects your competition.

Second, companies that show pricing on their website convert two to four times better than companies that don't. That's huge. Third, you don't have to publish a rigid price list. Starting ranges, estimators, and most customers pay formats all work well.

Adam Bennett: Okay, let's go ahead and dive in. So I want to start with a number that should make every pest control owner uncomfortable. So 93% of pest control websites don't show pricing anywhere on the site. And not a starting range, not a service-by-service breakdown, and not even a most customers pay between this and this.

Just nothing. So meanwhile, the number one question that pest control buyers have when they hit your website is what is this going to cost me? So we see it in the heat maps. We see it in the search queries and we see it on the phone.

The first question after how soon can you come out is always, does this cost? Chad, does that sound about right from what you've talked about? Chad: Yeah. I actually love this topic.

So here's a gap that that all really creates. So your buyer comes to your site looking for a number. You don't have one. They're going to go to the next site.

If the site also doesn't have a number, they're going to go to the next. And so on and so forth. The first pest control company in their search that gives them a real answer is going to win that call. So We run win-loss analysis with our clients on lost leads.

The number one reason a lead goes to a competitor is not price. It's clarity. The customer didn't peek pick the cheaper option. They picked an option that respected their time enough to tell them what they were buying.

Elisabeth: Yeah. And this is where pest control owners push back, right? They'll say, My pricing is too variable, every job is different, the customer needs an inspection before I can quote. All of that is true.

of it is the reason to put nothing on the page though. So what buyers want is an honest range. They're not asking you to commit to a number ⁓ unseen. They're asking you to give them enough information to know whether they can afford to call you.

So a buyer who thinks general pest control might be five hundred dollars and it turns out to be one hundred eighty won't call you. They've already decided they can't afford it. Adam Bennett: And the math of these loss calls from price uncertainty is brutal because you'll never see it. The owner thinks a lead just didn't convert.

The lead never even reached out. So they sat on the site for ninety seconds, they didn't see a number, and then they went to the company that had that had one, honestly. You can't fix what you can't see, and those losses are invisible. Chad: Right.

So a lot of times we there's three reasons we'll get pushback from a PCO for wanting to hide their pricing. And honestly, every one of them is gonna be wrong. So reason one, my competitors will see my prices and undercut me. The truth is your competitors already know what you're charging because they're probably charging about the same amount.

They have customers who switch from you to them. They've seen your invoices. Your information isn't secret. The only people you're hiding it from are your buyers.

Adam Bennett: And honestly, knowing your competitors price doesn't really help them anyway. So if they're $40 cheaper and you're better. Customers still choose you because cheap isn't always what they're optimizing for. If they're forty dollars cheaper and you're worse, you have a different problem than your pricing page.

Chad: Okay, so reason two, and this is one we get pushback on as well. So my pricing is too variable. You know, every job's different. While it sounds reasonable until you realize that roughly eighty percent of your residential jobs probably fall within a tight band, a typical quarterly general pest treatment for a two thousand square foot home in your market is going to be your normal range.

You know it, your text knowed it. The only person you're hiding it from on your website is your customer. So owner reason three. Now, I want them to call me first so that I can talk through it and I can sell them.

Well, this is the one that goes is going to cost you the most money overall. The owner thinks that the phone call is what where the sale happens. And you're wrong, unfortunately. The sale happens before the phone call.

The buyer will decide on the website whether they're going to call you. And if they didn't, and if you didn't give them a price range, the answer is often going to be no. Elisabeth: Also to add to that, you know, the majority of homeowners now are what millennials. Is that right?

What the what the research shows? And that group does not like to make phone calls. And the irony is the customers who do call without seeing a price are often actually the worst leads. They're the ones still shopping.

They want you to be the cheapest. The customers who saw your range, decided it was reasonable, and called anyway are the ones who actually close. Chad: And Marcus Sheridan has probably the cleanest data in the industry on any of this. So companies that show pricing on their website will convert anywhere from two to four times better than a company that doesn't.

Now, that's two to four times. Not 10% better, not 20% better, two to four times. If your current conversion rate from your website visitor booked jobs are two percent, transparency pricing gets you to four. Eight percent.

Same traffic, same ad spend, same marketing spend. Adam Bennett: We've tested this with our own clients. We had a pest control company in the southeast starting pricing to their service pages last fall. No other changes.

⁓ form conversion rate went from 3.1% to 7.4% over ⁓ months. Their cost per lead from Google Ads dropped 41% because of the same ad spend, and was now driving those qualified clicks.

The buyer self qualified on the price before they even called. Elisabeth: So let's get specific here. We've made the case for transparency. Now the question is, what does it actually look like on the page?

Because no pest control owner is going to publish a 47-line price sheet with every treatment for every score footage, nor should you. So here are better ones. Adam Bennett: Yeah, that sounds really scary. I'm not gonna just put all of my pricing on your website.

And that's that's not what this is about. So let's look let's look a little deeper into this. So format one is the starting range. So on every service page, you have a line that says something like General pest control starts at X dollars per quarterly treatment for homes up to two thousand square feet.

That's it. One sentence. It tells the buyer the the floor and the basis. ⁓ they know whether in the Elisabeth: No.

Adam Bennett: Whether they're in the right ballpark or not. Okay, format number two. It's the most customers pay range. So here's an example.

Most customers pay between $300 and $500 per year for our quarterly service. That format is really forgiving because it acknowledges that there's some variance without making you commit to a single number. Buyers love it because it tells them what's normal. Chad: Right.

So your format three is a treatment by treatment breakdown. So a one-time termite treatment may be something like X dollars to Y dollars. A general pest control may be $150 to $300. A exclusion ⁓ be another X to Y.

You're giving them a range. That's the main thing. So this works for the companies whose services don't vary as much by home size. It's clear, it's scannable, and answers the questions across your full service menu.

Now on to your fourth format here. This is the highest effort but the highest converting option. It's your estimator. The customer enters their square footage and the type of treatment, and then it spits out an estimated range.

We've built these for a few of our pest control clients, and they will double your engagement on your service page. The buyer feels like they got a custom answer. Elisabeth: And the language matters as much as the numbers here, right? So the phrases that work are starts at or most customers pay.

or typically between depending on home size. The phrases that don't work are call for pricing ⁓ we offer competitive rates and free estimates. Those phrases tell the buyer you're hiding something. And honestly they get so used to seeing it, they kind of don't even pay attention to it.

Adam Bennett: It's on every pest control website. Call for pricing. Call for a free estimate. They everybody does it.

You know, a way to stand out from the crowd is by offering some pricing like this. So here's one one mistake to avoid. Don't quote a number you can't honor. So if you put $179 starting on the page and the actual minimum you'll service is $240, you've really damaged that trust before the customer even called.

The number on the page has to be a number that a tech can deliver in the real world. And keep in mind your tech isn't going to be looking at your website page. So make sure that those numbers change as you actually change your pricing. the floor ⁓ pick the floor of your honest range and then pop that on the page.

Chad: So a little bit more, you've never published your pricing and you're really nervous about it, which is understandable, start with just one single service. Pick a service you do the most of. If it's termites, start with termites. If it's rodent exclusions, do rodent exclusions.

Add a starting price to that page only and then see what happens to your conversion rate over the next 30 days. The data will give you the confidence to roll out across the rest of your services. Elisabeth: Pricing is the biggest transparency lever but it's not the only one. So there's a broader category of trust signals that AI search and human buyers are both looking for.

Pricing is one. The others are policies, the humans behind the company, and your point of view. Adam Bennett: And Elisabeth that's a great point about AI. As things are searching more for AI search, AI search is really looking to answer those questions that people are asking.

those people may not even end up on your website, but those answers need to be on your website for AI to pick up that answer and then give it to your potential buyer. So it's really important to ⁓ to stand out above the crowd. But talking about policies on your website, it means things like service guarantee. your cancellation policy, what happens if a treatment doesn't work?

How how can you handle a callback? ⁓ most pest control sites don't have policies ⁓ on a page at all on their website and the owners think it makes them look really rigid, but the opposite is true. Clear policies make you look professional. Vague policies makes it look like you don't even know what you're doing and you're making it up as you go.

Chad: Yep. So the other thing as far as transparency is think about the humans behind the company. That's your team page. Real photos of your real text.

First names, a sentence about each, not some random stock photo, not a founder alone in his polo shirt. The actual people who are going to be at your customers' homes. Buyers want to know who's coming. AI wants to know they are real humans here.

Both reward the same thing. Elisabeth: Yeah, and I say even beyond the team, the the about us page, it would also just be throughout your website if you can, if you have pictures of your text, people, pictures of people doing what they do. and your point of view is what you stand for, why your company exists, what you believe about pest control, what you do differently than the other companies down the road. Most pest control sites read like every other pest control site.

The ones that win are the ones that have an opinion. AI rewards distinctiveness. Believe it or not, that seems kind of like a funny mix there, but it does. And buyers do too.

Adam Bennett: And you know, Elisabeth, it's really worth mentioning that transparency is one of the six categories we use to evaluate a pest control site in a tool that we built called the CubeScore. Transparency is consistently the lowest scoring side for pest control companies in our database. ⁓ other five sides are identity, authority, structure, and visibility. ⁓ So gonna do a full episode on that framework in a couple of weeks, but for now, just know that if you fix the transparency side of your site, You're gonna move your overall score score up more than other any other single change that you can make on your website.

Chad: So if you take ⁓ thing away from this episode and you want to act out on it before next week, here's what I do. Pick your most visited service page right now. The page that gets the most traffic from Google and the one sentence at the top with your starting price. That's it.

⁓ page, one sentence, ⁓ number. The format format starts at X dollars a per home up to two thousand square feet. Or most customers pay between X dollars and Y dollars per year. Pick numbers you can honor, save the page and walk away.

Adam Bennett: And then watch the form fill rate on that page for 30 days. So we're confident enough in this that we'll predict the outcome. The form fills go up, not down. The calls go up, not down.

The leads get warmer. And all you've done one added to that page to make that great change. So ⁓ Chad, again so much for ⁓ joining us today. Elisabeth, let's go ahead and recap these three key takeaways.

Elisabeth: All right, number pricing is the number one question buyers have. And about 93% of pest control sites don't answer it. That's an opportunity. Hiding the price protects your competition, not your margin.

Number two, companies that show price pricing convert two to four times better than companies that don't. Number three, you don't need a rigid price list. Starting ranges, estimators, and most customers' pay formats all work. The point is to give buyers a real number before they call.

And to put a number on where your website stands right now, head to thecubescore.com. It's free, it takes about 60 seconds, and grades your site across six categories of trust signals, including transparency. You'll see your score out of 600.

Adam Bennett: And if you want help figuring out where transparency is costing you leads on your site, visit marketing that actually works.ai to get your free pest control marketing audit. We're going to show you exactly what's working and what's costing you money. Elisabeth: And where you're losing points, which translates to lower rankings not being found as well by AI search.

Adam Bennett: And subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you don't miss next Tuesday's episode, Content Marketing for Pest Control, beyond the basic blog post. Elisabeth: If you got value today, leave us a review and a comment letting us know what you'd like to hear about next. Adam Bennett: Thanks for listening to Pest Control Marketing. That actually works.

We'll see you next Tuesday.