When the phone slows down, the ad budget is the first thing owners want to cut. Sometimes running ads in the off-season is a waste. Sometimes cutting them hands the slow months, and a head start on spring, to the competitor who kept going.
There’s no single right answer, but there is a right answer for your business. Start with your numbers, find the scenario that sounds like you, and follow it.
First, pull last year’s leads by month
Before you decide anything, look at what came in during your slow stretch last year and what it turned into. You’re looking for two numbers:
How many leads came in each month, from ads and everything else.
Your cost per acquisition, or CPA, what you paid in ads for each lead or booked job, in slow months compared to busy ones.
If you can’t find those numbers, that’s your first answer: fix your tracking before you touch your budget. Then come back to the scenarios below.
If customers still need you in winter, keep ads running
This is you if you have emergency demand or true off-season services: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, snow removal, indoor work, or maintenance plans. A frozen pipe in a Fox Valley January doesn’t wait for spring.
Then: keep ads on, and shift them toward what people search for right now. For a business like FloTek Plumbing, where we’ve run SEO and Google Ads since late 2025, there’s no real off-season, just different searches.
If customers plan big projects months ahead, change the message
This is you if you sell design-build landscaping, remodels, additions, or anything people research for a while before they buy. Many homeowners spend the winter comparing companies and requesting quotes for spring.
Then: keep ads running at a lower budget, and change the message from “call now” to planning. “Book a spring design consult” or “Get on the spring install schedule” turns winter research into booked work.
There’s a bonus, too. When competitors go quiet, your cost per click, or CPC, can drop, and your impression share, the percentage of eligible searches where your ad actually shows, can go up.
If nothing sells until spring, scale way back or pause
This is you if calls drop to almost nothing and every lead is for work you can’t start for months. If off-season CPA is far higher than busy-season CPA and those leads rarely close, you’re paying for clicks you can’t use.
Then: pick one of two options.
Scale way back. Keep one campaign running on your most valuable service at a fraction of the budget. You stay visible, keep the campaign’s history, and can turn the budget up when demand returns.
Pause, and plan the restart. Campaigns take a few weeks of data to settle in and spend efficiently. A cold restart the week your busy season starts means paying full price while the system relearns, so switch back on a few weeks before the first warm weekend.
If you’re keeping off-season ads, run them lean
Whichever scenario kept your ads on, tighten everything up:
Focus on one or two services people buy or plan this time of year.
Add negative keywords, search terms you don’t want your ads to show for, like DIY questions, job seekers, or services you don’t offer in winter.
Use retargeting, ads shown to people who already visited your website, to stay in front of folks who looked at your work but didn’t call.
Check your conversion tracking. It’s what tells you which clicks turn into calls and form fills, and the slow season is the best time to make sure it works.
Lead with your best work on social. For Hoss Tree Farm, the posts and Facebook ads all tell the same story (big trees planted in a day), so the message is familiar when buyers are ready.
If you pause ads, don’t pause marketing
The slow season is when you finally have time for the things there’s no time for in July:
Refresh your website. Add this year’s projects, update photos, and fix pages that aren’t pulling their weight.
Collect reviews from last season’s happy customers while the work is still fresh.
Email past customers. A monthly newsletter keeps you in front of people who already know you.
Book a photo and video shoot for the first weeks of the season, when your work looks its freshest.
Build your spring campaigns now, so they’re approved, tracked, and ready to switch on.
Our free busy-season marketing checklist walks through all of it, with timing for each piece.
Decision cheat sheet
Emergency or winter services: keep ads on, and change what you advertise.
Big projects planned in advance: keep ads on at a lower budget, and sell the spring schedule.
Nothing sells until spring: scale way back or pause, and restart a few weeks early.
No tracking: fix tracking first, and decide second.
If you’d like a second set of eyes on last year’s numbers, see how we handle paid ads, or tell us about your season, and we’ll help you decide what to run, what to pause, and when to turn it back on.
