Irrigation runs on a calendar rather than a sales cycle. The system goes on in spring and gets emptied in fall, and neither visit is optional — irrigation laterals sit about eight inches down, above the frost line, because it is cheaper to trench eight inches and drain the pipe each autumn than to trench four feet. Winterization is not a chore somebody talked your customer into. It is the annual payment on a decision made the day that system went in the ground. That is why most of your book already repeats, and why the phone rings in a two- or three-week panic twice a year and goes quiet in between.
Here is the part worth sitting with. The Irrigation Association's own contractor survey — 143 responses — found that 94% of irrigation contractors provide maintenance. Nearly everyone in this trade already runs a recurring business. And when fifteen contractor homepages across six metros were read end to end, not one sold a seasonal plan or an annual agreement anywhere on the site — including four whose businesses visibly run on recurring accounts, one with a customer login and payment portal, and one with a Memberships section in its own navigation. You already run this business. Your website is the only place that doesn't know it.
This guide is the research we use when we build marketing for irrigation companies, in plain English: how the five kinds of call behave, what your site needs before ads make sense, how to spend around a two-peak season, and how to hold a map-pack spot in the towns you actually route through.
How your customers actually buy
Irrigation gets five kinds of call and they behave nothing alike. The break: a zone is dead, a head is watering the driveway, there is a brown stripe across the lawn — that customer is looking at the problem while they dial. The calendar: start-up in spring, blowout in fall, both forced by a date rather than by a decision. The letter: the utility says their backflow assembly is due for testing and they have no idea what that means. The upgrade: somebody read about a smart controller or a rebate. And the install — biggest ticket, slowest close, bid against three others.
The two in the middle are where the money quietly sits, because they come back every year without you selling anything twice, and they are the two most contractor sites have no page for. Watch the words on those searches. In freeze states plenty of homeowners have never once said “winterize” — they say they need the sprinklers blown out, and they type it three different ways. In spring the trade says start-up and the customer says turn on. Cover both sides and you are ahead of most of your market.
The letter customer deserves attention, because a government agency does the marketing for you. Backflow testing is legally mandated almost everywhere, the frequency is set by your water purveyor rather than by your state, and water service can be terminated for non-compliance — so the utility mails the reminder, 30 days ahead in Denver Water's case, and many utilities publish a certified tester list and point homeowners at it. A contractor who holds the certification and is not on that list is invisible to demand the government generates and mails at its own expense.
Then there is the customer who does not behave like a homeowner at all. 90% of surveyed contractors serve commercial work, now slightly ahead of the 84% serving residential, and HOA boards buy on a different clock: weeks to months, a written RFP once the contract clears the usual $5,000–$10,000 bid threshold, agreements running $1,500–$5,000 or more per property per year. Plenty of irrigation companies list shopping centers and HOAs in their About text with no page a procurement committee could read.
The five kinds of call, and what each one is really worth
- The break. $100–$400 on the visit. Highest intent in the trade — something is broken and visible.
- The calendar. $60–$145 for a blowout, $60–$125 for a start-up — plus the annuity, because that customer needs both again next year.
- The letter. $75–$250 per device per annual test, on a legally fixed cycle, for work the homeowner cannot do themselves.
- The upgrade. A few hundred for a smart controller, $300–$1,200 a zone for drip — and in a rebate district the real cost lands well below the invoice.
- The install. $2,200–$4,800 for an average single-family home, at the lowest close rate of anything you sell.
What your website is actually for
The biggest thing missing from irrigation websites is the offer the business already runs on. Put two or three named tiers on a page with prices next to them — roughly $175–$250 a year for a plan covering spring start-up, fall winterization, zone checks and head adjustments, $350–$500 for a tier adding a mid-season check, $150–$400 a month for commercial and HOA. Those anchors come from a software vendor's blog, not audited data, so treat them as a read on the market. Itemize what is inside each one, because a basic plan lands at roughly the sum of its two visits. It is not a discount and should never be sold as one — it is a commitment device at full price, and its headline benefit is that plan customers get scheduled first. Where the people who call in May wait three to four weeks, that beats money off and costs you nothing.
Then build the two pages most of your competitors have not: a spring start-up page and a fall blowout page, each in the customer's word and each carrying your local date. Of those fifteen sites most had neither — one had built a page for Christmas lights but not for the two services every customer in that market buys annually. Backflow is the same story: seven of the fifteen left it off the homepage menu, two while holding the certification, and it is the one line in this trade with a real regulatory wall around it — a 40-hour course and two exams, plus a plumbing license in states like Michigan.
87% of those sites had no way to book online, in a business whose deadline is set by a weather forecast. The window is two or three weeks of regional panic during which nobody can answer the phone, and a customer lost inside it is gone for the whole year — the next contact is spring start-up, and by then they have found somebody else. And while you are in there: fourteen of the fifteen published no review count while their Google profiles carried real ratings — the proof exists, and the site refuses to repeat it where the decision happens.
The pages most irrigation sites are missing
- Spring start-up — in the customer's word (“sprinkler turn on”), with the week you want people booking by.
- Fall blowout & winterization — all three spellings, and your zone's real date instead of “before winter.”
- Backflow testing — written for your water district rather than your state, because the purveyor sets the frequency.
- The maintenance plan — named tiers, prices on the page, and a button that actually buys one.
- Commercial & HOA — a page that survives a procurement read: certifications, references, contract structure.
Google Ads: the cheapest clicks in the green industry
The only irrigation-specific ad benchmark anyone has published puts the cost per click at $2.69 and the cost per lead at $43.17 — a lead there being an inquiry, not a job on the board — against $84.24 for lawn care and $153.27 for hardscaping. Take it as a direction, not a measurement: it is one agency's own book with no account count, spend or date range, it blends every service type into one number, and the average is deflated by contractors concentrating spend into the months when demand is forced by the calendar rather than bid up by competitors.
The real lesson sits in the seasonality. An irrigation account should not spend evenly, and for several months of the year should not spend at all. Set the blowout campaign live three to four weeks before your regional winterize-by date, not on it: homeowners winterize one to two weeks before the first forecast 28°F night, and they need time to search and book. In a Denver, Boise or Minneapolis market aiming at early-to-mid October, that means live in the first week of September. Then split the account by service, because the correct radius for one job is a quarter of the correct radius for another. Blowouts and start-ups are pure route density — $60–$145 a ticket, and the day is capacity-bound rather than demand-bound — so start at 5–8 miles, or better, a named list of ZIP codes drawn around the neighborhoods you already route through. Repair calls justify 10–15 miles; installs run 20–30, because a multi-day $2,200–$4,800 job spreads the drive across days and the ticket carries it. Backflow is the odd one out: target the water district boundary rather than a distance, because a campaign crossing a district line makes compliance claims that are wrong on one side of it. Those distances are reasoned from the per-stop economics rather than measured, so tune them against your route data.
Most of what an irrigation account wastes is blockable in an afternoon, and the largest single source of it is manufacturer names. People search “Rain Bird 5000 nozzle” and “Hunter PGP adjustment” constantly, and those are people about to buy a $6 part, not book a $300 service call. Rain Bird, Hunter, Toro, Orbit and Rachio belong on the list alongside parts, nozzle, supply, Home Depot and Lowe's. Fire sprinkler deserves its own line: different trade, different buyer, and “sprinkler system installation” pulls it every time. And “backflow certification” is ambiguous between a homeowner needing a test and a technician wanting a credential, so add class, course, training and exam to the compliance campaign. One last thing to expect: the account will look terrible in January and spectacular in October. That is the business, not a fault in the campaign.
Local SEO: the map pack, and the category nobody gets right
Start with the thing that is wrong on a lot of profiles. There is no “Irrigation contractor” category in Google Business Profile — no “Irrigation system contractor” either, and no “Irrigation designer.” Contractors have raised the omission with Google directly, and published SEO advice in this niche still recommends picking a category that cannot be picked. Checked against the full list, what exists is “Lawn sprinkler system contractor,” and that is the correct primary for almost every company in this trade, with “Landscaper” and “Lawn care service” as secondaries where they apply. Watch the trap beside the right answer: two of the categories with the word irrigation in them are supplier categories, and choosing one tells Google you sell parts over a counter — which brings you the parts-shopper calls your negative keywords exist to keep out.
Reviews are the ranking currency, and this trade has a timing advantage almost nobody uses. Ask at spring start-up. The technician has just walked every zone, adjusted every head and handed back a working system, and the customer is standing in a yard about to go green. At blowout the technician arrives in the cold, drains the system and leaves them with something that does nothing until April. Text the review link as soon as the job is finished. And a plan customer produces two visits a year at 70–80% annual retention, so recurring customers feed you fresh reviews on a schedule.
If you work anywhere near a rebate district, the highest-value page you can build is the one that names your local number. Denver Water pays $30 for a WaterSense-labeled smart controller. Aurora Water, forty minutes up the road, pays up to $150 per station or zone, plus a partnership supplying a Rachio controller with installation valued at up to $523. Same device, same state, wildly different answer — and that number sits in utility PDFs no homeowner reads, while 61% of contractors already say rebates drive service demand. State the amount, link the qualifying-product list, offer to file the paperwork, and re-check it every season, because programs change and funding runs out.
Two more pages that should rank and mostly do not exist
- “When to blow out your sprinklers in [your metro]” — with a real date. The damage threshold is 28°F for two or more hours, not 32°F, and you winterize one to two weeks before the first forecast 28°F night.
- “Backflow testing requirements in [your water district]” — annual in Texas and Washington, at least annual in California, and in Florida it varies inside the same state. A generic “tested annually” page is wrong in a lot of markets.