Which months should a contractor advertise, and which should go dark?

When should an exteriors contractor stop advertising for the season?

In the months that carry under 5% of annual revenue. At the eight-figure Toledo exteriors company where I direct marketing, November plus December carry about a tenth of the year and January plus February between 8% and 13%, while April plus May carry 20% to 25%. Broadcast goes dark from mid-November to mid-February and the money is spent from March on.

What does a year of exteriors revenue look like by month?

I put four years of monthly net revenue, 2022 through 2025, on one sheet, and the shape is the same every year with the peak moving a few weeks. January and February together were 9.9%, 12.5%, 13.1% and 7.9% of the year. April and May together were 22.3%, 20.4%, 24.5% and 25.3%. November and December together sat around a tenth, with December in the last year partly a placeholder because the books had not closed when the sheet was built, so treat the ranges as the finding and not the decimals. That is a company-wide curve across both of our markets, not Toledo alone, which is the one caveat on it.

Nothing about the shape is surprising to anyone who has sold siding in Northwest Ohio in January. What was surprising was putting the media calendar next to it and seeing that broadcast had been running through the two months that produced the least.

Why did I pull broadcast for three months?

Cost. TV at our company has run between 32% and 41% cost of marketing every year since 2022 as the CRM attributes it, above our blended number in every one of those years. Carrying that through the three months when almost nobody in the market is pricing a roof was a cost I could not justify. The winter buy is a nice-to-have, a share-of-voice argument, and at that percentage the business could not afford a nice-to-have. For the 2025 off-season I pulled TV and radio from the middle of November to the middle of February, and we are doing it again this winter. Jobsite mailers, which only make sense when there are jobsites, come off in mid-September and go back on March 1 for the same reason.

The agency fought it hard. Their argument was the one every broadcast rep makes, that a brand owns the market by never leaving it, which I understand and which would be right for a shop that could afford it. I told them to shove it, politely, and the flight went dark.

What does the dark period cost that I cannot see?

I do not know, and that is the honest answer. Broadcast’s halo lands in the CRM under Google organic and repeat. If organic softens in March I will not be able to say whether the dark period caused it (Why does my CRM say radio and TV don’t work?). What I can watch is branded-search impressions by week through the dark window and into March, and that is the read I am using, and it is a thin one.

Where this is wrong

For a brand new to its market the winter is when the name gets built, and going dark before anyone knows the name is how a shop stays unknown. For a trade that books in winter, an HVAC company in a Toledo January, the whole curve is inverted and this note is backwards. And for a shop whose broadcast runs at 15% rather than 35%, the share-of-voice argument may well be worth the three months. The decision is a cost decision about a specific channel, not a rule about winter.

What to do

• Tonight: pull net revenue by month for the last three years from the CRM and compute each month’s share. It takes twenty minutes, and it usually shows two or three months that do not deserve a media buy.
• This quarter: set a dark window for every channel whose cost of marketing runs above the blended number, and tell the vendor the dates before the renewal conversation, not after.
• Ongoing: pull branded-search impressions weekly through the dark window. If they fall, the halo was real and the window was too long. If they hold, the money was not doing what the vendor said.

Sources: Company-wide monthly net revenue 2022 to 2025 from the sales-by-month sheet (December 2025 partly a placeholder); Lead Perfection “Cost of Marketing by Source,” Toledo, TV line, 2022 to 2025. Dark-period dates as decided by the author.

Related notes