Holiday hustle mode: get your home service business ready for winter calls

To get a home service business ready for the holidays, do five things before Thanksgiving: update your holiday hours everywhere, give your winter services their own pages, decide who answers the phone on holiday weeks, ask for reviews while jobs are fresh, and post the real work your crews are doing. Here is each one, in order.

The holidays are a funny season for the trades. Half your customers are calling about a furnace that quit the night before 14 relatives arrive. The other half want lights on the roofline by Saturday. And somewhere in there, your crew would like to see their own families. None of that is a good time to find out your Google profile still says "open" on Christmas Day.

1. Update your holiday hours everywhere, today

Your Google Business Profile has a special hours setting for holidays. Use it for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day. Then match those hours on your website, your Facebook page, and anywhere else you are listed.

• If you offer emergency service on holidays, say so plainly, with the number to call.
• If you do not, say that too, and say when you are back. A clear "closed Thursday, back Friday at 7 AM" beats a full voicemail box.
• Check that your phone number is tappable on mobile. Someone standing in a puddle from a burst pipe is not copying and pasting.

2. Give your winter work its own page

When a homeowner searches "furnace repair near me" or "holiday light installation" plus their city, Google looks for a page that answers exactly that. One general services page rarely does. A short, specific page for each seasonal service gives Google something to show.

• HVAC: furnace tune-ups, heat pump checks, and no-heat emergency calls.
• Plumbing: frozen and burst pipes, water heater replacement, and outdoor faucet winterizing.
• Electrical and roofing: holiday lighting installation and takedown, generator hookups, and storm and ice damage checks.
• Pest control: rodents moving indoors for the winter and overwintering pests.
• Contractors and remodelers: spring projects like decks, fencing, and kitchen remodels, which many homeowners start planning over the holidays.

Each page should answer the questions people ask before they call: what the service includes, which areas you cover, and how fast you respond.

3. Decide who answers the phone on holiday weeks

This is the one most companies skip. Holiday weeks are short-staffed, and a lead that waits until Monday has often called someone else by Saturday morning.

• Pick a person or an answering service for each holiday week, and write it down where the whole team can see it.
• Set an automatic reply on your web forms that says when people will hear back, and then keep that promise.
• If customers can text you, make sure someone is watching the texts. A text at 9 PM on a holiday still counts.

4. Ask for reviews while the job is still warm

Winter jobs make great reviews. A family that got their heat back on December 23 is about as grateful as a customer gets. Ask the same day, with a direct link to your Google review form. Then reply to every review, the five-stars and the not-so-five-stars, because future customers read your replies too.

Recent reviews matter to homeowners deciding who to call. A steady trickle all season looks better than a burst in spring and silence the rest of the year.

5. Post what you are actually doing

You do not need to post 10 times a day in December. You need to post real work, consistently. Your crews create content every single day; somebody just has to point a phone at it.

• A 20-second clip of a furnace tune-up, with one tip homeowners can use.
• Before and after photos of a holiday lighting install.
• A quick "how to keep your pipes from freezing" checklist.
• A thank-you to the crew working the holiday shift.

One tip: post the helpful stuff before the cold snap, not during it. When the freeze hits, you will be too busy to film anything, which is a very good problem to have.

Quick answers

When should a home service business start holiday marketing?

Early November is a good target. Update your hours, your seasonal pages, and your Google Business Profile so everything is in place before Thanksgiving week. New pages can take a while for Google to pick up, so earlier is better.

Should a home service business run holiday discounts?

Only if the math works for your business. Plenty of home service companies skip discounts and win on speed, reviews, and being easy to book. On a cold night, a fast answer is worth more to most homeowners than a coupon.

Get these five things in place this month and the holiday rush becomes something you are ready for instead of something you survive. If you want help deciding what to fix first for your trade and your market, get your custom plan.

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