A 12-month marketing calendar for UK trades
Trades know their seasons better than any marketer. Heating engineers brace for the first cold snap, landscapers for the first warm weekend, roofers for the first storm. The marketing mistake is to start promoting when the work arrives. By then everyone else is too. This calendar sets out, month by month, what to do in the weeks before.
The principle: market in the lull, work in the rush
Demand for most trades is seasonal and search behaviour follows it closely, with a lag of a few weeks. Homeowners start looking for a landscaper when the evenings lengthen, not when the lawn is already a meadow. Anything that takes time to work, such as a new service page, a review drive or a Business Profile tidy-up, needs to be done before that search starts.
Paid ads are the exception: they can be turned on the morning the demand arrives. But they work far better landing on a page built the month before. The calendar below is written for a general trades business and should be bent to fit your own order book.
January and February
The year opens with the heating trades still busy from winter and almost everyone else quiet. Homeowners are indoors, planning, and searching for the big spring projects: extensions, kitchens, bathrooms, new windows. Quotes requested now become jobs in April.
January is also when energy bills land after the Christmas period, which prompts searches about boiler efficiency and insulation. Ofgem's price cap for October to December 2026 was set at £1,723 for a typical dual-fuel household, up four per cent, and the January level will be announced in late November. Expect bill-driven searches to follow whatever that number is.
- Builders, kitchen and bathroom fitters: publish or refresh project pages and galleries now; this is peak planning season.
- Everyone: review and update the Business Profile, including hours and services, before Google's spring traffic arrives.
- Heating engineers: ask every winter customer for a review while the gratitude is fresh.
March and April
The first warm weekend changes everything. Garden searches jump, exterior work becomes possible and the quotes requested in January start converting. Landscapers, fencers, decking installers, exterior decorators and driveway firms move from quiet to overwhelmed in a fortnight.
Spring is also when the housing market traditionally picks up, bringing searches from new owners who want work done before they move in, and from sellers who want cosmetic jobs finished before photographs.
- Outdoor trades: have the service pages, photos and ads ready in February so they are live when the weather turns.
- Decorators, plasterers: target movers with pages about pre-sale and pre-move work.
- Roofers: spring surveys after winter damage; promote inspections rather than repairs.
May and June
Peak season for anything outdoors and for extensions and conversions that need dry ground. Most trades are too busy to market, which is precisely why the ones who automated their review requests and follow-ups earlier in the year pull ahead now.
Heating engineers have their quietest months. Boiler services, replacement quotes and summer installation offers fill the gap, and the homeowners most receptive to a summer boiler swap are the ones who had a cold week in January. If you kept their details, this is when to use them.
- Heating: run a summer service campaign to last winter's customers.
- Outdoor trades: capture photos of every finished job; this is next winter's marketing material, subject to the permissions covered in our guide to using job photos in marketing.
- Everyone: keep the review request going on autopilot.
July and August
The school holidays slow residential decision-making. Homeowners are away or saving for holidays, and searches for big projects dip. Trades on holiday themselves should set Business Profile hours and WhatsApp away messages accordingly, because an unanswered profile in August is still an unanswered profile.
Summer is the natural time to do your own housekeeping: website updates, new photos, a look at what the year's enquiries actually cost per job, and the sort of planning that never happens in March.
- Mark holiday closures on the Business Profile before you go.
- Audit the year so far: enquiries, jobs won, cost by channel, using the method in cost per lead benchmarks and their caveats.
- Window and door firms: start the autumn draught-proofing and replacement campaign in late August.
September and October
The second planning season. Homeowners return from holiday and think about getting the house ready for winter: heating checks, gutters, roofs, windows, insulation. Searches for boiler servicing climb through September and the first cold snap, whenever it falls, triggers the breakdown rush covered in our news piece on cold snaps, boiler demand and the marketing scramble.
Interior trades pick up as outdoor work winds down. Kitchen and bathroom enquiries rise again with homeowners who want work finished before Christmas, a deadline that creates urgency and shorter decision times.
- Heating engineers: service campaign in September, breakdown and replacement ads ready to switch on by October.
- Roofers and gutter firms: pre-winter inspection offers.
- Interior trades: a "finished before Christmas" message with honest lead times.
November and December
Heating is flat out. Most other trades slow through November and stop around the middle of December. Homeowners are spending on Christmas, not building work, but they are also at home, noticing the draught, the cracked tile and the kitchen that will not survive another year. The planning for next spring starts over the Christmas break.
This is the best time of year to do the unglamorous things that pay off in spring: service and location pages, the About page with a real face, accreditation numbers added to badges. The debate over how many location pages is too many is worth reading before you start, in service area pages: useful local SEO or doorway spam.
- Everyone except heating: build next year's pages and content while quiet.
- Set Christmas hours on the profile and the WhatsApp away message by early December.
- Heating engineers: capture every emergency customer's details for next summer's service campaign.
The calendar on one page
| Months | Homeowners are searching for | Busy trades | Marketing job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan to Feb | Spring projects, energy bills | Heating | Project pages, profile tidy, winter reviews |
| Mar to Apr | Gardens, exteriors, moving | Landscaping, exterior, roofing | Outdoor pages live, mover campaigns |
| May to Jun | Outdoor work, extensions | Almost everyone but heating | Automated reviews, summer boiler campaign |
| Jul to Aug | Less of everything | Steady | Holiday hours, annual audit, autumn prep |
| Sep to Oct | Winter readiness, pre-Christmas interiors | Heating, roofing, interiors | Service campaigns, breakdown ads ready |
| Nov to Dec | Heating, next year's plans | Heating | Build next year's pages, Christmas hours |
Frequently asked questions
When should a landscaper start advertising for spring?
Pages and profile in February, ads ready to switch on with the first warm weekend in March. Starting in April means competing with everyone else.
What should heating engineers do in summer?
Run a boiler service campaign to last winter's customers and quote summer replacements, when installation slots are easy to find.
Is December a dead month for trades marketing?
For most trades it is quiet for jobs but good for preparation. Homeowners at home over Christmas plan spring work, so pages built in December are found in January.