Home service marketing in Houston.

Houston runs about 43,100 searches a month across the six home-service niches we track — roughly 1.8× Charlotte — with demand concentrated in two categories and a year that peaks late rather than in spring.

Garage doors at 41% and pest control at 34% are three quarters of the tracked demand, while floor refinishing is 1.8% — among the thinnest of the twenty metros we measured (Google Keyword Planner, August 2026). The service menu that works in a pre-war Northeast metro points budget at a category that barely exists here.

September is the peak at 123 against an average month, November the trough at 76. That is a late calendar: the readiness deadline is August, not March, and a plan copied from a spring-peaking market will have its content and budget arriving a season late.

There is no published Houston case study on this site and we won't imply local proof. The method transfers: affordable cost per lead modelled per service line before launch, weekly optimization per channel, and reporting in cost per booked job rather than leads.

The per-niche numbers set the build order. Monthly search demand runs about 18,100 for garage doors, 14,900 for pest control, 4,500 for lawn care, 3,400 for landscaping, 1,500 for painting and 780 for floor refinishing. Competition is 42 out of 100, the same as Charlotte, on a market 1.8× the size — so the constraint here is coverage and timing, not difficulty.

Concentration cuts both ways. Three quarters of tracked demand sitting in two categories is an opportunity while both auctions behave, and a single point of failure when one of them turns — the thin categories here cannot absorb a budget that has to move. So the Houston plan is written with the floor in mind as well as the peak: what the account looks like in a November at 76 against an average month, and which channel carries each of the two big categories if the other one gets expensive.

What we look at first in Houston

• Demand concentration across the two dominant categories
• Cost-per-lead ceilings per service line before any spend
• Readiness against an August deadline, not a March one
• Tracking from click to booked job across a wide service area