TL;DR: Hardscape off season marketing is the work you do in your slowest months so the next busy season starts with jobs already booked. Find your slow months from two years of job records, set next year’s lead target with simple math, and start the slow-to-pay work (SEO, your website, reviews) now so it is ready when demand returns.
Hardscape off season marketing is not about staying busy. It is about using the quiet stretch to fix what you had no time to fix in July, so the phone is ringing when your crews are ready. Citadel works with hardscape contractors across the U.S. from Fort Myers. The owners who plan their slow months have a simple edge: they are not waiting for the calls to come back.
What Should a Hardscape Company Do in the Off Season?
Use the slow months for three jobs: set next season’s lead target, start the marketing that takes months to pay off, and build up the proof (photos, reviews, a better website) that makes the spring leads close. Selling and installing come back later. This stretch is for the groundwork.
That is the whole plan. Everything below is detail on those three jobs. If you only do one, do the lead target, because it tells you how hard the other two need to work.
Brian Basik, who founded Citadel, owned a paver sealing company before this. In his words on the Citadel homepage, he “had to do all my marketing when I first started out because I couldn’t afford to hire anyone.” The slow months are when an owner in that spot finally has the hours to do it properly.
Why Is the Off Season the Best Time to Fix Your Marketing?
Because the things that matter most take the longest to start working. Citadel’s own FAQ says ads can generate leads in days while SEO takes months to ramp up, and a website build takes weeks. Start in the slow months and they are working by spring.
That is the case for winter marketing for landscapers and hardscapers alike: the work with the longest lead time goes first. Look at the lead times side by side:
- SEO: months to ramp up, per Citadel’s FAQ. Read our SEO page for what that work covers. Start it in the slow months and it is building while your crews rest. Start it in the busy months and you are paying for results that arrive after the rush.
- Website: a build takes weeks, as our website design page lays out. If your site is costing you jobs, the slow months are the time to rebuild it, and our website hosting includes content updates so the finished site does not go stale.
- Reviews: the jobs you finished this season are a pool of customers you have not asked yet. Our post on getting more Google reviews as a contractor covers how to ask without breaking Google’s rules.
Ads are the exception. They can start in days, so hold the ad spend until closer to the season. We plan campaigns around peak demand seasons in your area, and that is the reason.
How Do You Plan Next Season’s Leads?
Start from your revenue goal and work backward: divide the annual goal by 12, divide that by your average job size to get jobs needed per month, then use your close rate to get the leads needed per month. Without those numbers you are guessing at how much marketing to buy.
This is Brian’s own method, and he put it plainly on the podcast: take the annual goal, divide by 12, then ask “what’s my average job size? … how many jobs do I need to do per month to hit that number? And then what’s my close rate?” From there, he says, “I know how many leads I need to get at that close rate at that average job cost.” His warning is the reason to do it: “you’re just shooting in the dark unless you have targets.”
Pull the three inputs from your own books: last year’s revenue and your target for next year, your average job size, and the share of estimates that turned into signed jobs. We are not giving you example figures, because yours are the only ones that matter. Once you have the lead number, it becomes the yardstick for every idea in the next section. If a tactic cannot plausibly deliver its share of those leads, drop it.
For the wider menu of tactics and how fast each one pays, see our hardscape marketing ideas post.
Off Season Marketing Ideas That Fill the Spring Calendar
The best landscaping off season marketing ideas for hardscape owners are the ones that produce jobs in spring: Google Business Profile photos, a review catch-up, past-customer follow-up, a website refresh, and ads timed to start as the season does.
- Google Business Profile photos and updates. Google says photos and videos “show customers what you offer” and that local results depend on relevance, distance and prominence. Your finished patios from this season are the photos. Upload them while you have time. Getting the profile itself right starts with your category: see our post on the best Google Business Profile category for hardscape contractors.
- Review catch-up. Go through this season’s completed jobs and ask the customers you missed.
- Past-customer follow-up. A short note to last year’s customers costs you time, not ad spend. Keep it honest and specific to their job.
- Website refresh. Add your best finished projects, fix pages that are slow or thin, and make the call button obvious.
- Ads, timed to the season. Plan Google Ads and Google Local Service Ads now, and switch them on when your crews can take the work. LSA is pay-per-lead, so the timing matters.
Our marketing basics videos cover Google Business Profile and reviews if you want a short explainer before you start.
What Do Landscapers Do in Winter to Make Money?
Landscapers fill winter with work that does not depend on warm weather: winter maintenance, holiday lighting, firewood, equipment maintenance, training and certifications, learning design software, and marketing. Which ones pay depends on your market and your crew, so pick based on skills you already have.
That list comes from Unilock’s off-season guide for contractors, a paver manufacturer’s education page. It includes a line worth keeping: “Winter is oil change time.” One contractor it quotes says “There is plenty of work in the Northeast during the winter months,” which is a reminder that a slow season is not the same slow season everywhere.
Treat the list as a menu, not a plan. Holiday lighting and firewood are side businesses, and they only help if they do not pull your best people off the marketing and prep that decide the spring. Equipment maintenance and training are the easy wins: they cost little and your crews come out of winter better prepared.
What If You Work Where There Is No Winter?
If you work somewhere without a snow shutdown, your off season is whatever your own slowest months are, and only your records can tell you which they are. Pull two years of jobs by month, find the months where revenue dips, and treat those as your window.
Citadel is based in Fort Myers, where there is no snow to wait out, so we do not hand owners a calendar and call it the off season. Your slow months can come from weather, from your customers’ travel, from permit timing, or from your own scheduling. The only reliable source is your own data.
Do it this way. List every job you closed in each of the last two years, total them by month, and look for the months that run low both years. One year can mislead you, which is why you need two. Those months become your planning window, and the same logic from the sections above applies: set the lead target, start the slow-to-pay work, and time the ads for the weeks before your busy stretch begins.
How Do You Keep Your Crew Through the Slow Months?
Pay your crew well while the work is flowing, and let them bank that money for the slow stretch, so they are still on your team when it ends. Aaron Ness of Ageless Concrete in Madison, Wisconsin, does this in a market with a hard winter.
Aaron was a guest on the Hardscape Insider Podcast, and he described the problem directly: in Wisconsin “all concrete comes to… halt,” and “We hit a really hard slowdown when it comes to winter.” His answer is to pay well through the season with overtime so crews bank money “for eight, nine months.” That is one owner’s approach in one climate, not a rule, but it fits the point of this post: crew retention is planned before the slow months, not during them.
Brian’s line on the same episode is the marketing side of it: “you’ve got to start prepping before season so that when you start going, you’ve got jobs in the queue so that you can go full bore from March through November.” A crew that knows spring is already booked has less reason to leave. Hardscape business in winter comes down to that: either the next season’s jobs are lined up, or the best people are looking elsewhere. If you want to hear the full conversation, it is on the podcast page, and Citadel also has a webinar page if you would rather start there.
A Month-by-Month Off Season Marketing Plan
This table uses November to March as the example calendar. If your own records show different slow months, shift it. The order matters more than the dates: targets first, slow-to-pay work early, ads late.
| Month in your slow stretch | Focus | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Numbers | Pull two years of jobs by month, find your slow months, and set the lead target with Brian’s math |
| Month 2 | Foundations | Start SEO work, begin the website rebuild or refresh, and upload this season’s photos to your Google Business Profile |
| Month 3 | Proof | Review catch-up on completed jobs, follow up with past customers, add finished projects to the site |
| Month 4 | Launch prep | Finish the website, plan ad campaigns, and confirm crew schedules against your lead target |
| Month 5 | Go live | Turn on ads for the weeks before the season, and check that the jobs queue matches the target |
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a hardscape company do in the off season?
Set next season’s lead target, start the marketing that takes months to work (SEO, website, reviews), and build proof such as photos and completed-job reviews. Hold ad spend until closer to the season, because ads can produce leads within days.
When is the off season for hardscape contractors?
It depends on where you work and who your customers are. In a cold climate it follows the freeze. Elsewhere it is your slowest months. Pull two years of jobs by month, and the months that run low in both years are your off season.
Is the off season a good time to start SEO?
Yes. Citadel’s view is that SEO takes months to ramp up, so starting in your slow months means it is already building when the season arrives. Ads can start in days, so those can wait until closer to the busy stretch.
What do landscapers do in winter to make money?
Common winter work includes winter maintenance, holiday lighting, firewood and equipment maintenance, plus training and marketing for next season. Pick based on skills and equipment you already have, and keep your best people focused on spring prep.
Plan Your Slow Months With Citadel
If you are a hardscape, paver or concrete contractor who wants a plan for the slow months, schedule a strategy session with Citadel Hardscape Marketing or call 239-893-7050. We will look at your slow months, your lead target and what to start first.