Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
Six-month season, three fire types, one weather pattern that books or breaks you
Chimney sweeping is a brutally seasonal business. The bookings are 80% concentrated in April, May and June (when householders feel the first cold mornings and remember the chimney), with a long tail into July. The other six months of the year you're chasing maintenance contracts, gas-log fire servicing (which is now bigger than wood-burning in most metro areas) and the occasional emergency draught-test or smoke-leak diagnostic. The work itself splits three ways: traditional wood-burning chimneys (real creosote build-up, real fire risk, AS/NZS 2918 compliance, council fire-restriction season considerations), gas log fires (Coonara, Jindara, Aussie Heating, Real Flame service calls, blocked burner ports, pilot assemblies), and open-fire safety inspections (insurance and tenancy requirements). Each has its own customer, its own ad copy, its own price point. Most sweeps run one generic 'Smith Chimney Sweep' page that says 'we clean chimneys' and ranks for none of the long tail. Meanwhile the customer who Googles 'chimney sweep near me' on the first cold night in May gets routed to an Airtasker handyman with a vacuum cleaner who doesn't know what creosote is, doesn't carry a carbon-monoxide detector, and isn't legally certified to sign off on AS/NZS 2918. The booking that should have been yours in April becomes someone else's emergency callout in June.
Good chimney-sweep marketing is three things, in this order: a pre-season campaign that's live by late March (when the first cold morning lands, the customer Googles, and you need to be already top-of-page rather than scrambling), three discipline-specific pages so the wood-fire customer, the gas-log customer and the safety-inspection customer each land somewhere relevant, and a brand-specialist sub-set targeting the gas-log brands (Coonara, Jindara, Aussie Heating, Real Flame, Saxon, Nectre) where the customer's actually searching for a service tech who has touched their model before. The trust spine across all three is carbon-monoxide testing, AS/NZS 2918 compliance, and creosote-level reporting (a photo of the flue before and after, with a written safety classification). Add an annual maintenance contract page that converts the one-off customer into a recurring booking, and a council fire-restriction compliance check page for the customers who got a notice from council. Get this right and the April-June rush books out by mid-March.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around the seasonal reality: pre-season campaign live by late March, peak bidding April-May, scaled back to maintenance and gas-log servicing from July, picked back up for the council-fire-restriction season. Splits the plan across the three fire types so wood-burning customers, gas-log Coonara and Jindara owners, and open-fire safety inspection customers each get their own funnel rather than fighting for a generic 'chimney sweep' slot.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying for hosting plus a CMS subscription, and ships a three-pillar structure (wood-burning / gas log / open-fire safety) instead of one generic homepage. Spins up regional pages for the wood-fire postcodes you actually drive to (Blue Mountains, Southern Highlands, Hunter, regional Vic, regional Tas where wood fires still dominate), each with creosote-grading photos, AS/NZS 2918 sign-off and CO testing called out. Annual maintenance contract page that turns one-off customers into recurring bookings. Two taps to push live.
Goes through your live site for the things that actually move local rankings in a safety-led category: discipline-specific H1s, brand-name sub-pages for Coonara, Jindara, Aussie Heating, Real Flame, Saxon and Nectre gas-log work (the customer searches for the brand of fire they own), schema for chimney-sweep (not generic 'cleaning service'), internal links from regional pages into the carbon-monoxide and AS/NZS 2918 compliance pages so the trust spine compounds, and a Google Business Profile rebuilt around fire types. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes.
Runs Google Ads on the seasonal cycle that actually works: pre-season campaign live by 20 March on 'chimney sweep [suburb]', 'flue cleaning [suburb]', 'creosote removal'; peak bids April-May when the booking-intent traffic is highest; brand-specific ad groups year-round on 'Coonara service [city]', 'Jindara service [city]', 'Aussie Heating fire service'; scaled back by July to maintenance contracts and gas-log servicing. Drops bidding on generic 'chimney' broad. Council-fire-restriction compliance ads turn on when the season notices go out.
Turns every job into a post: a grade-3 creosote clean in Wentworth Falls, a Coonara burner-port service in Bowral, a draught test on a 1920s open fire in Adelaide, a cowl replacement after a possum got into the flue in Mount Macedon. Builds the safety-led trust spine that wins the customer Googling 'chimney sweep carbon monoxide' before the first cold night. You take one rooftop or fire-side photo per job, the agent drafts the caption in your voice, you approve.
Drafts the long-form pieces customers Google in March and April: 'how often should I sweep my wood fire', 'creosote grade explained: when is your flue dangerous', 'is my Coonara safe: gas-log fire annual service checklist', 'AS/NZS 2918 chimney compliance explained', 'carbon monoxide and your gas log fire: the symptoms to look for'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, that pull the safety-conscious customer onto your site before they ring.
Your first 30 days.
- Site imported, hosting bill cancelled
- Annual plan against the seasonal cycle delivered by Sam
- Google Business Profile rebuilt as 'Chimney Sweep' with fire-type and brand attributes
- Three regional pages live for your core wood-fire areas
- Brand sub-pages drafted for Coonara, Jindara, Aussie Heating, Real Flame
- Pre-season Google Ads live on 'chimney sweep [suburb]' and 'flue cleaning'
- Carbon monoxide and AS/NZS 2918 compliance pages drafted for approval
- First fortnight of rooftop and creosote captions queued in your voice
Chimney sweeping is a calendar business pretending to be a year-round one. Whoever owns the SERP in April and May owns the next six months of work, and whoever doesn't ends up chasing maintenance contracts and gas-log servicing through winter. The wood-fire customer who books on the first cold night was supposed to book in early April, but didn't, because nobody reminded them. Pre-season ads, regional pages by wood-fire postcode, brand pages by gas-log model and a safety-led trust spine across all of it is the marketing that actually fills the diary.
Agencies are too dear to actually run the pre-season campaign, the three-pillar site and the brand pages for $3.5k a month. DIY tools are cheap but you set the bids on the kitchen table in mid-May when the rush is already booked elsewhere. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the pages, launch the April-June ads ahead of the rush, post the creosote-grade jobs, and rebuild your Google Business Profile around the fire types you actually service. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day. Stop watching the pre-winter rush book out to a handyman with a vacuum cleaner.