A seasonal marketing calendar for Manitoba trades

The Manitoba year in four marketing seasons

We split the year into four seasons by demand rather than by the calendar:

Exact timing moves with the weather and with your region. Thompson's subarctic climate, with a mean January temperature of −23.4 °C according to its Wikipedia article, gives the north a longer surge and a shorter build season than the south.

Prepare: late summer to early fall

This is the most important marketing season for heating trades, and the one most owners skip because the phone is quiet.

Heating, plumbing and electrical trades:

1. Audit your Google profile: primary category, services, hours, holiday hours and photos.
2. Update service pages for furnace and boiler repair, replacements, frozen pipes and backup heat.
3. Check call tracking and your after-hours phone message.
4. Ask summer customers for reviews, so your profile looks current when winter searches start.
5. Set up and test Google Ads campaigns at a low budget, so they have learned before demand arrives.
6. Call your property managers and builders before the rush.

Outdoor trades: this is your busy season. The marketing job is to collect: photos of every good job, and a review request after every one.

Surge: freeze-up to deep winter

When the first deep cold arrives, heating searches jump and every competitor's ad budget runs out by mid-morning.

Heating, plumbing and electrical trades:

• Keep visible all day. Raise ad budgets for the cold spells, or concentrate them on the hours you can answer.
• Answer every call. A missed call during a cold snap is a lost customer. If your crew can't pick up, a fast text-back tool such as CallText.chat helps.
• Prioritise profitable work. If you're full, adjust ads towards replacements and high-value jobs rather than paying for calls you can't take.
• Reply to reviews quickly. Winter customers are often stressed, and a calm reply to a difficult review is read by the next customer.

Outdoor and building trades:

• Publish project pages from last season with good photos.
• Meet builders and property managers about spring work while they have time to plan.
• Keep a low, steady ad presence for quote requests on planned projects.
• Don't switch everything off; campaigns that stop completely have to relearn in spring.

Shoulder: late winter to spring thaw

This is the turning point. Heating demand eases; outdoor demand starts before the snow is gone.

Heating trades:

• Push maintenance, tune-ups and upgrades.
• If you sell heat pumps and are registered with Efficiency Manitoba, the air source heat pump rebate was $2,000 for a centrally ducted cold-climate unit and $1,500 for a ductless one as of October 2026, and the page described a $100 supplier bonus for applications with an F280 heat-load calculation completed before March 31, 2027. Confirm current terms with Efficiency Manitoba before mentioning them in ads.

Plumbing and restoration trades:

• Spring thaw can bring sump, drainage and basement water calls. In river communities this has a long history; Portage la Prairie, for example, was flooded repeatedly by the Assiniboine before the Portage Diversion was built, according to its Wikipedia article. Update spring service pages and ads before the thaw, not after the first call.

Outdoor and building trades:

• Launch ads in late winter, so the spring schedule fills before competitors wake up.
• Send last season's customers a note that you're booking.
• Contact lapsed referral partners.

Build: late spring to summer

Outdoor trades: you are busy. Keep the review routine running, take photos, and answer quote requests quickly. Avoid adding ad spend if your schedule is already full; shift it to the higher-value jobs you want.

Heating trades: steady service work. Use the quieter months to plan winter: budgets, pages and staffing.

Regional differences worth planning for

• Winnipeg: the surge is sharpest because competition is highest. Plan budgets so you can stay visible through cold snaps.
• Westman and the Pembina Valley: the farm calendar matters. Seeding and harvest are poor times to talk to farm customers about planned work; the weeks before and after are better.
• The southeast and Central Plains: growing communities bring building work, so builder relationships should be renewed in winter.
• The north: longer winters and a short building season. Outdoor work books early, and being reachable in winter matters most. See our Thompson and the north page.

Common seasonal mistakes

• Starting winter marketing in November, when it is already too late
• Switching ads off completely in the slow season
• Forgetting holiday hours on the Google profile
• Asking for reviews only in the busy season, so the profile looks dormant for months
• Promoting a rebate without checking that it is still open

Your 12-month checklist

1. Late summer: profile audit, pages, tracking, low-budget ads, review push.
2. Early fall: call referral partners; test after-hours call handling.
3. Freeze-up: raise budgets for cold spells; answer every call.
4. Mid-winter: outdoor trades meet builders and publish project pages.
5. Late winter: outdoor ads launch; heating trades push maintenance and upgrades.
6. Spring: thaw-related pages for plumbing and restoration; thank partners.
7. Summer: collect reviews and photos; plan next winter.

For help planning your own calendar, see our services, the areas page for your region, or contact us. We are a marketing and consulting service, not a contractor; we plan the season, you do the work.