The 90-day storm pre-build: what to have ready before the front
On event day the out-of-town crews are already knocking. If you are writing ad copy that afternoon you have lost. Everything below should exist and be paused before the season starts.
Why this is an operations checklist, not a marketing one
The advantage in storm restoration is not creative quality. It is that on the day, the only remaining decision is where to point the budget.
Every hour spent building during peak demand is an hour of the most valuable window of your year spent on setup. The work is identical whether you do it in February or the afternoon of the hail — it just costs vastly more in the second case.
90 to 60 days out: build and pause
- Campaign shells, built and paused. One per service line, with ad groups already structured. Paused, funded, waiting.
- Landing pages tested. Loading fast on a phone, on a bad connection, because that is the condition they will be used in.
- Creative library. Multiple angles written and approved now, so you are not getting copy signed off while the phone rings.
- Tracking verified end to end. Submit a real test lead and follow it into the CRM. Do this in February, not in June.
60 to 30 days out: the geo and trust layer
- A geo playbook. Which ZIPs, in what order, at what budget, based on where damage actually lands rather than on county boundaries. Written down, so whoever is awake can execute it.
- Licensing and insurance proof, published. The homeowner who was just knocked by an out-of-state truck goes online to check who is legitimate. Make that answer easy to find.
- Review velocity. Reviews accumulated before the season, not requested during it. In peak nobody on your team has time to ask.
- Crew and subcontractor capacity confirmed in writing. Signed contracts you cannot service are worse than contracts you never signed.
30 days out to event day: the runbook
One page. Who does what, in order, in the first 24 hours.
- Who turns campaigns on, and who is the backup if that person is asleep.
- Who sets the geography, from what data source, and how it gets narrowed as better information arrives.
- Who answers the phone, including the overflow plan for hour three when volume is nothing like normal.
- Who pauses spend in ZIPs under active evacuation, and how fast. This is a reputational item, not a compliance one, and it matters.
- What the daily review looks like for the first week — one metric, one decision, once a day.
If the answer to any of these is "we will figure it out," you will figure it out during the most expensive 72 hours of your year.