When are tradespeople busiest? Enquiries month by month, by trade

Tradespeople ask us this all the time: when’s the busy season? So we counted. This is every Facebook lead form sent to our clients’ ads, month by month, for October 2025 to September 2026. We also compared each trade with the year before, so you can see which patterns held up and which were one-offs.

How to read these charts

Each bar is one month. 100 means an average month for that trade. 130 means 30% more enquiries per business than average; 70 means 30% fewer.

We count enquiries per business that ran ads that month, not the total. Our client numbers grew a lot over the period, so raw totals mostly show Lead Wave growing, not the season. Months with fewer than 5 businesses in a trade are left out.

Tree surgery: a clear summer peak

This is the strongest pattern in the data. May to August ran 19% to 38% above an average month in 2026. The year before showed the same shape: May to September all above average, with July the peak. November and December were the quietest months both years, at around 60 to 70.

The winter dip is real but not empty: the quietest month, December 2025, still brought in 60% of an average month.

If you’re a tree surgeon, the rest of the story is in how to get more tree surgery work.

Roofing: strongest early in the year

January to March ran above average in 2026, with February and March both 34% up. The year before, January and March were above average too (February wasn’t). October was the quietest month in 2026 and one of the quietest the year before, at 73 and 74. The year before, November was lower still.

The rest of the year moved about. November was well above average in one year and well below in the other, and summer was a little above average one year and a little below the next. We wouldn’t plan around those months. Roofing has the most businesses in the data (61 to 76 a month), so the early-year lift is the most solid finding here.

Driveways and paving: March high, December low

March was well above average in both years (52% up in 2026 and 25% up the year before), and December well below in both (59 and 50). January and April were also strong in 2026.

Beyond that, the two years don’t agree. October was the quietest month in 2026 and exactly average the year before, and August was the busiest month the year before but only 10% up in 2026. Driveways had fewer businesses in the data (9 to 24 a month), so treat this as a rough guide. There’s more on winning driveway work in how to get driveway jobs.

Landscaping: one season so far

We only have one landscaping season with enough businesses to chart (March to September 2026, 5 to 11 businesses a month). In that season March was the strongest and September the weakest. One season isn’t a pattern, so read it as what happened in 2026 rather than what always happens.

What about carpet cleaning?

There weren’t enough carpet cleaning businesses to chart it fairly (2 to 8 in any month), so we’ve left it out rather than guess.

Why don’t we say why?

This data counts enquiries. It can’t tell you why a month was busy. Weather, house moves and school holidays all play a part, and so do things that have nothing to do with demand: how many businesses were advertising, what their ads were, and what ads cost that month. So we’ve stuck to what the numbers show and said where two years agree.

What does this mean for you?

• Know your quiet months and plan for them. For tree surgeons that’s November and December, for roofers October, and for driveway firms December.
• Book the busy season early. If summer is your peak, the enquiries that turn into July work start coming in from May.
• Quiet doesn’t mean dead. In every trade, even the quietest month brought in at least half an average month’s enquiries. They still need a fast reply and a follow-up.
• Don’t miss the evenings. Whatever the month, about half of all enquiries arrive outside 8am to 5pm. More in when do homeowners send enquiries.

How did we work this out?

• What’s counted: every Facebook lead form sent to Lead Wave clients’ ads. The full data runs from January 2024 to October 2026 (110,021 leads). The charts use October 2025 to September 2026, the last 12 complete months, and compare them with October 2024 to September 2025.
• One count per lead. Meta lists the same lead under several labels, so we counted one label only. We checked the data against a second export: 1,765 of 1,865 campaign-months matched exactly.
• What “per business” means: a business counts as active in a month if its ads brought in at least one lead that month. Months with fewer than 5 businesses in a trade are left out.
• How trades are assigned: each business’s trade comes from the ad it ran.
• Counts only. No names, no client details, no spend.