When it comes to running an HVAC business, sometimes the most difficult thing isn’t the work itself — it’s getting the phone to ring. Marketing is playing an increasingly important role when it comes to the survival of an HVAC business. While it can be a complex and sometimes expensive endeavor, it’s also one that can pay dividends down the road.

The days when simply having the company listed in the Yellow Pages are long gone — today’s consumer makes many of their judgments based on a company’s online presence, which means a marketing strategy is something to take seriously. To cut through some of the noise, Adam Smith, vice president of Channel Marketing at Mediagistic, and Jennifer Helton, account development manager at Mediagistic, gave business owners a crash course on what it takes to deploy a successful, multi-faceted marketing campaign during the AHR Expo, held in Chicago this January.

Marketing Strategies

Before jumping in headfirst, it’s important to define the overall goal of the marketing campaign.

“Are you trying to get new customers?” Helton asked. “Could it be potentially growing your brand equity in the market? Do you want more of a household-recognized name? Or do you want to increase your maintenance plans?”

After setting that goal and determining what to accomplish, he said, the first step is to evaluate the risk involved.

“How much do you have to lose?” he said. “What is it going to cost? What's the upside? The best-case scenario? What's the worst-case scenario? And is this something that you can do yourself? Do you have somebody that works for you that can do this? Or do you need to hire somebody, like an agency or an individual? These questions should all be part of the evaluation process.”

Finding the right geographic and demographic areas to target first can help minimize waste and maximize exposure to the clientele that will actually be interested in HVAC services.

Options here vary, whether it’s broadcast or social media, outdoor advertisements, a print ad in a trade magazine or local newspaper, or sponsoring a softball team. Which channel is best for a certain business depends on who the target audience is and what the goal of the campaign may be — Is it residential? Commercial? Schools? Hospitals? Agriculture?

Once that avenue has been established and the message is more likely to get to that prized base, other things like competition, market size, existing brand presence, and budget need to be factored in.

If this seems overwhelming, it's also ok to start small and evaluate the success of the campaign before scaling up, to avoid wasting time or resources on ineffective strategies. It’s also important to stay flexible. Sometimes these campaigns need some time to develop, so don’t give up if things aren’t producing results right away.

Branding

Arguably, the most important step to developing a marketing campaign that’s going to enjoy a measure of prolonged success is to establish a brand — an identity that will help a contractor stand out from the competition and build a loyal customer base.

When it comes to branding on socials, Smith and Helton suggest packing as much information as possible onto those pages, as more detailed information equates to a higher chance of being noticed by web scrapers.

"Google is asking businesses to include their social links in their Google Business profiles to harvest information from those links — if you're a business owner, definitely take advantage of this,” Smith said. “Don't let Google guess what your Facebook page is, what your Instagram page is. If you use TikTok or LinkedIn or any of the other social networks, tell them specifically so they can find it, and it can help provide more potential customers with a better experience."

While spreading the message across different channels is important, so is consistency. Think about Disney — its font, its characters, and its music are immediately recognized. Its brand is worldwide and, while some specifics may vary from country to country, all the basic elements remain the same. Having two different logos for a Facebook and X page will likely cause confusion, and it might be enough to sour a potential client entirely.

Research has shown customers will choose a familiar brand over an unfamiliar one more often than not, so getting a brand presence and familiarity within the relevant market is crucial.

“Type in ‘a/c repair’ and (a potential customer) will be presented with 20 different options — what makes them choose the one that they do is ‘I’ve seen them on Facebook, I’ve heard their ads on the radio, I’ve got their direct mail in my mailbox, my friends and family have used them before and told me about them,’” Smith said.

The All-Powerful Search Engine

Search engines are becoming the first, and sometimes only, place a potential customer turns to once something goes wrong, and it should also be the first place a contractor should hope to be noticed.

Getting to the top of the search results is a Herculean task that won’t happen overnight, but it also won’t happen at all if businesses don’t put in the legwork.

Google has various marketing tools available, including organic results, Google ads, Local Service ads, and knowledge boxes. Using tools like Google’s local service ads is a good way to stimulate leads, but Smith said that typically doesn’t go far enough and alone may not drive enough leads for a business.

AI is also promising to take over a bigger share of how search results are generated, especially as Google's LLM (Large Language Model) continues to improve and provide more specific and customer-tailored answers by changing the way it gathers information.

“It's pulling data from different sources to try and give a more complex answer to a more complex question,” Smith said. “So I'll give you an example — you can ask this particular generative AI and say, ‘Okay, I want to go on vacation at the end of March to Chicago: I'm going to bring my two boys, they're age 9 and 13. They like sports, they like activities, and one of my kids is allergic to peanuts and sesame.’ So obviously, devoid of a really, really specific travel blogger, you're not going to find all that information on one particular website, right? It has to pull data from different information or from different data sources. And that's what generative AI is trying to do."

With AI crawling the web to grab more answers, that only again reinforces the importance of getting as much information about a business as possible online.

Risks, Results, and Other Considerations

The HVAC businesses that are thriving typically all have one thing in common — they took a risk and thought big. If a business is going to opt to spend its hard-earned money on a marketing campaign, it pays to do some research before forking over the cash and, sometimes it just makes more sense to hire a professional to get things off the ground.

There are several ways businesses can measure if their investment is paying out, and a business should establish these metrics with a marketing firm before starting a campaign.

There are a lot of ways to determine an ROI, so that will vary from business to business. Website traffic, lead generation, or whatever it is the company is looking to accomplish, make sure that the goal is clearly stated and laid out from the onset.

Data gathered during a campaign can help to target specific customer demographics, preferences, and behaviors, allowing contractors to really hone in on where to spread their message. Using market trend data, patterns will emerge, and those identified patterns can be used to guide future campaigns.