5 Ways to Get New HVAC Contractor Customers

This is the fourth article in our five part HVAC marketing series. Links to the other articles are at the bottom of this page.

Running an HVAC business can be incredibly time-consuming. If you are like many HVAC business owners, your current workload probably doesn’t leave you with enough time in the day to even consider marketing your company and bringing in new clients.

However, marketing is the foundation of any successful business, and without it, your HVAC company may slant towards decreasing profits rather than growth. Thankfully, many of the best marketing tactics are relatively easy to implement and won’t take too much time away from your daily business tasks, especially with the right HVAC Business Software.

Read on to learn our tried-and-true tips for how to get HVAC customers through marketing.

1. Set Up an HVAC Customer Referral Program

One of the easiest ways HVAC companies increase sales is through customer referral programs.

When you continually create positive customer experiences, your customers should want to tell their friends and family members about your business. However, customers often do not consider referring your heating and air conditioning business to others without a referral program.

In a referral program, customers would have the opportunity to gain some type of reward for bringing new customers to your door. Most of these programs follow this general format:

You provide an HVAC service discount code or special offer that existing customers can share with their friends.
Existing customers’ friends use this referral code and schedule a service with your HVAC business, receiving a discount in the process.
You reward the original customer after the referred friend’s installed date.

This method ensures that referred customers follow through with a service before you reward your original customers, creating sales rather than just leads.

The rewards you supply in a new customer referral program can include:

A free indoor air quality service
Cold hard cash
Entry into a drawing for a referral reward check
Comfort club maintenance service for six months

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We recommend making your referral program rewards as enticing as possible to encourage your existing service customers to participate in your program.

Successful customer referral programs can produce a range of benefits for your heating and air conditioning business, such as:

Increasing brand and service awareness
Bringing in high-quality customers
Attach your heating and air conditioning business to other benefits

Referral programs are also highly effective, as word-of-mouth is one of the most influential sales tactics. Even better, these programs tend to be more cost-effective than other successful marketing strategies.

If your business is struggling to bring in new clients, introducing a referral program is an excellent place to start.

2. Create an HVAC Company Lead Generation Machine

The first step in bringing new customers to your HVAC business is to build interest around your services. As you probably know, not everyone who is slightly interested in your company will become a customer. As a result, having a large pool of interested individuals, or leads, will give you the greatest chance of converting some of those individuals to customers.

Lead generation is the process of deploying various strategies to increase interest in your business with the hopes that interested individuals will turn into customers.

A lead generation machine is different from a lead generation strategy. When you build an HVAC lead generation machine, you develop systematic strategies that your business can use continually to create interest in your company. These processes need to be highly effective to continue attracting potential customers and deliver adequate ROI.

There are several internet marketing strategies that you can include in your HVAC lead generation machine. Here, we will discuss three primary techniques that have proven effective for HVAC contractors: content marketing, SEO, and pay-per-click ads.

First, content marketing is the process of creating written and visual content for your website and social media pages. This content should be engaging enough to bring people to your website and convert them into leads. It should also be informative, allowing readers to learn more about your HVAC contractors and understand why they need your services.

Content marketing and SEO go hand in hand. HVAC SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of tailoring your web presence to push your business to the top of Google search results. SEO for HVAC contractors is a highly specialized process that involves numerous strategies, such as:

Including the right keywords in your written content
Linking to external websites
Linking to internal web pages
Using a relevant domain name

Finally, pay-per-click ads are advertisements that you pay for whenever someone clicks on them. Advertisements can go a long way in garnering interest in your HVAC business, and PPC ads, such as Facebook ads, tend to be some of the most effective ad types.

We recommend partnering with a digital marketing company that offers HVAC lead generation services to optimize your HVAC marketing strategy. Prioritizing lead generation and rolling out these strategies in the next few months can be highly beneficial for bringing new customers to your door.

3. Use Video Marketing To Get HVAC Leads

Creating HVAC marketing videos is another effective digital marketing strategy to bring new customers to your HVAC company. The chances are, other HVAC contractors in your area have already begun using HVAC video marketing to get HVAC leads. Failing to implement this strategy for your own HVAC company could place you behind your competitors.

Video marketing is one of the most valuable digital marketing strategies your HVAC business can use. Today, many people are much more likely to watch a video than read written content. Posting videos to your website and social media pages can spark viewers’ interest in your HVAC service, turning more people into leads.

Thankfully, you do not have to be an expert videographer or editor to develop high-quality video content for your HVAC marketing strategy. Most smartphones include impressive cameras that take top-quality videos. Additionally, you can edit videos right on your phone with a range of free editing apps.

Developing ideas for the types of videos you will create is one of the more challenging aspects of video HVAC marketing. Here are a few ideas your HVAC business can consider for your first few marketing videos:

Record yourself completing a common HVAC job, such as an air conditioner installation, to give viewers an inside look at your processes.
Live stream on social media to answer potential customer questions.
Turn digital marketing blog posts into videos.
Interview contractors in your HVAC business.
Highlight your favorite restaurants in your city to promote local SEO.
Announce major changes or updates to your HVAC company.
Create fun videos capturing social media trends.
Teach customers about how to identify common HVAC problems.

These ideas should give you a good starting point to develop an effective HVAC marketing strategy for your video content.

4. Market Your HVAC Brand on Social Media

If your HVAC business does not currently use social media marketing, you are missing out on an extensive outlet to reach potential clients and increase brand awareness. HVAC social media marketing is the practice of advertising your HVAC business on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

One of the primary benefits of HVAC social media marketing is its cost. Creating and posting content to Facebook and Twitter is completely free. While you can pair social media advertising with a Facebook ad campaign, you shouldn’t have to spend any money to market your business organically on a social media platform.

HVAC social media marketing also allows you to create various types of content to market your HVAC services, enabling you to engage different users in different ways to maximize ROI. For example, Facebook supports text posts, photos, videos, GIFs, and several other content types. Meanwhile, Twitter is best suited for short, one-liner announcements and videos.

Finally, because most social media platforms tend to be relatively casual, you can create all of your social media marketing content yourself without hiring a professional.

Here are a few tips for how to embrace social media for HVAC professionals to its fullest potential:

Use different strategies for different platforms: As we mentioned, various social media platforms tend to support different types of content. We recommend tweaking each social media post between platforms to engage the specific user base within that platform. For example, Twitter tends to be much more casual than LinkedIn, allowing you to create fun, goofy content to engage viewers.
Post consistently: Social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn use specific algorithms to determine what posts users see when they open their feeds. As a result, your followers probably will not see every post you make. Creating new posts every few days can ensure that at least some of your posts reach your audience.
Use social media marketing analytics to track your performance: Most social media platforms allow you to view your engagement metrics for free. We recommend examining these analytics regularly to ensure that your social media efforts are effective and worthwhile.

Overall, you should create social media marketing content with the goal of representing your HVAC business well and engaging potential customers.

5. Use an Automation Platform to Streamline Digital Marketing

Some marketing strategies may take up more of your time than others. However, using an automation platform like Weave can streamline several of the most critical tasks involved in digital marketing, allowing you to get back to what you do best: running an HVAC business.

Here are five ways Weave can assist your digital marketing strategy.

1. Reviews / Reputation Management

When consumers search for a new HVAC business to hire, they often read customer reviews for several companies, then choose the business with the most positive reviews. While it isn’t always possible to control what people say about you, reputation management helps you manage your customer reviews and encourage past customers to leave reviews of your business.

Weave can send you a notification every time a customer leaves a new review of your business, allowing you to respond efficiently. With Weave, you can also send automatic texts to customers after you finish their HVAC services, reminding them to leave a review of your company.

See more about Weave Reviews here.

2. Text Messages & Automated Reminders

Sometimes, the best way to increase profits as an HVAC business is to encourage former customers to schedule services with your business again.

Weave makes it easy to send automated reminders to past customers to encourage them to schedule a new service with you. With Weave, you can create custom text templates to send to all customers a specified amount of time after you work with them. For example, Weave could send the following text to customers six months after you complete a service:

“Hi, [Name], this is [Contractor] from [HVAC Business]. Our records show that you are due for an air conditioning tune-up. You can click here to schedule your appointment.”

This automated text can reignite a personal connection with your past customers and create a sense of urgency surrounding your services, making former customers more likely to schedule with you.

See more about Weave Texting here.

3. Email Marketing

Reaching potential customers through email is an effective way to convert them from leads to sales. Thankfully, Weave makes it easy to send high-quality marketing emails to everyone within your database.

Weave includes numerous email marketing templates and stock images that you can use to craft engaging, professional emails to send to leads and customers. Better yet, once you load your customer information into the Weave platform, you can quickly choose the populations to send marketing emails to, saving you time.

See more about Weave Email Marketing here.

4. WeavePOP Phones

Maintaining positive relationships with your existing customers is, in some ways, just as important as bringing in new customers. One way to show customers that you care about their experiences is to demonstrate that you remember them every time they call your business.

WeavePOP can give you an easy way to manage customer information. When a customer calls your business, WeavePOP can show you a page with relevant information about the customer, including their:

Name
Age
Last service date
Next service date
Outstanding balance
Contact information

Not only does this information allow you to form a personal connection through the customer’s phone call, but it can also save you time by enabling you to complete several tasks at once. You can help the customer schedule their next appointment, pay their remaining balance, and send a reminder text all in the same phone call.

See more about Weave Phones here.

5. Team Chat

Creating unified communication amongst your HVAC contractors is also an essential step in maintaining positive customer relationships. If customers can tell that your team is disorganized or forgetful, they may be more likely to choose another HVAC business.

Thankfully, Weave can give your team a unified platform to send messages to one another from any device, ensuring that your contractors receive the necessary communications while traveling from appointment to appointment with Weave Team Chat.

Overall, marketing your HVAC business well is essential to bringing in new customers and remaining profitable. While implementing successful marketing strategies will take some effort on your part, Weave can simplify several processes involved in digital marketing, saving you time and money.

Read the Entire HVAC Marketing Series

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5 Ways to Bring In New Customers to Your HVAC Business