10 HVAC Marketing Strategies for Boosting Your Business

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

If you own an HVAC business, you probably know how competitive the HVAC industry is. There are currently over 119,000 HVAC contractors ¹ in the U.S., with new companies popping up every year. The chances are, your HVAC business is not the only one in your area.

Providing high-quality, professional services and using responsible business practices is no longer enough to keep a steady stream of customers hiring your contractors. Instead, you need to make your business stand out from the rest and encourage customers to choose you over the other options in your area if you want to maintain and grow your customer base.

Implementing effective HVAC digital marketing strategies can help your business remain competitive and continue bringing new customers to your door. Read on as our team at Weave discusses 10 HVAC marketing strategies for boosting your business in this highly competitive industry.

Create a Lead Generation Engine

In the marketing world, “leads” are people who show interest in your business and may turn into customers down the line. “Lead generation” is the process of creating interest around your business and HVAC services to accumulate leads, getting people one step closer to hiring you.

As an HVAC business, one of your primary goals should be to generate consistent, profitable leads through your business’s website. Typically, people transition from strangers to leads by following this pathway:

1. A person discovers your business through one of your marketing strategies.
2. The person engages with a call-to-action on your website to take advantage of an offer.
3. The person fills out an online form with contact information.
4. The person receives the benefits of the stated offer.

Let’s translate this pathway into an example scenario.

Imagine that your HVAC business is running a promotion for a $50 HVAC winter tune-up. A potential customer learns about your business by seeing this offer online or viewing some other promotional material.

The user navigates to your website and sees a form they can fill out to receive a coupon code for this offer. They fill out the form with their contact information and receive the coupon code in their email.

Now, your HVAC business has the contact information of a lead, and the lead has spent time learning about your business through your website. You can use the person’s contact information to reach out and encourage them to schedule with your company. Because they have already made contact with your business, they may be more likely to hire you.

However, to make this pathway successful, you must first start with the discovery phase. You can use several marketing strategies to help potential customers discover your business and begin the path from stranger to lead.

HVAC Marketing Strategies

1. Advertise on Google and Facebook

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements are ads your business pays for every time a user clicks on them. These ads are some of the most successful paid marketing tools you can use to improve your business’s brand awareness.

Google and Facebook provide easy-to-use platforms to publish PPC ads. While some businesses choose to work with one platform or the other, we recommend publishing ads in both of these spaces, as they each provide different benefits.

Google ads can promote your business to people who may be searching for related topics. For example, if someone searches for “HVAC near me” or even “how to know when your air conditioner is broken,” an ad for your business can encourage them to contact you for assistance.

Meanwhile, Facebook ads can reach people who may not be searching for an HVAC company directly but who can still benefit from your services. For example, you can create an ad campaign around the importance of scheduling a winter tune-up. These ads can target people who were not already planning to schedule with an HVAC company.

Overall, paid Google and Facebook advertisements can both be highly beneficial in promoting your brand.

2. Create Content for Social Media

Social media is huge in this day and age. If your HVAC business does not have any social media profiles, you are missing out on a significant opportunity to market your business for free. Today, many companies use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even TikTok to promote their businesses to various demographics.

However, the content you post to your social media pages is even more important than simply having a social media presence. Your social media content can provide the following benefits for your marketing strategy:

•     Increase brand awareness
•     Improve connections with customers
•     Personalize your business
•     Promote your services
•     Advertise coupons and deals
•     Encourage users to check out your website

Posting informative text posts, engaging images, and professional videos to your social media pages can go a long way in promoting your business for free. Ideally, you should post to your social media platforms at least several times a week to increase visibility and ensure that your followers remember your services.

3. Make Your Website Conversion-Friendly

A website conversion occurs when a visitor completes a desired action on your website. Generating conversions is one of the most important goals of your website. Without conversions, your website visitors would never become actual customers.

However, converting website visitors into leads and customers is easier said than done. Most website visitors leave a website if something has not caught their attention within eight seconds.² With this statistic in mind, you can imagine how challenging it is to encourage visitors to not only stay on your website but also fill out a form or complete another action.

Here are a few tips to make your website more conversion-friendly and encourage visitors to act.

•     Emphasize your unique selling proposition (USP): What makes your HVAC company different from the rest? Are your services more affordable? Are they faster? Your USP should be one of the most prominent elements on your website to leave no doubt in visitors’ minds why they should hire you.
•     Use strong headlines: Your headlines play a significant role in users’ first impressions of your site. Using strong, engaging headlines is essential to keep users on your site longer.
•     Include short forms: Filling out a contact form is the goal of many conversion strategies. However, if your form is lengthy or complicated, users will click away from it within a few seconds or less. Instead, you should make your form as short as possible and only ask for necessary information.

4. Do Optimize Your Site (SEO)

Your website can be full of high-quality, engaging content, but if users never find it, it will essentially be a waste of time and resources. Search engine optimization (SEO) is another critical step in marketing your HVAC business and converting strangers into leads.

SEO is the process of making your website more visible in search engines like Google and Bing when people search for related keywords. For example, if you own an HVAC business in Orlando, search engine optimization can help ensure that your business is one of the top results when people search “Orlando HVAC” or “HVAC company Orlando.”

Unfortunately, search engine optimization isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Google and other search engines use complex algorithms to determine what websites rank on the first page when users search for specific keywords. The following components contribute to your search engine rankings:

•     The user’s location
•     The written content on your website
•     Your domain’s age
•     Your website’s authority
•     Your website’s layout
•     The number of sites that include links to your website
•     Your website’s internal links

Learning the basics of search engine optimization and implementing a few strategies on your website can improve your rankings and website reach. However, you may want to hire a professional for more in-depth SEO services.

5. Create a Customer Referral Program

Your existing customers can also act as marketing tools. These customers know how reliable and professional your business is and have direct experience working with your contractors. When they tell their friends and family members about your business, they utilize a personal connection to market your services, effectively generating new leads.

However, most customers will not advertise your business to friends and family on their own. One effective way to encourage them to spread the word about your business is through a customer referral program.

Customer referral programs work as follows:

1. You provide a coupon code, discount, or other incentive that customers can share with their friends.
2. When a customer’s friend schedules with your company, the original customer then receives an incentive.

The incentives you provide through these programs can include coupons, gift cards, or even unrelated items, such as electronics or food. Just make sure that these incentives are things your customers actually want.

Overall, referral programs can increase customer loyalty, bring in new customers, improve conversions, and more.

6. Cultivate Business-to-Business Referral Relationships

While customer referrals can go a long way, B2B referrals can have an even greater impact. When a business refers a customer to another company, the customer usually takes their recommendation seriously.

Most B2B referrals occur across industries, not between. However, forming a strong, positive relationship with the other HVAC contractors in your area can also go a long way. You never know—if an HVAC business has too many customers on its plate, it may refer callers to your business instead.

Here are a few tips for cultivating B2B referral relationships within the HVAC industry and with other business types:

1. Network in your area: Networking is the process of developing professional relationships through exchanging information with others. You can network in your area by introducing yourself to other business owners and attending meet-ups.
2. Deliver high-quality services: Businesses will be more likely to refer you if they can count on your team to consistently deliver professional, trustworthy, high-quality services.
3. Refer other businesses: Referrals go both ways. You can’t expect a company to recommend you to others if you do not also recommend it to your customers.
4. Advertise commercial HVAC services: If you do not currently advertise that you provide commercial services, doing so is an important step in developing professional relationships with other businesses in your area. When business owners hire your team, they will see first-hand evidence of your expertise and authority.

7. Consider Direct Mail

Many people think that sending physical mail to potential customers is outdated. Does anyone actually open their mail anymore?

However, direct mail creates a valuable physical connection with potential customers. Whether they hang your mail on the fridge or keep it on the counter for a few days, they will have a tangible reminder of your business and services that could influence them to act.

Many HVAC businesses have found success mailing coupons to people in their cities. Others have increased conversions by mailing out reminders to schedule a winter tune-up before the first snow.

You can use any of the following types of mail to create this physical connection:

•     Postcards
•     Self-mailers
•     Catalogs
•     Letters
•     Branded magnets or calendars

Be sure that the mail you send invites your customers to act in some way, whether by calling your business, emailing you, messaging you on social media, or visiting your website. Your mail should also include information you think potential customers need to know, such as details about sales or changes to your services.

8. Text Your Customers

Many people prefer to send and receive text messages over calls. Texts are faster, easier to respond to, and less interruptive. It takes much less effort to send a text to someone than it does to call them and carry on a formal conversation.

With these points in mind, the benefits of implementing texting as a communication method for your business are clear. Thankfully, Weave makes it easy to allow customers to communicate with your business through text messages.

Weave is an automation platform that your business can use to send and receive text messages through your business’s phone number. You and your contractors can use the Weave app on desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices, allowing you to take your texting vessel with you anywhere.

Even better, Weave can enable you to send automatic texts to customers to:

•     Remind them about upcoming appointments
•     Encourage them to schedule an inspection or maintenance appointment
•     Follow up about work you previously completed
•     Inform them about specials and offers
•     Invite them to refer their friends

Weave can even interpret their responses for you, saving you the hassle of reading and responding to every message you receive. For example, if a customer is simply confirming an upcoming appointment, Weave can mark their appointment time as “confirmed” without your intervention.

Offering text messaging as a communication method can give potential customers the boost they need to reach out to your business. It can also improve your communication with existing customers, supporting retention.

9. Collect Online Reviews

Your business’s customer reviews can also act as a marketing strategy to convert strangers into leads. People often read reviews of a new company to help them decide whether or not to hire it. If your reviews are positive, detailed, and plentiful, potential customers may feel more confident hiring your business.

Unfortunately, many people do not leave a business review unless they have had a negative experience. Customers often need a little bit of coaxing on your part to leave a positive, helpful review of their experience with your contractors.

Thankfully, Weave makes it easy to collect reviews from customers and manage the new reviews your HVAC business receives. Weave will notify you every time you receive a new review on Google or Facebook, allowing you to read the review and respond accordingly. If anyone leaves a negative review, you can reach out to them to rectify the situation.

Weave can also encourage customers to leave reviews of your business after you complete an HVAC service. With Weave, you can automatically send a text message or email to every customer after you leave their property, inviting them to leave a review of your business.

10. Build an Email List

Sending emails to your potential and existing customers is another easy, free way to promote your business and inform them of special deals and discounts. One way to simplify the email marketing process is to keep a running list of your customers’ email addresses.

Weave makes it easy to organize your customers’ contact information, send mass emails to every customer in your database, and create custom emails from templates and stock images. Even if you do not have much email marketing or writing experience, you can use Weave to craft engaging, professional emails to promote your business.

Contact Us at Weave

Using effective HVAC marketing strategies is essential to staying competitive in this booming industry. Now that you know some of the top HVAC marketing ideas, you can begin creating a marketing plan to implement these techniques for your own business. Your first step? Adding Weave to your tool arsenal.

Schedule your free demo with Weave today to learn more about how this automation platform can benefit your HVAC marketing strategy.

In the next article of this series, we discuss how to get HVAC leads.

Read the Entire HVAC Marketing Series 

1. How To Get HVAC Leads: 10 Ways To Bring In New HVAC Customers
2. 5 Ways To Bring In New Customers To Your HVAC Business
3. HVAC Advertising Examples Proven To Get You Customers
4. How To Grow Your HVAC Business

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Resources:

1.https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-businesses/heating-air-conditioning-contractors-united-states/

2.http://interactivemarketinginc.com/landing-pages.html