HVAC Marketing 2.0 With The Local Omnipresence Framework
The local omnipresence HVAC marketing framework includes 10 core strategies to get more leads, book more jobs and increase the ROI on your marketing budget.
By establishing a solid online presence on the most important marketing channels, this strategy helps you build omnipresence in your city and become the go-to HVAC contractor.
What does omnipresence mean?
‘The state of being widespread or constantly encountered.’
Omnipresence is a concept that describes your level of visibility on the most important marketing channels that homeowners use.
The most important channels to reach homeowners are:
- Direct mail
- Referrals
Omnipresence describes the status that you achieve when your prospect can see you everywhere. They see…
- your homepage & blog articles rank on Google
- your business rank and being advertised when they search Google Maps
- your posts and ads on Facebook & Instagram
- your monthly or even bi-weekly emails from you
- your direct mail offers, deals and reminders from you
- you being recommended to them by friends
When your business has established omnipresence, prospects will see you, your content and your offers everywhere they are.
This will lead to you being perceived as the go-to HVAC contractor in your city.
And you being perceived as the go-to HVAC contractor in your city will ultimately lead to more leads, booked jobs and an increased return on investment on your marketing dollars.
This guide to HVAC marketing will go into each of the core strategies above, to help you establish and build local omnipresence in your city or area.
Here is a quick overview of what we’ll discuss:
- Website Design
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Local Search Engine Optimization (Local SEO)
- Reputation Management
- PPC Advertising
- Sales funnels & marketing automations
- Facebook Advertising
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Tracking & Analytics
Website Design
Your website is the absolute foundation for your HVAC online marketing success. Your website is the digital equivalent to your storefront or shop. Your website is the hub for prospects to gather the information they need in order to feel certain that you are the best HVAC company in their city.
Therefore it’s incredibly important to strategize, plan & execute your HVAC website design & website build well.
Here are the three most critical aspects to focus on and optimize for:
1. User experience optimization (UXO)
User experience describes the journey that a prospect who lands on your website goes through when interacting with your website.
A positive user experience on your website leads to a positive experience with your brand.
Since most new customers will have their first touchpoint with your brand via your website, it is paramount that their experience is as good as it gets.
Here are a few things to consider when optimizing your website for UX:
- Blazing fast load speeds (Everything under 1 second is premium)
- Unique and memorable design (colors, fonts, graphics, images, layout)
- Easy to find information (navigation & interlinking)
- Ability to chat with the business
You can test your website user experience with tools like Google Page Speed Insights (research more tools)
Optimizing your website for these factors at a minimum will guarantee a great user experience.
2. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization describes the process of optimizing your website for top rankings in search engines like Google and Bing.
Because what good is your website if it does not reach homeowners when they are searching Google to find an HVAC contractor that can replace or repair their HVAC system.
An HVAC website that is not designed and built with SEO in mind leaves a lot of potential revenue behind.
‘But Thomas, can’t I just do SEO with my current website?’
Yes you can. But it is inefficient and will cost you a lot more money than getting a brand new website built.
In 99% of all cases, optimizing an already built website for SEO takes more time, effort and therefore more money.
Here is why:
- Themes need to be switched (for load speed)
- Website layout and content needs to be rebuilt on new theme
- New plugins need to be configured and harmonized with website
- Taxonomies, website structure & navigation needs to be rebuilt
- …
And the list goes on, and on, and on.
If you don’t have your HVAC website designed and built with SEO in mind, you can expect massive drops to your existing rankings or not ranking at all.
For that reason, we include a new industry-leading website in even the smallest of our marketing programs.
3. Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
The third and last important factor to include in your HVAC website design and build is conversion optimization.
Conversion optimization is all about turning your website visitors into maintenance, repair & replacement leads.
Because what good is a website that delivers a great user experience, ranks high in search engines, but does not turn your website visitors into leads?
There are over 100 factors that go into optimizing your website for conversions. To keep it actionable, here are the 6 factors that move the needle most:
- Easy to understand & meaningful headlines
- Photos of your team, trucks & work
- Clear guarantees and warranties
- Attention grabbing call to actions
- Proof & trust on your website (awards, certifications, associations, publications)
- Benefits of the features that you offer
Optimizing and building your HVAC website with UXO, SEO & CRO in mind will provide you with incredible branding, with more visitors to your website that are looking for your services and a website that turns these visitors into leads and therefore increases your bottom line.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
In order to achieve omnipresence in your city or service area, it is incredibly important to nail your website SEO.
Your website SEO typically consists of ‘on-page SEO’ and ‘off-page SEO’.
1. On-page SEO
On-page SEO describes all activities that have to do with the optimization of your website rankings ON your website.
The most important part of on-page optimization is writing customer-centric content that is also optimized for search engines.
Here are some places on your website that need great content to rank:
- writing company specific content on your homepage
- writing high quality content on your service pages
- writing location optimized content for your service area pages
Here are some more things related to writing content on your website that will improve your rankings:
- writing 1 to 4 blog articles a month
- writing optimized meta titles & descriptions for each page
- optimizing your headlines (h1, h2, h3, etc.) on your pages
- updating your website content frequently
Writing fresh and new content is the most labor intensive part of great HVAC SEO. Another important part, yet not as labor intensive, is technical SEO.
Technical SEO includes, but is not limited to:
- XML Sitemaps
- Robots.txt
- Internal Linking
- URL Structure
- Canonical Tags
- Schema
- Website security
- 404s
- Site architecture
- Image optimization
These activities are oftentimes just ‘set and forget’ activities that need done once extensively and are kept up-to-date with smaller efforts over time.
2. Off-page SEO
Off page SEO describes all activities that increase your rankings outside of what can be done on your website. While not only consisting of backlink building, it is the main activity and goal of off-page SEO.
Backlinks are votes from the internet that your website content is great.
Since Google’s only goal is to display the best search results for any given query, they check how many links from reputable websites are pointing to your website.
The more high-quality links that are pointing to your website, the better you rank (in a nutshell… of course there is waaaaay more to it.
We have seen many oldschool SEO companies utilizing cloud stacking links, PBNs and other questionable ways of gaining backlinks.
While these tactics can work in the short term, in the long-term these tactics can actually hurt your rankings.
Google is smart. Google knows. Google gets better and better at determining who does things according to their guidelines and who doesn’t.
To get backlinks that are not biting your own butt after a couple of months, focus on
- Help a reporter out (connectively link) – a platform where you can share knowledge with journalists who publish content and link you
- Strategic partnerships with other local contractors that serve different niches who place a link on their website
- Sponsoring local organizations who place a link of their website
These ways of gaining backlinks do not only comply with Google guidelines, they also give you highly local backlinks which increase your rankings in the Google Maps!
To summarize:
Website SEO consists of on-page SEO and off-page SEO. You can nail your on page SEO and still rank mediocre on page 3. You can have the best off-page SEO and still rank mediocre on page 3.
Though, if you combine On-page SEO and off-page SEO, you will certainly land in the TOP 3 search results.
On-page and off-page SEO are like a married couple.
Together they are strong. They have unlimited potential. They can create something from nothing. Divided though, they are missing something.
Local Search Engine Optimization (Local SEO)
Your local SEO describes the optimization of your website and Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) for local search rankings.
Over the past 2 decades, Google has built a separate algorithm for local search.
This means that there is a special algorithm that evaluates your business based on your GBP and website.
To improve your rankings within Google Maps and the local three pack, you have to optimize your Google Business Profile (GBP) and optimize your website substantially.
57% of searchers are interacting with businesses that are displayed in the TOP 3 of the map pack and in Google Maps itself.
Ranking in the map pack and on Google Maps is essential to get high-quality leads that are looking for repairs, replacements or maintenance in your service area.
Google Business Profile Optimization
In order to rank well in Google maps, you have to optimize your Google business profile by
- Choosing the right categories
- Listing your services
- Updating your media regularly
- Writing great FAQs
- Posting updates and offers frequently
- Gaining more reviews on a weekly or daily basis
Website Optimization
In order to super charge your rankings in Google Maps, you have to optimize your website by
- Publishing hyper local content frequently
- Optimizing your website for geo-specific keywords
- Optimizing the keywords in your GBP landing page title
- Optimizing the keywords in your GBP landing page headlines (h1, h2, h3, etc.)
- Building a dedicated page for each of your services
- Building a dedicated page for each area you serve (city, subcity, community)
The better you optimize your Google Business Profile & website for local SEO, the better you will rank in Google Maps and the local map pack.
The better you rank, the more leads you will get. The more leads you will get, the more jobs you will book. And this ultimately increases your bottom-line.
Reputation Management
Reputation management contributes not only to better rankings in the local three pack and on maps, but also affects your profiles conversion rate big time.
The better your business reputation, the more visitors of your website and GBP will feel comfortable to reach out to you and inquire about an estimate or inquire for a service call.
Reputation management is all about getting more reviews, responding reviews and displaying your reviews.
But who has the time to reach out to every customer, respond to every review and post new reviews to the website & social media constantly?
That’s right.
This is why a solid reputation management system automates the process of getting, responding, and displaying your reviews.
This empowers you, your technicians and office to only focus on delivering great service and doing an incredible job in the field. The rest will be taken care of by the automation.
There are a lot of great platforms out there that you can use to build and automate your automated reputation management system:
This is really no rocket science.
It’s as simple as sending automated review requests to your customers, having somebody check and answer reviews on a daily and find plugins/services that help you distribute your reviews to your website and social media.
It’s a no-brainer in terms of conversion rate and rankings increases, compared to the effort it takes to implement this strategy.
PPC Advertising
PPC advertising for HVAC companies is one of the great levers that you can pull if you are in need of qualified leads fast.
By focusing on advanced PPC strategies, you can keep the cost per click and cost per lead low, while increasing lead quality.
Focus on various channels that you can address with PPC marketing. This allows you to spread your budget into multiple baskets to hatch your bet and become omnipresent everywhere.
Here are a few placements that can get you great leads at affordable cost:
- Search ads that show up at the top of search results
- Local service ads that show up right below
- Local performance max campaigns that put you in the local three pack and on maps
There are many other places you can advertise with Google, for example with banner ads to retarget website visitors or via YouTube ads to reach your target audience on YouTube.
The most important point of PPC advertising is to strategically allocate your advertising budget based on the placements and campaigns that will get you the best results.
In terms of advertising budget, we typically recommend at least $20 a day to start seeing an increase in leads and booked jobs.
Sales Funnels & Marketing Automation
Sales funnels and marketing automations are the secret sauce to scaling to 8-figures. They will help you turn more visitors into leads and more leads into booked jobs.
Typically a sales funnel consists of
- A freebie/lead magnet to get contact information & provide value (e.g Replacement cost online estimator)
- A series of automated email and text follow ups to engage with the lead
- A sales rep/team that reaches out to close the lead
While building a sales funnel can be quite and endeavor, especially if you have never done it before, you could also start with more simple marketing automations that can increase your visitor to lead & lead to booked job conversion rates.
1. The speed-to-lead automation
Speed to lead is one of the most important metrics to increase conversion rates from visitor to lead and lead to booked job. If your speed to lead is anything slower than three minutes, it is very likely that you are losing the lead to another company that picks up the phone or responds quicker to a web form.
If you are uncertain what speed to lead means, answer yourself these questions:
- How long does it take for one of your customer representatives to reach your prospect after submitting a form?
- How long does it take for a customer representative to reach back out after a missed call?
You can increase your speed to lead by automating some communications with you leads:
- Automated dial back after form submit (connects your CSR and the lead)
- Automated email after receiving a web form
- Automated text message after web form or missed call
If you implement these automations, your speed-to-lead will increase and hence your lead won’t feel the necessity to inquire with other companies.
2. Nurture automations
Ever had a lead that sent a webform or came in via the phone not schedule an estimate with your company?
It’s likely that this was either due to price or trust in your company. An easy way to build trust is to enroll every lead into a lead nurture sequence.
In that sequence you talk about:
- your unique selling proposition
- your track record as a company
- case studies & pictures of other jobs
- reviews of your customers
By simply incorporating such a sequence into your business, you can improve the trust in your company and increase the conversion rate from lead to booked job.
The world of sales funnels and marketing automations is huge.
Starting with these basic ones above will give you tangible results quickly. And from there you can improve month-to-month.
Facebook & Instagram Advertising
Facebook and Instagram have over 1 billion users and a multitude of data points worldwide.
By utilizing Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns, you can hyper specifically target homeowners in your service area.
You can specify your targeting to only advertise to homeowners with a specific household income, homeowners that are investigating companies to make a buying decision, specific genders, interests, age, you name it…
Facebook advertising for HVAC contractors is a great way to
- get more replacement, repair & maintenance leads
- Build brand awareness in your service area
- Retarget website visitors with irresistible offers
Depending on your budget and goals, the campaigns you choose are different.
If you are flush with cash and jobs but want to expand your fleet and service area soon, go with brand awareness ads.
Get a great videographer, have them shoot a cinematic brand trailer with 1-2 minutes of footage. Advertise the trailer on Facebook & Instagram and retarget people who have watched the video once you service their area.
If you need leads fast you can use Facebook & Instagrams on-platform lead campaigns. These campaigns will provide you with names, emails & phone numbers that you can then reach out to to schedule a replacement, repair or maintenance.
If you have great website traffic that does not convert as well as you’d like to, retarget them on Facebook & Instagram and make them a great offer. Free HVAC tune-up, $1,500 off a replacement, 2 years maintenance for free on every new install/replacement.
Facebook & Instagram advertising is an effective way to get you more leads, to book you more jobs and to increase your return on investment.
Social Media Marketing
Believe it or not, social media is a platform that many homeowners use to check on a HVAC company.
It’s not so much about the funny dancing videos or crazy-ass produced reels.
Homeowners visit your social media channels to get to know your company, your culture and your values. They are looking for signs that they can trust you.
In order to help them build the trust, it is important that you keep your social media channels (Facebook, Instagram & Google Business Profile) up to date.
You do not need to post every day, but once or twice a week is definitely helpful.
And as of March 2024, your activity on social media has become an overall ranking factor for your website and Google Business Profile!
Here is some inspiration on things to post:
- Team portraits & descriptions (builds trust and connection)
- Technicians at work and what they accomplished (establishes authority & expertise)
- News at the company (e.g. hires, promotions, offers, awards, etc.)
- Funny memes that relate to the customer (entertains and makes your brand more human)
- Content that helps your homeowners (e.g. the 10 mistakes when replacing your HVAC system)
By posting regular content about your company and your services, you will build trust and help homeowners decide in your favor.
Email marketing
Email marketing for HVAC companies is a simple, yet effective way to build trust, increase customer lifetime value and improve your customer retention.
Typically, good email marketing for HVAC companies includes a monthly newsletter, a monthly education email about important topics and maintenance reminders for changing air filters, scheduling tune ups, check ups and regular HVAC maintenance visits.
The goal of your email marketing is to provide more value your leads and customers, beyond the services that you offer.
By providing value through regularly, you ensure that your company stays top of mind when it comes to the question ‘Who would you recommend for an HVAC replacement?’.
If a customers friend is in trouble and needs a replacement, guess who gets referred to? Right, you.
Guess whose customers sit in the bathroom at 6 AM in the morning on the first Monday of the month and wait to read a newsletter? Right, your customers.
Guess who is incredibly grateful to receive important reminders for maintenance because their lives are so busy and they would have otherwise forgotten? Right, your customers.
Each email you send, if being of high-value, fortifies your positioning as the go-to HVAC company in your area.
Your email marketing is a fundamental, yet easy strategy to increase omnipresence, conversion rates, return on investment and client retention.
Tracking & Analytics
Tracking and analytics is probably one of the most important factors to ensure the success of your HVAC marketing campaigns.
Without knowing your numbers you will likely miss out on optimization potential and even waste money on activities that don’t create results.
And if you are looking to work with an HVAC marketing agency, then do not even consider working with them if they do not provide you with tracking & analytics.
No matter if you are running your marketing, your teams runs your marketing or an agency runs it.
Tracking and analytics help you to keep a finger on the pulse of the health of your HVAC marketing campaigns.
Your tracking and analytics dashboard should display your
- cost per lead (how much does it cost you to generate a lead?)
- Avg. conversion rates (how many leads end up becoming a customer?)
- cost per acquisition (how much does it cost you to get a new customer?)
- return on investment (what is the return on your marketing budget?)
Nothing else should be of importance to you in regards to your marketing dashboard. You should be in the know of these numbers at any given moment.
At any given moment you should know if numbers are trending up or trending down. If you are spending more or spending less on a new customer. If conversion rates are increasing or dropping.
Knowing this will help you understand which HVAC marketing strategies are working and which are not working.
To get a hold and better understanding of these numbers, it is important to implement
- solid call tracking (including leads, estimates & closed jobs)
- Traffic & UTM tracking
- SEO rank tracking
- Local maps rank tracking
Here are a few partner that we recommend to implement tracking:
- Call tracking: Call Tracking Metrics
- SEO rank tracking: ahrefs
- Local maps rank tracking: BrightLocal
- Traffic & UTM tracking: Google Analytics 4
By implementing these different tracking platforms & mechanisms, you will be able to create a marketing dashboard and have a finger on the pulse of your HVAC marketing campaigns.
Ultimately knowing at any given moment in time what your return on marketing dollars spent is.
Do you want help?
Imagine the advantage you can have over your local competition by investing into HVAC marketing strategies that put you in front of the 84% of HVAC customers who do not have a particular company in mind when searching.
The best way to implement the strategies presented in this guide is by finding an HVAC marketing agency familiar with your industry’s standards.
If you are looking for a quality HVAC Marketing Company, look no further than Top SEER Marketers. Our HVAC websites outrank even the biggest national competitors. Book a quick 15 minute ‘does it make sense’ call today to see if you might be a good fit!
