5 HVAC advertising ideas for increasing qualified leads

When looking for HVAC advertising ideas to grow your business, it’s helpful to filter all strategies through one question: Is this strategy designed to bring qualified leads into my HVAC business?

A qualified lead is a customer who is a) in need of your services, b) willing to pay for those services, and c) within your service area.

So how do you determine which advertising methods will work best for your business and bring you those high-value leads? As you consider and try out different options, it can be easy to put a lot of time and money into strategies that ultimately have little payoff, whereas some businesses aren’t even sure where to start.

To help you grow your HVAC business, here are five HVAC advertising ideas and how they can bring you qualified leads, starting with a free option—listing your business on Yelp.

5 HVAC advertising ideas for increasing qualified leads

1. List your HVAC business for free on Yelp

In the first part of this section, learn how you can set up a free Yelp Business Page and customize it for your HVAC business using 20+ free features. If your Yelp Page is fully set up and optimized with the free tools, then skip ahead to learn how Yelp Ads can help you grow your business locally.

80+ million people visit Yelp each month, and many of these users are highly engaged—they are high-intent users who need services and goods from a business. If someone is on Yelp looking up HVAC companies in a specific area, it’s because they need air conditioning repair or installation or some other HVAC-related service—and they likely need it quickly.

So it makes sense that 83% of users hire or buy from a business they found on Yelp, and 57% of users contact a business they found on Yelp within a day. This is why using Yelp is a solid strategy for increasing qualified leads.

Claiming your free Yelp Page

If your HVAC business has been operating for some time in your area, then chances are your HVAC business already has a Yelp Page, and you just may not have completed the claiming process.

Start by visiting Yelp for Business, and type in your business name. If your business already has a Yelp Page, it will appear in the dropdown. If your business doesn’t already have a Yelp Page, you can add it for free. You’ll then follow the instructions to complete and verify your information.

Using Yelp’s free tools

Once you’ve added and/or verified your business, you can now customize your Yelp Page by adding the unique details of your business and photos.

Here’s what a free Yelp Page can look like:

Note: This is a real example of a free Yelp Page that we found by searching for “HVAC services” within the Seattle area. 

You can see it’s full of information that helps your potential customers make a buying decision, including details like what services you offer and photos of your business. Plus, there’s a clear call-to-action (CTA) for a potential customer to request a quote for your HVAC services or request a call from someone at your business. These are free features that Yelp gives you access to once you claim your page. If you scroll down a little more on the page, you’ll also see the business’s services as well as highlights from customer reviews.

Customizing your Yelp Page can help increase the number of page visits you get from Yelp users. In fact, businesses with photos, website, phone number, and business hours listed on their Yelp Page averaged 7.6x more page views per month than businesses without that content. And the more people visit your page, the more likely you are to get a lead from someone needing your HVAC services.

When you use Yelp, you get access to 20+ free features that will help you get found by potential customers.

Here are some of the free features you can use to promote your HVAC business on Yelp:

• Add up to three relevant categories. At the minimum, make sure you have the “Heating & Air Conditioning/HVAC” category selected, but if your business also helps in other related areas, like insulation installation, add that category to your Yelp Page as well. This helps the right audience find your listing when searching on Yelp. See the full list of categories.
• Add all the services your HVAC business specializes in. For example, does your HVAC specialize in A/C Repair, air duct repair, heater installation, ductless A/C services, heater repair, electric furnace installation, etc.? If so, add it to your Yelp Page to let your potential customers know what services you offer (and so that they can discover you when searching). You can add as many services as are relevant to your business.
• Add your business website. You can link from your free Yelp Page to your business website.

  Tip: If you don’t have a business website—or if your site isn’t optimized to get traffic and generate leads—you can use Yelp as your main business page. But if you do have a business website, or are working on building one, we talk more below about how you can use your business website as a way to get more leads.

• Add photos. Displaying photos on your page helps establish trust and credibility with potential customers by showing them what type of experience they can expect with your business. To help increase customer engagement with your Yelp Page, add photos of your HVAC business—from images of awards you’ve won to your service vehicle and staff.
• Add business hours. Displaying your hours helps customers know when they can reach you and/or be serviced. Having accurate hours is also important because Yelp users can use the filter “Open now” when searching on Yelp, and you’ll want to appear in those search results when your business is available. A quick tip: Don’t forget to adjust the hours on any days you have special hours, like on holidays or for a staff outing.
• Set up your service area. Make sure your HVAC business shows up when customers are searching for businesses in the areas you service. This helps make sure that when someone reaches out to you, you already know they are within your service area and, thus, are a truly qualified lead for your HVAC business.

Plus, there are several ways to communicate with your customers through Yelp.

• Your customers can contact you directly through your business page and send a request for a quote or a request for a phone call. With the Request a Quote feature, you can even message with them directly without leaving Yelp.
  Tip: If you get messages from customers on Yelp but are struggling to turn those inquiries into sales, check out these four tips for responding to job requests. Or you can reach out to a designated Yelp sales team who can walk you through the best practices for turning leads into paying customers.

• You can respond to customer reviews. Yelp is a user-generated review platform, and this is one of its great strengths because as your business gets reviews and responds to them, you have the opportunity to create an established and engaged online presence that shows trust within your community. After claiming your page, you have the ability to respond to all reviews, either publicly on your page or privately via direct message.

Additionally, your potential customers can call you directly from the number you listed on your Yelp Page or click your website link to visit your HVAC business’s website.

When you log in to your free Yelp for Business account and scroll down on the home page, you’ll see your performance dashboard featuring key metrics, including your organic page views and a breakdown of your leads (how many messages, website visits, or calls you get from your Yelp Page). You can also see a chart that shows your leads potential with Yelp Ads (an estimate of how many leads per month your business can get by purchasing Yelp Ads).

You’ve read how you can list your business on Yelp for free by simply claiming your business and customizing your page, which gives your prospective customers the info they need to decide if you’re the right HVAC business for them. Think of your Yelp Page as a highly informative one-page website, where the main audience consists of those who need an HVAC company.

If you want to stand out and showcase more of your best work on your page, consider the Upgrade Package, which combines Yelp’s best tools so you can grab people’s attention and bring in more business. When you upgrade your page, you get advanced features such as:

• Business Highlights: Add eye-catching badges to highlight what makes your business unique.
• Logo: Look more professional and promote your brand by showing your logo on your page.
• Slideshow: This customizable feature allows you to choose the order of photos you want featured on your page and in search results.
• And more

Here’s an example of an HVAC business using Yelp’s Upgrade Package to further customize their listing:

Next, learn how you can get up to 2.5x more leads with Yelp Ads.

How to get more leads with Yelp Ads

When you invest in Yelp Ads, your business listing shows up in a number of key places on the site and app, including above relevant search results and on your competitors’ pages. This means you’ll reach even more high-intent users.

There are five primary benefits to advertising your HVAC business on Yelp.

• Benefit #1: Your ad is shown to customers actively searching for HVAC services within your area. The people who see your HVAC ad on Yelp are searching for HVAC services, so they probably need servicing—and more than likely need it soon—whether it’s air conditioning maintenance, air duct repair, pipe repair, etc. They aren’t just doing early research online to see how much HVAC repairs should cost; they aren’t scrolling through their Facebook feed and randomly coming across an HVAC ad. Instead, Yelp users are high-intent consumers currently searching for and in need of HVAC services.
• Benefit #2: You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Select your maximum monthly ad budget and you’re only charged for the clicks your ad gets.
• Benefit #3: Yelp Ads are easy to set up. Below is a step-by-step look at setting up Yelp Ads, but you don’t need a degree in marketing and analytics to be successful with advertising on Yelp. Yelp Ads are intentionally designed so you can set them up quickly, get impactful results, and continue to focus on your business.
• Benefit #4: You can target the leads you desire most by location and keyword. Adjust the radius of your ad to determine how far your ad will be shown, and boost the keywords that are most important to your business—Yelp will try to show ads with boosted keywords more often.
• Benefit #5: You can monitor results from Yelp Ads on your dashboard. Your dashboard is easy to navigate, showing you how your ad has performed, including how many leads you got because of it.
• Benefit #6: You get advanced support from our specialized Yelp team. If you have questions or aren’t satisfied with the results you’re getting from Yelp Ads, you can reach out by phone, live chat, or via your Yelp for Business account. Yelp has a team of advertising experts who are very familiar with HVAC businesses and can guide you with changes designed to increase your return on ad spend (ROAS).

An example of an HVAC business using Yelp Ads effectively

To maximize the effectiveness of your ad, you want to make sure your Yelp Business Page is fully completed and optimized with both the free features and Upgrade Package features mentioned earlier. This is because Yelp Ads will pull information directly from your page when making your ad. Plus, when people do end up on your Yelp Page from your ad, you want your page to be in the best shape possible.

As an example, take a look at this Yelp ad from HVAC business 1st Choice Mechanical in Phoenix, Arizona. This specific HVAC company is running Yelp Ads and also upgraded its page with the Upgrade Package.

This ad is likely to be highly effective for this HVAC business because it’s a very well-optimized Yelp Page that utilizes both free and paid features. When potential customers come across this ad (which they’ll see when they’re looking up HVAC businesses within their service area), they’re seeing:

• How many customer reviews the HVAC business has and its star rating
• That the company has a Verified License
• Pricing details and promotions; in the ad above, they’re using Portfolio (a Page Upgrade) to promote their new HVAC systems for as low as $89 a month, along with 0% interest for up to 12 months and up to $2,500 in rebates
• What words best describe its services (based on customer reviews); in this case, 1st Choice Mechanical is rated as “efficient” by six of its past customers

Again, some of these elements are free and form the foundation of your Yelp Page, and others are paid enhancements using the Upgrade Package (you don’t need to invest in ads to use either of them). But the benefit of advertising on Yelp is that your highly optimized page is seen by more of your target audience—it’s placed in key areas on the Yelp site and app, including above search results for HVAC businesses in your service area and on your competitors’ pages. Because of that, it’s not surprising that businesses with Yelp Ads get 2.5x more leads on average.

Plus, when a potential customer decides you’re the right HVAC company for their needs, it’s easy for them to get in touch from the information in your ad. Your new customer can either request a quote right from the Yelp search results or click on your business listing, which takes them to your full Yelp Page.

From your Yelp Page, they can request a quote, schedule an appointment online (available with the customized Call to Action feature when you upgrade your free page), go to your website, get directions, see your phone number, and more.

How to set up Yelp Ads for your HVAC business

To get started with Yelp Ads, first select a goal for your ad campaign.

You can choose to:

• Let Yelp optimize your goals 
• Focus on getting more phone calls
• Focus on getting more website clicks

Then you’ll get to choose which ad photo you want to use. You can let Yelp choose which photo is used for your ad—in this scenario, Yelp can determine which photo is likely to get the best results and then automatically displays the photo that received the most clicks. You can also handpick the photo you want displayed on your ad.

Then you’ll write your ad text. Tell your customers what’s special about your business and what your satisfied customers like about your HVAC business. Your current Yelp reviews are a great way to source what your satisfied customers love the most about your services.

Here’s the ad text from the example ad from 1st Choice Mechanical above:

“Over 20 years of experience. 100% satisfaction guarantee. 2 year warranty on all repairs for agreement customers. Same day appointments available.”

Then you’ll review the keywords your ad will show up for. You can also choose to boost important keywords and Yelp will try to show ads with those keywords more often. This will help your ad appear in searches for the types of HVAC services and other relevant services you offer.

Note that you can also exclude keywords after purchase (recommended only if there are adjacent keywords for services you don’t offer).

Then pick how far you want your ad to be shown by setting the radius around your business. How far from your HVAC business do you want customers to see your ad?

The last step is to pick your daily ad budget. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, and you’ll have a monthly max based on your selected daily spend, so you won’t go over your budget.

Plus, you can see estimates of how many clicks and leads your HVAC business could get based on your daily budget.

After your ad is set up, you can monitor its performance over time via your Yelp Ads dashboard (within the Yelp Ads tab) where you’ll see details like how many impressions, page visits, and leads you’ve gotten from your ad; what keywords helped people find your ad; and a heat map showing where your ad is reaching. Just remember that, as with any investment, it will take time for your ad to show results, so be patient and keep an eye on any tweaks you can make to improve performance.

A quick recap: using Yelp to promote and advertise your HVAC business

Above, we looked at two ways you can use Yelp to get more qualified leads.

• You can claim your free Yelp Page. This lets you promote your business on Yelp.com to customers who are actively looking for HVAC services within your area. You can customize your Yelp Page, including adding photos, business hours, contact info, and the specific services you offer. You can also communicate directly with your customers—both current customers who have left a review on your page and prospective customers who want a quote. Claim your free page today.
• You can use Yelp Ads to generate more leads. As mentioned above, businesses with Yelp Ads get 2.5x more leads. You can advertise your business to ready-to-buy customers who need HVAC services in your area. Yelp Ads are easy to customize, turn on, and monitor. Plus, you only pay for the clicks you get. Start advertising on Yelp today.

2. Create a business website built to convert

Having a website isn’t really an advertising strategy in and of itself, but rather a tool that helps you capitalize on your ongoing HVAC marketing strategies—such as ads, referral programs, and search engine optimization (SEO).

For example, advertising and review platforms like Yelp can help send traffic to your website. Then your website can be the last stop of the customer’s buying journey— the destination that ultimately convinces a potential customer to use your HVAC company.

When someone is considering using your HVAC services (maybe they saw an ad online or perhaps a friend recommended your company), they’ll probably visit your website, wondering:

• Is your business website professional?
• Do you have testimonials?
• Are you a local business?
• Do you have transparent pricing?

Because of this, you want a website that’s designed to convert prospects into leads or customers.

For an example of this, let’s look at Penguin Air. (A quick note: Penguin Air was sourced through an online search for local HVAC companies on Google. Further down below, you’ll see how this site also uses SEO to make sure their site ranks in search engines.)

You can see in the image above that they make it clear how their customers can contact them to inquire about their HVAC services.

Customers can either call:

Or they can fill out a contact form:

Further down the same page, Penguin Air lists specific business details that can help convert the website visitors into customers:

But how are potential customers going to find your business website? In other words, how will your website help increase the number of qualified leads you get?

There are two main ways: 1) through organic traffic from search engines (such as Google and Bing) and 2) through ads (such as Facebook, Google, and Yelp).

3. Using ads to increase qualified leads

Above, you learned about running ads on Yelp. One of the biggest benefits of Yelp is its active and engaged user base—people who use Yelp are looking for a business that provides a specific product or service, such as finding a local HVAC company.

But you can also advertise your HVAC services on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram and on search engines like Google and YouTube.

To see some of the different ways you can run online ads, take a look at Google Local Services Ads and pay-per-click Google ads.

Say someone goes to Google and types in “HVAC companies near me.” Here’s what they’ll see.

The top three ads—HVAC Near Me, Parker & Sons, and Semper Fi Heating—are all Local Services Ads. They show you how long the company has been in business, how many Google reviews each company has, and its business hours.

When you click on a Local Services Ad, the company’s Google listing will pop up.

Similar to a Yelp Page, you can see:

• An overview of the business
• Services offered
• Online reviews
• Photos
• And more

Your customers can reach out to you via phone or message after seeing your Local Services Ad, or they can click through to your website.

The great thing about Local Services Ads is you don’t pay when someone clicks on the ad; instead, you only pay when someone actually becomes a lead. That is, when someone calls, messages, or books an appointment with you through your ad.

Then there are Google Ads, or pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

That’s the ad directly below the Local Services Ads. You can see there’s more information in this ad, including the business address, more ad text, and the services they offer.

Unlike Local Services Ads, you pay Google every time someone clicks on your ad, regardless of whether they become a lead or not.

This is just an example of one advertising platform, but you can see how running ads on different platforms can drive traffic to your website and ideally get you phone calls from potential customers.

Check out these guides for getting started with ads on various platforms:

• The Beginner’s Guide to Local Service Ads
• Guide to Google Ads
• Facebook Ads for Beginners
• YouTube Ads for Beginners

4. Increase your audience with SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) means tailoring your website’s content to improve your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). This includes identifying keywords that consumers are using to search for businesses like yours and weaving those naturally throughout your website.

For example, if you’re an HVAC business in Mesa, Arizona, then you want your HVAC website to rank for keywords around/similar to “HVAC in Mesa, Arizona” or “mesa arizona HVAC.” These are the types of phrases your target audience will be using when searching online.

To see how this works, look at the top three results in Google when searching “mesa arizona HVAC.”

The third result is Penguin Air, an HVAC company in Mesa, Arizona (the same business from the example above). If you click on that result, you’ll see its website is clearly optimized to rank for customers searching for HVAC businesses in Mesa.

This includes having target keywords in the URL, title, and throughout the post. These keyword placements help signal to Google and other search engines who your post is written for so they can recommend it to the right audience.

But there’s more to SEO than specific keywords in specific areas. Here are some helpful guides if you plan on doing SEO yourself:

• Why SEO Is Important for Small Businesses
• The Beginner’s Guide to On-Page SEO

Another way to increase qualified leads to your business is through local SEO. 

This means making sure your HVAC business shows up in Google when someone’s looking for a business like yours in your geographic area. The benefit here is you don’t need to pay for advertising—Google is recommending your business because it’s in the right service area and fulfills the user’s search intent.

To do local SEO correctly, you’ll need to work with Google My Business (GMB).

GMB is a free tool that’s designed to make key business info easily accessible to people.

This includes showing a business’s:

• Location
• Google reviews
• Contact info
• And more

To get started, create a GMB profile. Once you’ve created your profile, make sure your listing is updated.

You’ll want to:

• Fully populate your profile
• Keep your hours updated
• Choose the right business categories
• Select all applicable attributes
• Verify your location
• Add photos

5. How to get new (and return) business with email marketing

Email marketing is an effective way to maintain relationships with previous clients and nurture relationships with new leads. Research shows that 80% of small business owners use email marketing as their primary channel to acquire and retain customers.

Plus, when you use email marketing, you’re targeting customers who have either used your service before or have expressed interest.

To execute email marketing successfully, you’ll need an email list of qualified prospects.

To create this list, you can:

• Collect emails from people who visit your site. To get contact information from new leads, add an email signup form on your website and incentivize visitors with a free estimate or first-time customer discount. 
• Collect emails from your existing customers. When they pay for their service, you can ask them to share their email address to be added to your mailing list. You can also set the expectation that you will follow up with them in a set number of months to make sure their HVAC unit or repair is holding up. 

Once you have an email list, you can implement several different email marketing strategies, including:

• First-time customer discounts. For example, say you have several new leads who signed up for your email communications via your website. As soon as they sign up, send them a welcome email that offers 15% off their first service with your business.
• Seasonal discounts. Beyond nurturing your new leads, email marketing also works well for sharing seasonal discounts with previous clients. For example, say you serviced a client’s air conditioner last summer. Knowing that another warm season is approaching, you can reach out to them and offer a 10% discount on air filter changes for their air conditioning system. 
• A follow-up program. Another idea is to create a follow-up program reminding your customers to change out air filters—that’s a good way to establish trust and a relationship with your customer, while increasing engagement.
• Create a referral program. Encourage existing customers to join your referral program and give them discounted HVAC services for referring new customers. You can send out email updates periodically, reminding your customers about your referral program.
• Follow up with un-closed leads. You’re going to get customers who request quotes or perhaps even have a tech come out, but yet don’t decide to take you up on your services. These are un-closed leads. And they’re often overlooked or untapped by HVAC businesses. But just because someone didn’t buy that day, doesn’t mean they still need your services. 

Whatever strategy you choose, here are some tips to help you get started with email marketing.

• Tip #1: Use email marketing software. If you’re a very small operation, you might try to get away with manually writing emails and following up. But even with a handful of clients, this gets out of control quickly. Instead, you’ll want email marketing software that lets you automate how you write and when you send emails. For example, you can set it up so your software emails new customers after so many days and reminds them about your referral program. 
• Tip #2: Track your metrics. The other benefit of software is that you can get valuable insights. For example, how many people are opening your email? How many people are opening your email but not engaging with your content? By looking at this info, you can refine your email marketing campaign.

In summary: key advertising ideas for your HVAC business

In this post, you explored five keys strategies for advertising your HVAC business to the right audience, including:

1. Promoting your business on Yelp through:
   • Free features
   • Yelp Ads
2. Creating a business website built to convert
3. Running PPC ads (on search engines and social media) 
4. SEO and local SEO  
5. Email marketing 

For more information on how to grow your business:

• Digital marketing for small businesses (8 tactics for growth)
• Content marketing for small businesses (6 essential steps)
• Lead generation ideas for small business owners
• How to use seasonal trends in your marketing campaigns
• 8 social media marketing tips for small businesses 

 

FAQs

How do I advertise my HVAC business?

There are several ways to advertise your HVAC business, but we recommend you focus on advertising channels that can help you bring in qualified leads, such as using Yelp Ads that are displayed to consumers on Yelp.com and the Yelp app.

Here are some other ways to advertise your HVAC business:

• Advertise on social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram
• Advertise on search engines, such as Google, Bing, and YouTube
• Advertise with mail-in flyers in your service areas 
• Advertise in local papers or work with local businesses to run cross-over promotions
  

How do HVAC companies get leads?

There are several ways for an HVAC company to get leads, including:

• Optimize your business website to get more organic traffic
• Create a well-optimized website that converts visitors into leads
• Use Yelp’s free tools as well as Yelp Ads to get your HVAC business in front of qualified leads
• Create a referral program
  

Do Facebook Ads work for HVAC?

Facebook Ads can be a good advertising strategy for your HVAC business if you’re active on your company’s Facebook page or if you have a well-optimized website that you can direct customers to.

For more information on Facebook Ads and other types of digital advertising, check out our post on how to reach customers with digital media advertising.

For more information on getting leads, check out this post that covers five ways to get free HVAC leads.