HVAC Lead Generation: Tips, Ideas, & Marketing Strategies

Key Takeaways

hi everybody I'm Scott this is Bobby we're with marketing 360 and we're going to talk a little bit today about HVAC marketing and how to generate more leads for HVAC companies with your uh website and online marketing assets so I go right into it Bobby here works with a lot of hvat companies so he's got a lot expertise with this and uh we want to share that yeah so with the pay down component you can pay and immediately have your ad showing that day if you have a live domain on the web um there's two ways you can approach it either on desktop or on mobile devices and with the mobile device component uh you're actually able to build mobile only ads you don't have to place yourself in both areas and with the call only ad specifically with HVAC businesses It's very effective because when the AC goes out or the heater goes out the person at their home or their business wants to make a quick call and immediately get service um you know on desktop I've seen sometimes we paying twice as much for the business because people are more hunting around not needing to make a quick immediate call where the call is the conversion and then we can quantify and see if we have 100 conversions how many of those turned into actual leads for your business where on the SEO side of things you know say you're late in the game and you just built a domain you want to put effort there and actually optimize your website so you can build ranking but it's much quicker to get up with the paid ad component okay so I we talk about paid advertising I tend to think of that myself as advertising meaning you're you you've got an offer here's our special deal you're trying to get quick action uh you got to call the action obviously on the web page with the SEO stuff it seems like it's kind of heading more towards you can rank kind of more informational or useful content do you find that to be the case definitely yeah whenever a customer searching they may be searching for a way to fix it their themselves and uh you may want to provide you know little tips on how to troubleshoot your AC for different brands uh of air conditioners or for heating and then you know allow people to be educated through your business which I think is something to build brand equity and build some trust with customers and then if that doesn't work you know then they'll call you have some trust in you because you've kind of helped them along the way uh yeah so you might do that as like a Blog article that you would write that could explain a little bit of this or maybe a YouTube video yeah YouTube videos they're incredibly effective I know uh like uh we're creating some of these videos for the exact same reason we've started to see the videos that we're making sometimes get a little more traction than blogs or vers visa and then you can get them working together as well so say you do create you know some content that's helpful for the user you could have a video to back it up as well so people can experience both ends of the token when you're doing PPC how do you approach uh setting a budget so that you know that it's going to be competitive yeah so um from our from our experience and the data we have from our marketing agency we know which keywords will perform best based on our experience over the last six years but also you know maybe um for your business you want to focus strictly on uh commercial or on residential or a certain brand of you know air conditioner or heater and then you can tailor your ads that way but um really just what's what's been successful for me is working those call only campaigns I find a way to drive cost tremendously down for that for some of our guys and we're working on a case study with Google right now on that and then also um the SEO component's huge you know everyone's searching on mobile now so what's great about utilizing paid ads on the mobile phone is you can see how people are searching on their mobile phone and then that data and information on what's working there to optimize your website as well for your SEO so over time you you really do tend to look at you run different ads you can kind of test those different ads on both desktop and mobile and you can figure out hey this is this is what really works better this ad copy is getting more click-throughs this uh call to action is getting more conversions ultimately and then as you test that you get better results over time yeah okay and then well is also in setting budget initially you got to look at what the competition's doing right you got you kind of bid on these systems yeah Google will tell you exactly what everyone's bidding and they'll recommend keywords you to use um Google will naturally try to get you to bid more and they'll recommend keywords that maybe are not the best converters but what is good is you can use uh certain scripts that you add to your campaign and um that data might not just or that those scripts may not be 100% readily available just to someone who's starting you know working on Google AdWords tomorrow but you can find these scripts online and develop them and tell Google to intuitively bid just higher than other competitors that way okay if say Google says bid $40 but really you only needed to bid 28 you know you could save yourself 12 bucks almost you know 50% of that total bid and multiply your budget just through setting your ad campaign up in an intuitive way okay so the goal of what we do with our our system called top placement ads is we want to get you the highest possible ranking that you can get at the lowest possible cost per click correct yeah exactly that's kind of the ultimate goal yeah and marketing 360 it'll show what the average bid is that the other competitors are bidding but it'll also show you what we're bidding and what dollar amounts actually being saved from having that optimized campaign so you can tangibly see what savings you're getting cool that's a good reason to have professionals do this for you huh yeah because obviously we do this all day every day so you got a A lot of experience in how to get that uh that perfect range of lower cost per click and best exposure yeah and we've we've audited a lot of counts and they're performing well they're actually profitable but you know certain customers come to us and they say you know we want to perform better we want to weed out some of the bad things we're doing and just by making some of these adjustments we're talking about can save a tremendous amount of money without even making some incredible tweaks you can do a lot just with some simple changes are HVAC keywords pretty straight forward is there usually a set you know HVAC in Denver or something like that HVAC contractors pretty kind of straightforward keywords or there kind of different things people will look for yeah um so there are like common keywords like HVAC in a certain area or HVAC near me like for the mobile users when they're on the go searching uh people searching HVAC and then maybe the certain brand they have do they always use HVAC or do they look look for like my air conditioner is broken or my heater or my my water heater that kind of thing heating and cooling air conditioner repair uh replacement um you know we we have some clients who work particularly and just uh replacement getting new installs because maybe some of the Partnerships they have some folks love repair just working on the repair component not having to fully replace things you know it all depends on your margin and we have some folks who will do yearly tuneups which helps them build a rapport and a relationship with people over the season and year so that's been so recurring work then and you you optimize for all those different things those are all kind of different campaigns that you try to focus in on yeah good that's perfect um let's talk a little bit about the the website obviously kind of the website is the the backbone of it's the landing area for for all of this marketing uh what are some of the keys to good design uh and what are what are some of the things that you really want to communicate I know I talk I talk a lot with people about having a unique sales proposition and really working on that call to action to to um persuade people to take action the action that you want yeah what's your experience with that with HVAC yeah um well one of the things I've noticed is there's a lot of everyone will give out a free quote or they'll say you know X dollar for your consultation like that initial let us come out and scope the job before we tax you you know x amount of dollars for the whole project and a lot of times there's just a loss leader that we'll try to do like the tuneups that's a great way to get people to open the door to the relationship like you know $80 tuneup $69 tuneup that's been a great way for us to build engagement and then get the customer on the phone actually diagnose their issue and maybe help them take preventative measures now maybe it's actually a $500 job this year rather than a $2,000 job next year M um but a lot of it does come down to like what we were mentioning uh like talking about brand Equity trying to do things a little different and build more trust with the brand because we know for a fact like data shows that people are going to call two to four sources sometimes more and the first thing they look at is their design their professionalism or do they look trustworthy and then after that start getting into price point and you know is the customer service what I expect so anyway we can help on the front end just getting them on the phone so that our clients can give them the customer service the customer expects is going to build that trust up front okay good and uh with the you mentioned how you know everybody offers a free estimate it's like you go out every hbac every contractor out will give you a free estimate what can you do to make that more unique we talk about a lot about having a unique sales proposition something that distinguishes you from the competition and really kind of Peaks people's interest do you have some suggestions about how that can uh be better achieved with the website content yeah through Facebook uh we found a couple of cool ways to Target there and you know people are not necessarily hunting out an HVAC or a air conditioning repair company on Facebook but through there you can actually engage with customers in different ways like maybe with a certain promotion through a retargeting list on Facebook and maybe that campaign only lasts a week you give it a shorter window of of time um but really just some of those loss leaders like I was discussing allowing people the opportunity giving them a hard number like just free estimate could mean you know that's a $500 job they don't want to waste their time calling six people to get the same answer so maybe like a cheap loss leader to get them in the door like the tuneup or just simply uh there's some other things uh you could really do but it's hard to really say it depends on the customers excuse me the the clients like what they can actually offer so that's usually one of The Upfront things we try to discuss with them because what what you're asking is is very important you know depend on what that customer can supply so it's always something for your HVAC company what can you do a little bit differently in your competition how can you kind of stand out how can you get people's attention that's one of the things that's really going to work well for you with your website content um we talk a lot about reviews and contractors are generally aware now that online reviews and their kind of reputation online plays a pretty big role in how leads decide who to cont um what are some things that HVAC companies can do to get more positive reviews to use things like Yelp Angie's List top rated local uh to their advantage yeah uh reviews is a very interesting topic and um just having a testimonials page on the site doesn't cut it anymore so if you're listening right now and you have a testimonials page and someone emails you a testimonial and you copy and paste it on your page you're doing nothing but hurting yourself and if you have questions why why is that comment below if you have questions why but the reason is is customers now there's so many third party sources in which you can actually go to and get verified reviews rather than this copy and pasted stuff is that's how these third parties actually Foster that community of qualified Real reviews so one of the platforms we utilize that we Leverage is top rated local top rated National and with that it it actually sends a customer an email then they leave a review and then gives you the opportunity to follow up with them within 30 days and it's on Third Party Source rather than the testimonials page and if you have questions about the testimonials page we won't get into that there's ways to do that better than just copying and pasting but you can send us questions below but reviews are everything if you do have reviews you're 60 to 80% more likely to close that customer so that's everything that teson positive reviews so what it comes down to is that in in today's world consumers trust what other people have said about a company more than what the company says about itself yeah that's kind of the world that we live in now um what do you do when uh somebody hits you with a negative review maybe maybe you screwed up a little bit or maybe it was really unfair yeah well you know we all understand like you at a restaurant you have a bad experience you're going to let them know and like people are more likely to come to you with the negative than the actual praise so it does take effort to gather reviews from a customer whenever you do a great job it's not a problem to ask for that you know hey you had a great experience with us we'd appreciate a review from you just to share how your experience went but whenever you do have a bad review I mean the first thing you'd want to do is follow up with the customer and try to you know earn that trust back maybe give them like a bigger deal like a better deal to like come back just fix it at no cost or maybe the next time they need servicing you can take care of them and you can respond like on Yelp you can respond too and maybe even describe how you rectified it yeah on Yelp you can describe how what you did better business bureau you can follow up and leave comments with top rated local in particular due to the amount of spam that we're seeing on Yelp it's been reported on the news 25% of the the reviews are robots they're spam it's not real so top rated local gives customers the opportunity like say you're the business and I'm customer I gave you a bad review just because I didn't like the way or maybe you're a competitor who went on there and and tried to sneak one in to try to hurt my marketing like you killed it my AC works but maybe you didn't pet my dog or something and then I'm bitter because I'm in love with my puppy right and then I leave you a bad review and you're like wow you know we did a great job for that guy let's follow up with him and then maybe you could make amends with me and then top rated local actually gives you a 30-day opportunity to to do something to approve to that customer that what they mean to you and then they can edit that review so there's some power and having that freedom of the followup CU we know uh like a customer interaction never stops with when they call and then when it's over with there's always a followup there's a way to Foster that relationship which is important MH yeah very good so there are ways to manage your reputation and try to get it to work for your advantage as best as possible yeah that's good that's one of the things we definitely work on here um talk a little bit here also about when it comes to online marketing and the whole scope of it what are some of the time frames that are involved a lot of times people start out and they're like well I know I need to get this going but how long before I really start getting significant leads out of this uh what can a newer hvat company expect when they're trying to get going with digital marketing yeah with the with uh HVAC and AC talking about heating companies you can get pretty quick results almost immediately on the paid ad component because like we said there's only two positions on mobile if you structure a campaign and you can keep yourself visible there and then intuitively and in a Smart Way set your bids so you're not overpaying you can make your budget stretch further now with the SEO component trying to optimize it can take longer because there's people that have been doing this for a long time but there's also some of these best practices we talk about you can do like creating videos educating customers because nowadays there's so much information out there not all HVAC companies are actually taking an effort to educate the customer up front so there's there's ways you can get a competitive Advantage there we actually have a couple of hbac and plumber guys where their competitors made videos in 2007 and they're on page one of Google right now so who knows what they're getting from that we don't have their analytics but it's ranking Google Sees value in and it must be leading to lead so that's why we're making this little shift in uh the marketing strategy where that's becoming more important people are doing research to fix it their own they're finding there's better sources maybe your company and then if we can actually you can actually be the person who helps Foster that relationship and educate them you might be able to close them or just get them coming back maybe sharing that with their friends so you you earn that trust and which takes time of course uh and then eventually you can get that opportunity to maybe when there's the big job to kind of present your sales pitch and you you kind of earned the permission to do that which is a much better position to be in than trying to force it on people right yeah and the reality of U you know SEO and our naturalis ad program is there's some sites like like I'm talking about people they've never had a site they may be work in a new domain putting that online a new website or you have one you've worked on forever there's a lot of variables like what have you done in the past that's gotten you to where you are or what is the competition that's currently ranking done that's helped them sustain this position with that being said we've seen some sight whenever they get put on Google they're on the web for two or 3 weeks straight they may be on page four within 2 weeks I've had some folks like I said with SEO where it's a struggle maybe they've done some things in the past that weren't good buying some shady SEO practices or due to the competition in their area it can literally take 6 to 18 months to get there but major most of the time majority of the time you can get it done in 6 months so that's why we've created a system for minimum that but there's a lot of these best practices we're talking about that need to be done that do impact our SEO like how do we decide what our SEO strategy is going to be baseding that off paid ads and reviews building that retention building trust which keeps people on your site longer which is something that impacts your ranking so there's a lot of new things impacting that and when we talked about the content like uh the call to action the value proposition it's not like you always hit that out of the ballpark on the first one you have you have to refine that stuff you learn more about your your customers and the leads that you're trying to communicate to and every time you tweak that to where you get it to where it really works yeah that that doesn't happen all you know that's one of the things you do early on uh and as you get data and you learn more about what you're trying to do you you get that nailed down you modify it yeah absolutely we've had uh we've had some specials that just flopped that you know some of the guys I work with have recommended and others have just killed it for us and it been our bread and butter so there's definitely you got to learn from mistakes sometimes as well too yes big Discovery pH yeah yeah that's important um there's a lot that can be done to really help build your business obviously with digital that's really where it's at now all you got to do is see people walking around with their phones to know that that's where you need to try to reach them that's what we do here at marketing 360 check out the site check out some of the solutions that we have and give us a call we hope that we can help you out someday thanks thank you