Posted on June 4, 2020

With most people turning to the internet when needing heating or air conditioning repairs, much of your new business should be coming from visitors to your website. However, with so many options right at a customer’s fingertips, having an outdated, sluggish website and little to no online presence means your potential customers will skip your HVAC business and connect with your competitors instead.

By staying in front of changes in marketing, you can improve your visibility so the people who are looking for your services will see you first. Combining smart digital marketing for HVAC companies with customer-friendly web design can quickly lead to more customers hiring your business. To help you increase website traffic and convert visitors into customers, the marketing team at WPdigital is sharing 7 HVAC marketing trends for 2020!

1. Mobile First Web Design

Look at your website on a smartphone or tablet – is it easy to navigate and read on the small screen? Do the pages load quickly? If you’re struggling with your site, imagine a new visitor’s experience, and then consider that around three-quarters of online searches take place on a mobile device. A page that takes three seconds to load means visitors are moving on to your competitors. To get a clear look at your site’s mobile performance, test it here.

When it comes to web design for HVAC companies, you need to take a “mobile first” approach. This means your website is designed with mobile screens in mind and can scale and adjust as the screen size grows. This is also called “responsive web design,” and it ensures that visitors to your website have the same experience whether they’re using a phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer.

Having a mobile friendly website not only guarantees an improved user experience, it raises your rankings in search engine results. Google and other search engines look at mobile friendliness as a top ranking factor due to the high traffic from mobile devices.

2. Content Marketing

While on the topic of Google and search engine optimization for your HVAC company, one of the most valuable marketing trends for your heating and air conditioning business is content marketing. Content marketing refers to creating designed to attract customers by generating interest in your business.

Content marketing serves two main purposes:

Updating your website regularly with relevant, quality content improves your search engine rankings.
Posting relevant, engaging content that meets the needs of your website visitors positions you as an expert and leads to visitors becoming customers.

Let’s look at the best content options for your HVAC business’s website:

Service Pages

For each main service you offer, dedicate a specific page to it that allows you to provide in-depth information. For example, if you offer HVAC installation, HVAC repair, and HVAC maintenance services, devote a page to each of those three services, making sure each page includes:

Who the service is for
Why the customer needs the service
Benefits of the individual service
Brands you work on
What happens if they don’t utilize your service (ie: without maintenance, their heating and air system is less efficient, broken system means a hot house in the summer, etc)
Call to action explaining what the next step is, including how to connect with your business with a link to your phone number and contact page.

When you write your pages, use layman’s terms so the average visitor understands the information you’re sharing. For easy reading, break up the text with bulleted lists and short paragraphs, so even someone in a hurry can quickly scan it and give you a call.

Blogs

Writing original blog articles allows you to keep your website updated to achieve improved search engine rankings while also providing interesting information to visitors to your website. Example topics include:

“5 Signs Your HVAC System Needs Maintenance”
“How to Prepare Your Furnace for Winter”
“5 Ways to Lower Heating Bills This Winter”
“4 Simple Ways to Improve Your Home’s Air Quality”
“5 Furnace Problems You Can’t Ignore”

Just like your service pages, avoid using jargon, break up text into bullet points and shorter paragraphs, and make sure to add a call to action at the end, such as, “If your air conditioner is sending your energy bills through the roof, let us get to the root of the problem. Call us today at (888) 555-1234!”

Visual Content

Content isn’t just text and writing. You can add photo galleries of your company at work to show what you do or before and after images of what ducts, furnaces, and air conditioners look like after you’ve performed cleaning and maintenance. Infographics are an interesting way to show a large amount of data in a way that’s easy to digest while graphics can break up text, generate interest, and impart additional information to your visitors.

3. Video Content

Video content is rapidly growing in popularity, and businesses that use video content on their websites and through their social media channels increase their revenue almost 50 percent faster than those who don’t. As an HVAC company, your business is in a unique position to leverage video content in a way that allows you to better serve potential customers while increasing engagement.

Would you say it’s easier to talk someone through seasonal furnace maintenance or is showing them more beneficial? Video content is a more effective method of communicating a message that allows you to stand out from competitors and increase your visibility when you share it regularly on your website and social media channels.

Not sure what to post? Try these ideas:

Create an instructional series of videos
Repurpose old blog posts into video guides
Show your team in action performing maintenance, installing a unit, or making a repair.
Do a side-by-side comparison of heat pumps vs furnaces and AC units

4. Facebook Advertising

While much of your digital marketing strategy will take place on your website, it’s important to not neglect off-site resources. Having a social media presence allows you to reach potential customers where they are instead of waiting on them to come to you, and with over one billion users on Facebook, that’s the first place you should start.

Simply having a Facebook page is a step in the right direction and is extremely important for your heating and air conditioning business. You will have a place where customers can read reviews, learn more about your services, and you can share your videos and blog posts to a broader audience. Regularly posting and responding gives you an opportunity to increase your brand awareness and gives a personality to your brand, which leaves a lasting impression on visitors to your page.

Another way to leverage your social media presence is through Facebook Ads. Using Facebook Ads gives you the opportunity to customize how you advertise your business, such as sharing a short-term special offer or taking advantage of seasonal changes to highlight your services. For example, in the spring and fall, advertise your maintenance and tune-up services. When the weather is nice, remind people that hot or cold weather is on its way and you can help make sure their HVAC is working properly.

Most importantly, Facebook gives you the ability to target your core audience and selecting who sees your ad by selecting factors like:

Location: Reach people in your HVAC service area
Demographics: Age, gender, relationship status, etc allows you to target people who may be more likely to own a home and consider needing your services.
Interests: Consider targeting people with interests that include home and gardening
Behavior: Choose prior purchase behaviors, device usage, and preferred websites.
Connections: Exclude people who already are connected to you on Facebook so you can reach a new audience or only send your ad to people you’re connected to if you’re featuring a special offer.

The end result is a more engaged audience and a higher return on your advertising investment.

5. Online Review Sites

No matter where your HVAC business is located, you’re working to stand out from your competitors. Following the latest trends in digital marketing for HVAC businesses will certainly improve your position, but making sure you are visible on online review sites like Yelp! will not only get your business recognized, they inspire confidence in your business and can even boost your search engine rankings.

With a service-based business like heating and air conditioning repair, potential customers will often find a few options, then seek out reviews to learn more before deciding who to call. Most customers are more likely to choose a business with many reviews, even a blend of positive and negative, rather than a business without any reviews at all.

In addition to Yelp! and Facebook, customers can also leave reviews on Google My Business, a free tool you can use to optimize your business listing when users search or use Google Maps. To improve the quantity and quality of your online reviews, encourage old customers to leave a review about your business.

6. Real Time Data and Metrics

Once you have your digital marketing strategies in place – your HVAC business’s website is updated, you’re posting video content, leveraging Facebook ads, and your business has multiple solid reviews for customers to read – you need to see what is working to attract the most leads to your business while correcting the actions that aren’t working. Fortunately, there are multiple tools available that give you real-time data and metric management that give you an accurate look at the success of your marketing strategy.

The most popular data and metric management software for HVAC businesses is Google Analytics, a free software program that tracks your website traffic so you can learn:

Where your website traffic is coming from, including:
- Organic searches (ie: entering in “HVAC business near me” and selecting your business)
- Facebook or other social media links
- Direct traffic (ie: typing in your web address directly into your search bar)
New vs. Returning Users
Which website pages get the most traffic
The search queries users use on Google to find your HVAC website
Traffic demographics including age ranges, location, and percentage of male/female traffic
How much time a visitor spends on a specific page
How many people leave your website without navigating away from the landing page (also called “bounce rate”)
Device usage including mobile and desktop users

Once you have this information, you can use it to your advantage by improving user experience like adding clearer navigation and links. Often, partnering with an experienced digital marketing agency can help you track and interpret your data and help you implement a strategy that leverages your analytics.

7. Energy Efficient Products

Staying up to date on marketing trends for your HVAC business allows you to drive more interested traffic to your website while modern web design and convenient features ensure more visitors will navigate through your pages. The key to converting them into customers is offering modern, sought-after products and services. In the HVAC industry, this means shifting toward more energy efficiency products, including equipment that limits heat and air loss or uses renewable energy sources.

The demand is so high among consumers, it’s estimated that the market for energy efficient systems will grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 11 percent between now and 2022. Homeowners want to reduce their carbon footprint while minimizing their energy bills, and they want to connect with businesses that make that possible, which means you want to look at adding energy efficient solutions to your service offerings.

If your HVAC company implements these marketing trends, you can expect to see a marked increase in your brand awareness, consumer engagement, and traffic to your website. More importantly, those all promote more leads, an improved return on your marketing investment, and best of all, an increase in customers requiring your services.

Contact WPdigital to Implement the Latest HVAC Marketing Trends

Whether you are an entrepreneur starting a new home servicing business, or you have an existing website that needs updating, WPdigital can help you. We specialize in creating attractive, user-friendly, lead generation websites that are optimized for search engines. WPdigital offers an array of affordable service packages, to meet your website needs and to improve your online presence.

HVAC Digital Marketing Trends You Need to Know