Six Lead Generation Strategies for HVAC Businesses

Posted on June 1, 2020

As with most businesses, the HVAC business is very competitive on a local level. As an owner, building your business requires time and consistent implementation of strategy. With an HVAC business, getting new clients never ends.

In today’s environment, having a website that employs certain proven strategies is critical in generating new leads. With the exception of “old school” word-of-mouth referrals, the internet is THE way new business finds home-service contracting companies. But, being able to generate new leads goes beyond just having a website. So, what are the most important strategies in 2020 to incorporate in your online presence?

Great Content

We’re putting having great content as an overall requirement and not a specific strategy. Why? Because your business needs a strong presence on the search engines, the search engines love great content. As a result, all the strategies require great content.

What is “great content?” Great content is written directly to your target market and speaks to exactly what your business does for that market by being meaningful, engaging, educational, and purposeful.

When your online presence contains compelling content, you can use that content to convert visitors into leads. It has been shown that companies that are including great content (for example, blogs, emails, social media posts, and offers) in their overall marketing strategies are generating 67% more leads per month than those who don’t. Today’s shopper is more savvy, more discriminating, and less patient than ever before so your content has to hit and stick as never before. People won’t waste their time reading what is not relevant or isn’t helpful in their decision making. Content is still king, as it has been for awhile. It’s just that it needs to be even better to promote your business successfully.

Now for the strategies.

Strategy #1: Optimize Your Website for the Search Engines

There is no question that the best way to get HVAC leads is through search engine optimization (SEO) and, of course, a good website. Having a great website that has included SEO is the foundation of your digital marketing program. Some of the other strategies like PPC and paid social media campaigns may get leads fast, however the best and most cost-effective way to sustain lead generation is to rank highly for the search engines, giving you the visibility to get more visits, leads, and sales.

Incorporating SEO with effective keywords and phrases on your website helps your site be more visible when people are searching. Having an optimized website that is fast, mobile-friendly, secure, and has strong calls to action is part of the SEO strategy, These go hand-in-hand.

Strategy #2: Have Clear Calls to Action (CTAs)

A Call to Action (CTA) directs the visitor to do something. It’s true that your website needs to inform. But, if you never ask the “looker” to actually do something, you won’t be successful in generating leads. Your CTAs need to be clear and strong. A few years ago it was fairly easy to get someone to fill out a contact form so that you had their email for future communication. It’s not necessarily that way any more. People are barraged with emails and can’t keep up with their inboxes, so yours may be ignored along with hundreds of others.

How do you get the information you need to be able to stay in touch with a prospect and, hopefully, close the sale? You get info by offering information that is educational, motivating, and meaningful. It’s easier to get something if you give something first, such as:

• an offer for a discount
• a give-away
• a tip sheet

In the end, people like to get something because they visited your site. Every web page should have a CTA somewhere. Asking for the business or to sign up for a newsletter or whatever you want them to do needs to be clearly stated and visible. If they perceive that what you are giving them is of value, you are more likely to get the business. But, the key here is to capture their information as a lead.

Strategy #3: Advertise through Pay Per Click (PPC)

The most fruitful lead generation is targeted and the Pay Per Click (PPC) strategy accomplishes this masterfully. With a PPC campaign, like with SEO, you can target keywords that get your website shown when people are searching for HVAC services. For instance, if you offer emergency repairs, you could target the keyword “emergency hvac repair” to reach shoppers that are ready to purchase now. When a shopper clicks on an ad, most likely they are looking for the service then and are ready to buy. You want to capitalize on this readiness!

Strategy #4: Use Social Media

Social media platforms help you engage with your existing customers and reach out to potential new customers to demonstrate the type of customer service and expertise they can expect from your brand. Social media can lead to more word-of-mouth referrals, increased brand loyalty, boosted website traffic, and more. Make sure you’re present on the platforms used by your target audience. For HVAC businesses, definitely use Facebook but don’t neglect others like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Nextdoor.

Strategy #5: Market through Email

Email is still a viable strategy as part of your overall digital marketing plan. Even though, as stated earlier, people get a lot of email, we think it is important. Something like 90% of email gets delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox, whereas only 2% of your Facebook fans see your posts in their News Feed. So, it is important to use CTAs to capture those email addresses. Monthly newsletters are a great way to stay in touch and provide useful information, and there is evidence that this method has been successful in gathering new business!

Here are some more data regarding emails as an effective marketing strategy:

• Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
• A message is 5x more likely to be seen in email than via Facebook.
• You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet.

Strategy #6: Capture Reviews

As you build a stronger online presence, you will want to include online reviews as a component. A high percentage of people shopping online don’t make a decision until they have looked at reviews. In lieu of getting a word-of-mouth reference, reviews give shoppers that personal recommendation. This can be both good and bad…good if you have great reviews and bad if you don’t. So, it’s important to build a portfolio of positive testimonials that create a lot of HVAC leads. Feedback from satisfied customers convinces shoppers that you are the one for the job!

How do you get reviews? Ask for them. After servicing a client, ask them if they wouldn’t mind leaving a review on Facebook, Google, or Yelp (these three sites are some of the most frequented for business reviews). The more positive reviews, the better. Realistically, you can’t please everyone. So, if you don’t get a 5-Star rating, it’s not the end of the world. You just have to learn how to respond to those reviews. Also, when you ask for a review, ask for a referral. This is equivalent to that word-of-mouth referral which puts you in an even better position to get leads.

Call Us!

Employing these strategies for getting more HVAC leads takes a lot of planning, organizing, and writing. This is time you may not have. If you don’t, you should consider outsourcing to an expert digital marketing team like WPdigital. Contact us at 919-944-4284 for more information about what we can do to partner with you to generate more leads and, ultimately, more bookings! We would love to help!