It can be challenging to generate air conditioning leads when you’re first starting in the industry. Many times, operators are just throwing money and time away by using outdated tactics. But if you want to expand your clientele base, you’re going to need to learn what works today and how to implement it fast and effectively.
Many people underestimate the lead generation process and how crucial it is for your business’ success but also how challenging it can be when it comes to standing out among your competitors.
Does this mean you should reconsider being a business owner? Or maybe whether or not it is a good idea to start a company in this niche? Not quite.
For starters, one of the benefits of starting heating, ventilation, or air conditioning business is the ability to start small and steadily grow at your own pace. This opens more opportunities and variations when it comes to lead generation.
That being said, yes, it is a simple yet vital step for every company to work on this since your company will not grow if you don’t take the time to market it and get business leads. The other critical aspect is to work towards closing those sales-qualified leads once you generate them.
As an air conditioning business owner, always look for new leads but don’t forget about your current ones and how you can nurture them. The more leads you have, the more air conditioning jobs you will land, and your customer base will grow.
There is no sure way to get those leads. However, there are some marketing strategies that you can use that will help you find them easier compared to others.
Try to use as many of these strategies simultaneously to increase your chances and improve lead quality while boosting your lead scoring.
Aim for many, but don’t try to take more than you actually can!
Establish Business Networks Related Contractors
Forging beneficial partnerships with other businesses is a great way to generate leads for your air conditioning company, as you can be present in more than one field at a time.
You can do this by looking for small businesses that could be a good fit for your business and could be interested in forming a bond with you and bringing benefits to both sides.
You need to include all these partners in your lead generation campaign.
For example, small contracting companies often require specialized air conditioning support. You’ll likely open up new opportunities for leads if you have two businesses that work together to refer customers.
Partnering with interior decorators, HVAC contractors, landscape architects, and other business owners is a great starting point in this industry.
You should identify beneficial enterprises and partner with them. In most cases, this relationship usually is mutually helpful, and both enterprises stand to benefit in a big way.
Use SEO to Your Advantage
Search engine optimization (abbreviated as SEO) is a critical component of generating leads online on an ongoing basis. Even with many paid options, you will notice how it ends up being the core for most of your closed deals.
SEO can be the difference between getting lost and being found on the internet. Optimized websites are more likely to be found on the first page of search results and, thus, hired when it comes to services or products (purchases).
It is essential to implement good SEO practices to increase traffic to your website and, of course, build a site before anything else.
Your website won’t be easy to find even if you use relevant keywords and phrases throughout the site’s content.
Therefore, you have to focus more on white hat SEO techniques. Use multiple strategies to optimize it as well, and don’t stick to the most common or basic ones only.
Once your website is visible in the search engines, you will attract high-quality leads that are worth your time.
Get to Know the Latest HVAC Technology
Another way to market your air conditioning company to get leads is to be knowledgeable about the latest technology. While specialization can improve a company’s reputation, it can also cause damage.
Although work experience and practical knowledge are valuable, they do not replace continuous education.
Keep your eyes peeled for classes in your area that could keep you current. Your reputation will be better if you dedicate a week of each year to learning new things.
Get In Touch with Professional Organizations
Although it may seem old-fashioned to go to a clubhouse or members-only meeting, these organizations can still be an excellent place for networking and getting leads for your air conditioning company.
You should look for the most respected air conditioning professional organization near you and join them.
Even though their membership may be declining, many members feel a deep appreciation and loyalty to the people who keep them going. This sense of belonging can be a great opportunity in many ways.
Part of your target audience closely follows these organizations. Therefore, you will find it easy to interact with them when you make good use of them.
Consistent Branding of Your Business
Consistency in your branding efforts is a great way to get people to notice your company. Think back to the ads you remember as a child. There are likely many that you can recall almost from memory.
It tells you that branding forms the basis of the lead generation process.
Longevity and repetition combine to significantly impact your mind and that of others, which unconsciously drives people towards that brand. To succeed in your marketing efforts, you have to make sure that you are consistent in everything.
When doing so, you will notice how long-lasting they are, which means that you can expect to see returns on your air conditioning marketing investment.
As your brand becomes established, media costs may decrease.
Open to Business and Mean Business
To be successful in any venture you begin, you must “mean” business. While it is essential to have some downtime, you must be available to take advantage of any opportunities that present themselves.
Your business cards should be with you all the time when you go to the bar, the shop, or any other social event.
It is crucial to answer questions and help others during conversations if your specialization comes up.
Also, let people know you are available for new projects to get HVAC sales leads for your business. Your approach to this is a great lead generation strategy and will pay off your efforts.
You must ensure that your customer is not disappointed if they hire your services. Air conditioning repairs can become urgent during emergencies, and installing new ones is just as vital as the rest.
You need to be knowledgeable before you open your business. Also, make sure you don’t let anything get in the way of customers.
You may need a dedicated line to handle emergency calls depending on the services you decide to focus on.
After all, you may be an air conditioning company, but that’s just a general role or niche you’ve given yourself. You can specialize and decide in what sub-niche you want to invest your time in and so on.
For this, you may find it crucial to determine what services are the most requested in your area.
Networking Tips for Conferences
Although it may seem old-fashioned, networking is a great way to generate leads. If you have never been to an industry conference before, find out about local ones.
It’s powerful to host a booth or attend a regional trade conference as you can meet many interesting people who are willing to work with you or hire your services directly.
Are there any skills or knowledge you can share with attendees at a conference? What could your experiences be of benefit to others?
Participating in an event will help you connect with potential clients and other HVAC service providers. You could also gain access to more people by speaking at an event.
Become a Great Online Resource
If you were looking for an HVCA contractor, which one would you choose? Is it the one with a simple business listing or a well-designed website with helpful tips and industry news, or both?
You can grow into an authority in your field by sharing valuable, regular content online. Blogging through your website is one of the best ways to do this. You need to engage more in content marketing and ensure you are getting the best out of it.
Instead of creating redundant websites, put your efforts into making them work. When you publish informative and helpful articles, it will help you to show off your expertise. It will benefit your customers and boost your ranking in search engine results.
Look for sites that allow guest posting. If your writing is of real value, many site owners will gladly post it with a link to your company.
Doing so is a sign that you are being seen as a valuable resource by other professionals in your local area.
Share Your Experiences and Information
In today’s market, businesses don’t just get customers without effort. You must first earn their trust to win them over. It tells you why you need to pay much attention to any sales-qualified lead that you come across.
You might find that clients are reluctant to give tips to others, even though it could be detrimental.
Prospective customers will experience your company as knowledgeable, helpful, and generous if you provide valuable information before they even exchange a dollar.
You can share these tips on your Facebook page to help you take advantage of them and not only on the previous places we mentioned in the last strategy.
You can set up an email reminder system to remind customers when it is time for service. But don’t make it appear like a sales pitch.
Search for Other Advertising Options
Advertising has become digital in this new age. Thus, the online world is a place where people are more concerned about being relevant.
Always be available online, but there are still ways of advertising that work regardless of the century.
People still listen to radios while driving, for example. Others subscribe to local advertising-supported television services.
Consistent offline advertising can have a transformative effect on your business. When you do this, it will ensure that you get the majority of your HVAC leads.
Local media companies often offer reasonable rates for introductory access that will allow you to reach the airwaves without having to pay high fees.
Your sales team can even get some production costs covered, which will ensure that your ads have a professional finish.
Run Online Ads
Remember what we said about digital ads? Well, online advertising is another excellent strategy to generate leads for your air conditioning company.
You cannot avoid advertising in this channel because shoppers prefer to use the internet to search for any product or service that they need.
Pay-per-click ads or Facebook ads are great options to grab users’ attention online quickly. You can get immediate exposure and traffic with either of them.
You can always trust such traffic to bring in leads for your business. The HVAC leads cost is not as high as you might think. Since you only pay for the clicks, you stand to benefit much from this marketing strategy.
Get the Most Out of an Attractive Website Design
The old saying, “Pretty things catch the eye,” still holds even in modern times.
If you want people to spend more than a glance at your website, you must make it attractive and user-friendly.
Your HVAC company website will be more engaging if it is well designed. A better website will result in more business leads.
Therefore, you have to make sure that you have a highly functional and aesthetically pleasing website. The navigation should also be simple to help clients get the information they are looking for with much ease.
No matter how small or large your business is, it must have an online presence.
Website design and development are the best marketing strategies to help increase your HVAC business’ revenue or achieve better results.
Institute a Beneficial Referral Program
Referring customers who are satisfied with the services of a business is one way it can grow. You can create a referral program to help yourself in this journey.
This program can make you a very wealthy business owner. It also offers outside salespeople the chance to promote your company and earn a few dollars for their efforts.
Existing customers will refer their friends and family to your business when they are sure of getting anything in return.
Most business owners often overlook referral programs. The entrepreneurs would instead do all of their marketing on their own. Although it is your right to feel that way, you shouldn’t refuse this chance because it could help your business.
Referral programs allow you to offer cash or discounts to people who refer your business to others.
You can also provide your customers with cash discounts for trying your services. It is much easier to attract prospects to your brand when past clients recommend your product or service to them.
Take Advantage of Geofencing to Make Your Business Stands Out
Geofencing, a popular marketing trend, is a mobile-based service that sends a notification to the smartphone user in a specific area. This tool allows potential clients to engage directly by the geofencing service.
It sends promotions and other information to their phones.
It can be a valuable tool for small businesses to grow their market share, as they are less well-known than large brands.
Make Good Use of Seasonal Deals
Promoting seasonal specials and services can increase sales for the next season.
HVAC companies have the opportunity to grow their brand and get more furnace installation and repair clients during the fall. Therefore, you have to increase your marketing efforts and budget during such seasons.
Heating maintenance is essential as winter draws near. To turn these leads into sales, you only need to create the right marketing campaign. It is also the best time to target high-paying contracts.
You can offer different deals on your website and social media to grab your prospects’ attention. You can grant a discount on your furnace tune-up to get the winter cold under control or an AC precision tune-up before the summer heat hits.
Air Conditioning Video Marketing
Video marketing is the use of video to promote your HVAC business.
Statistics show that video can be an effective medium to expand your reach. The likelihood of videos ranking on Google is 50 times more than text content.
Most people who have seen a product video say that it helps them decide between buying or not. YouTube is the most popular platform for HVAC internet marketing. Therefore, make sure you have a few high-quality videos and your own channel on your website.
It can help you build trust and drive brand voice. Some of the most effective HVAC video marketing materials are videos on customer testimonials, company culture, and those that highlight the benefits of HVAC services.
Manage Your Data Correctly
Online transactions generate tons of data, and this is a known fact. It is more difficult to understand how to use this data for lead generation purposes.
Data exists to demonstrate results, and you can use it to show results.
If you work on its management, the strategy should include gathering data from competitors. You should also have lead information about your industry and customers.
Use data to develop your USP, create advertising copy and make calls to action. Use your intuition and experience to craft a message that is benefits-focused.
Your message should emotionally impact your leads and encourage them to hire your company today or soon.
The best business managers will focus more on the stuff that works. Proper data management will help you to improve your lead capture.
Use Outbound Marketing
Inbound marketing can be an excellent tool for your business, regardless of whether you believe it or not.
Direct marketing, also known as outbound, is a strategy that pushes your message to your audience through techniques such as telemarketing, cold calls, direct mail blasts, email blasts, and print media ads.
Today’s technology makes it easier to block advertisements, and people listen to social media recommendations to find the right products and services.
Inbound marketing is about helping prospects find you when they search for your assistance. It can also help you get qualified leads.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Air Conditioning Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Air Conditioning Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Air Conditioning Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.