Lead generation for an HVAC business has never been easy, and it has only gotten more competitive in the digital age.
Nevertheless, by employing swift promotional tactics and utilizing the power of platforms like Reonomy, HVAC professionals can consistently generate high-quality leads and turn those leads into long-term clients.
In this article, we will look at the different ways to accomplish this and run a successful HVAC operation.
HVAC Leads
New business leads can be either inbound or outbound. Inbound leads represent prospects who come to you, and outbound leads are potential clients that you have contacted first.
Today, across nearly every industry, inbound marketing strategies are becoming increasingly popular, and when executed successfully, can have a huge impact on generating new business.
HVAC installers and other professional services can employ a range of marketing techniques in order to generate inbound leads.Some of the more notable strategies include:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Optimizing your content with targeted keywords and specific elements such as headings in order to rank higher in Google and other search engines.
- SEM (Search Engine Marketing): Utilizing Google Ads and other search engine advertising platforms to place targeted ads in front of users already looking for your type of service.
- Social Media Paid Advertising: Running ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms to reach potential customers who fit your target demographic based on their profiles.
- Client Referrals: Building a strong referral system that rewards your existing clients for bringing in new business.
Another way to generate quality leads on a consistent basis is to use Reonomy – a database of nearly every commercial real estate property in the United States. In the next section, we will look at this option in more detail.
How to Get HVAC Leads With Reonomy
HVAC professionals can use Reonomy to find commercial and multi-family properties in any U.S. market based on building size and age, number of units, and a number of other criteria.
Furthermore, Reonomy can be used to gain access to the names and contact information of property owners and even the tenants occupying the property.
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Search for Properties With Certain Types of Tenants
Search by Location
Reonomy offers a wide selection of geographic filters, ensuring that you can find HVAC leads in your exact area of interest. Similar to the “restaurants near me” search option in Google Maps, Reonomy features an “HVAC installer jobs near me” filter specifically created for HVAC installers.
Aside from that very specific option, there are geography search filters for state, city, MSA, county, zip code, neighborhood, and even street name. You can also search for an exact address.
Alternatively, you can conduct an interactive search using Reonomy’s integrated Google Maps. Here you can search an area on the map by drawing a radius or a custom shape.
Once you do so, all commercial properties within that shape will appear as individual parcels. Clicking on any of these results will reveal further information on the property, including its owner and tenants.
This search approach can be very useful for HVAC professionals who are interested in operating within a very confined area.
Search by Property Type and Building Size
Once you have identified all the properties within the location of your choice, you can further narrow down your results by applying some building type filters.
First, you can add an Asset Type filter for your desired property type. Options include multi-family, industrial, apartments, office buildings, medical facilities, dorms, and many more.
After you make your property type selection, you can go to the Building and Lot tab and add filters for building specific criteria such as building area, year built, number of units, and more.
Search by Sales History
If you’re looking for new property owners, you will also want to visit the Sales tab of Reonomy’s search, where you can add filters for the most recent sale date and price on a property.
By finding assets that have been sold within the last year, you can identify new owners that may be looking to make changes or upgrades to their property—and from there, you can get directly in touch with those owners (more on that below).
Search by Tenant Type or Name
If you’d like to look for a specific type of tenant, you can also use Reonomy to search by NAICS and SIC tenant type codes, or by the name of an individual company.
Perhaps you’re looking for retail properties, but not all retail properties. The various filters of Reonomy’s search platform can help you quickly navigate your market and sift through buildings on a number of different layers.
Get Property Owner and Tenant Contact Information
Your list of property results is in essence a list of leads.
You can vet each property a bit further by reviewing the tenant list and the full portfolio of the owner.
In addition to seeing the name of the owner, you can also quickly access their contact information, including the contact info of individuals behind a property owning-LLC.
To see an owner’s entire portfolio, you can simply take the name of the owning entity and use it to run a property owner search. You will be given a list of all the properties that have matching ownership details.
This type of search, for example, allows you to target property owners with the largest portfolios and therefore, spend your time developing more lucrative relationships with potential for a lot of new business.
To assist you in creating effective HVAC lead lists, Reonomy has workflow tools that allow you to label properties of interest in bulk, save searches, and easily export your results into an Excel file.
HVAC Marketing and Sales
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are several additional marketing strategies that can help you consistently target and generate high-quality leads for your HVAC business.
Online HVAC Ads
One popular marketing technique for HVAC installers is to run paid digital advertising campaigns on search engines and social media platforms.
There are a number of digital channels where businesses can run ads, and each has advantages and disadvantages that are largely dependent on your individual objectives and resources such as marketing knowledge and budget.
Below, we are going to delve into three paid ad platforms – Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads. Additional channels that you may want to consider for your paid advertising include Bing, Quora, Reddit, and Twitter.
Google Adwords is a powerful tool that can help HVAC installers increase traffic to their website and potentially generate new leads. The platform will position your ads in front of people searching for specific keywords of your choice.
This enables businesses to target ads at people already looking for their services. For example, one key term that HVAC companies should consider bidding on is “HVAC installers near me.”
Keyword Research
When developing your keyword strategy, it’s important to select a strong combination of terms that will appeal to your target audience.
For example, HVAC companies may want to look at keywords such as “commercial HVAC installer services” or “HVAC installers near me.”
To assist you in your keyword selection, Google Adwords features a Keyword Search function within the platform. This will show you the search volume for each term so you can select the ones that have the potential to bring in the most traffic.
Campaign Execution
In the screenshot above, we can see that the search term “heating and air conditioning repair near me” has a volume of 1,300 searches per month and a suggested bid price of $31.61.
That price is what you are bidding for a click on your HVAC ad. While it appears expensive, keep in mind that people searching for HVAC installation or repair services are one of the best target audiences for your HVAC business, because they’re actively looking for your service.
This bid can be refined to a target geography. For example, a company looking for contracts within a 30-mile radius of Reno, NV would specify geographic details as below.
Facebook Ads for HVAC installers
Place a Paid Ad on Facebook
Choosing your target audience accurately is definitely the most important element of Facebook advertising.
There are several routes you can take to build an audience on Facebook. Outlined below are three approaches that HVAC installers could implement for targeting property owners.
These filters can be used individually or combined, depending on how refined you want your target demographic to be.
What is the End Goal of Your Ad?
You can customize Facebook ads depending on your desired results.
Examples of these outcomes include prompting people to click on the ad and be diverted to your website, or to fill out a contact form that you can then use to get back in touch with them.
An easy way to start is to run an HVAC ad lead form. This allows interested individuals to fill out a form with various information such as name, phone number and email address if they would like to learn more about your service.
Targeting via Job Title
Targeting individuals based on their job title can prove very effective as it provides you with an audience that identifies themselves as decision makers of a property.
Outlined in the example below are a couple of property manager job titles. HVAC ads could be positioned towards individuals with titles such as “Facilities Manager,” “Maintenance Manager,” or “Senior Property Manager.”
Targeting via Interests
Targeting individuals based on interests can significantly expand your audience size. Filtering by the interests Facebook users have selected allows you to serve your ad to a more engaged audience – they have already expressed interest in or liked a page connected to your industry.
As an example, Facebook users who have expressed an interest in “Building Owners and Managers Association Brooklyn” are most likely property owners – the exact group of individuals that you want to advertise your HVAC services to.
Targeting via Geography
Distilling an HVAC ad’s audience based on geographic location can be very useful when it comes to lead generation techniques.
If you currently operate in a specific area or are interested in working a new area, for example, due to an increase in property redevelopment there, you can deploy this on Facebook ads.
Geographic targeting can be tailored by state, city, zip code and/or address. Considering most HVAC contractors know the area they work in well, you can simply place the pin wherever you like on a map and you are good to go.
The trick to fully leveraging social media is to build a strong presence and establish trust through the social channels that your prospects are on.
LinkedIn, the world’s largest online professional network is an excellent platform to include in your HVAC lead generation strategy.
LinkedIn Ads come in several formats such as banner ads, skyscraper ads, and native newsfeed ads.
Targeting via Job Title
A similar concept to Facebook, LinkedIn ads can be targeted at professionals with a particular role title. In this case, as an HVAC installer, you may choose to target property owners or maintenance/property managers.
Once you input your target job positions into the platform, your HVAC ads will be placed in front of individuals with one of those titles listed on their profiles.
Targeting via Geography
Another powerful targeting technique on LinkedIn is filtering an ad to a particular geographical area.
For example, if you are an HVAC installer operating in Los Angeles and you are seeking to target maintenance managers there, you can implement this with LinkedIn ads.
Content Marketing for HVAC Contractors
Effective organic marketing nowadays relies largely on strong content and SEO.
A scarcity of content results in low-quality leads from prospects who are purely looking for the lowest price. If HVAC prospects are provided with limited information to evaluate a company, their decision will usually be solely based on pricing.
Quality content includes pictures, videos, blog posts, case studies, and any other published materials that represent your brand and expertise in the industry.
Creating and publishing HVAC-related content can accomplish several things.
Firstly, it improves your website rank in Google search and consequently, your brand credibility. Your online brand image is crucial in today’s digital world and companies must put their best foot forward in order to stay competitive.
When a potential customer looks for an HVAC installation service, you want your website to appear at the top of their search, and you want them to like what they see.
Once a prospect has landed on your site or social media account, strong content is what can grab their interest and hook them in.
If an HVAC company is frequently posting helpful, relevant content around the topics of HVAC installations and the industry in general, along with high-quality imagery and/or video, it will build up its credibility and trust among HVAC prospects.
Think about the last time you searched for a product or service. If the website you landed on looked out-of-date and had low-quality content, would you be enthused to get in touch, or would you continue searching for more reliable companies?
Focus on strong content and the rest will follow.
High-quality content that is relatable to your target audience will naturally create reactions and engagements from prospects and customers, which will help you build brand awareness.
Engagements can range from comments, likes, sharing your content, posting emoji reactions, and others depending on the online platform.
Responding to comments and engagements on social media platforms such as Facebook and business review sites like Yelp can be very helpful to your HVAC lead acquisition efforts.
Customers appreciate being heard, so by engaging with them, you are taking the first step towards turning them into long-time, happy customers.
SEO for HVAC Contractors
To make sure prospective HVAC customers can easily find your website and that your website ranks high in searches (also known as effective SEO), your HVAC marketing strategy should include as many of the techniques described above as possible.
SEO ranking is especially important for HVAC installation companies as 92% of consumers utilize search engines to discover local businesses.
The key factor for ranking high in Google is to produce strong, relevant content. The diagram below outlines all the major components of a successful SEO strategy.
What Exactly Is SEO?
SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, refers to the process of optimizing the content and structure of websites so they would appear at the top of search results on the topic.
A subconcept of SEO, local search engine optimization can make websites appear in searches made by local prospects.
As an HVAC installer, your presence in local search results is key to the successful generation of quality HVAC leads.
Local search results appear at the top of the results page and are often accompanied by a map of the businesses listed. The integrated Google map provides visitors with the distance and directions to your HVAC business.
When creating or editing the business listing for your HVAC company, selecting the right category can have a strong impact on search results.
Select the most relevant category for your business, unless there is a competitor ranking higher. In that case, find out the category they are using, and if it makes sense for your business, select that one as well.
For example, if you are a technology company using the category “technology” but you notice that your competitor is using “internet,” you should consider adding or switching to that category as well.
With constantly-changing search engine algorithms, how can businesses stay ahead in a highly-competitive environment?
Your company’s search engine rank is also based off information that Google has about you from across the internet, including links to your website on other sites, articles, and directories.
Online reviews and Google scores are also taken into consideration when determining your local search ranking, so the more favorable reviews and ratings you have, the better you will rank in local results.
How to Improve Your Google Ranking as an HVAC Installer
As an HVAC professional looking to stay ahead of your competitors, you may have realized by now the importance of strong online presence and effective SEO. If you want to improve the ranking of your website, you need to begin by conducting an audit of your current performance.
A basic site audit for local SEO starts with the following questions:
- How many web pages does my site have?
- Is the content relevant to prospects in the area?
- Are the business name and contact information clearly visible on the homepage and throughout the site?
Additional important questions to ask are: How long are visitors staying on each page? What is the bounce rate? The goal is to engage viewers with content long enough for them to take the desired conversion step (for example filling out a free trial form) and not “drop off.”
If your website is not generating leads, you should consider improving your content, user experience, and CTA (call to action). The ultimate goal is to decrease your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate.
In conclusion, the key facts to always be aware of are:
- Your ranking in local search results
- Your ranking in traditional search results
- How does your rank compare to the competition
In the grand scheme of things, higher rank equals more traffic, and more traffic equals bigger revenue. That’s what SEO is all about.
Converting HVAC Leads Into Clients
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, sales leads can be inbound or outbound. By now, you have built an HVAC lead list and identified the owners and their contact info. The rest should be easy, right?
Well, what we’ve learned from the HVAC installers we’ve engaged with, is that outbound business strategies can also be challenging.
Below, we will discuss a few outbound HVAC marketing techniques that demonstrate how commercial property service providers of all kinds have leveraged Reonomy’s information to earn new customers.
Email Campaigns for HVAC Installers
Email can be a very cost-effective lead generation method. While it does require a certain amount of time and effort to design an effective message, it is a powerful marketing channel with one of the best ROI rates.
The challenge for most HVAC installation companies is that sourcing the lead list for an email campaign can be expensive. With Reonomy however, you can target ideal potential clients with ease!
Source: marketingprofs.com
Apart from whether your message is being sent to qualified HVAC leads, the campaign’s effectiveness can also be gauged via a number of metrics provided by your email campaign software. These include the email bounce rate, email open rate, and click-through rate.
There is a wide range of email campaign management tools that are suitable for HVAC professionals. One popular, reasonably-priced solution is Mailchimp.
Source: marketingprofs.com
Results from email campaigns can vary widely, and as an HVAC installer looking for effective lead generation, you will want to identify the email styles that are producing the highest response rates from your HVAC leads.
One popular method to accomplish this, is to rearrange the structure or copy of your email messages, use both versions simultaneously over a specific period of time, and then compare the results.
This concept, which is also regularly applied by marketers to website landing pages and app homepages, is known as A/B testing.
Common email variations/tests include:
- Testing the style or wording of your CTA – the call-to-action link or button that takes users to your website or signup form.
- Changing the tone of the email – for example, sending sales-focused content vs. sending a piece of informative content such as an article covering the latest trends in the HVAC industry.
- Switching up the frequency of the campaign, or in other words, how often you send an email to the same HVAC prospect over a certain period of time.
Source: marketingprofs.com
Cold Calling
A more traditional outbound sales method, cold calling can also be very effective as a lead generation strategy for your HVAC business.
In order to maximize the conversion rate of your cold calling efforts, the person placing the call needs to be not only pleasant, but also very knowledgeable about your HVAC business and the industry in general.
When relying on cold calling for lead generation, you need to ensure that you have a dedicated, enthusiastic team, which has the growth of your HVAC business in the front of their mind.
A huge value-add of using Reonomy is that you will be one step ahead of the competition by having a list of highly-qualified HVAC leads in your hand. Furthermore, having current contact information, including several phone numbers, for each of the HVAC leads is incredibly valuable.
Direct Mail Flyers
Another traditional marketing tactic that continues to be a strong component of many companies’ marketing strategy, is direct mail. It could also be very effective as a lead generation technique for HVAC professionals.
Direct mail could be any paper-based promotional material, such as an HVAC marketing postcard or letter.
The direct mail cost per lead may appear high initially, but if the campaign generates even a couple of successful commercial HVAC jobs, the campaign has paid for itself.
One direct mail strategy that could work well, is to send mailers to targeted prospects within a specific geographical area. These prospects could be property owners or property managers within a location you already service, or a new area you would like to expand your operations in.
A well-crafted direct mail piece can prompt the recipient to get in touch with the HVAC installer who sent it.
One critical aspect to the success of any direct mail campaign, is having accurate mailing addresses for your prospects. Reonomy not only pierces through owning LLCs and identifies the individuals behind it, but also provides the mailing address for the owning entity. You can use this information to mail your marketing piece directly to the owner or manager of the targeted property.
Below, we will list several best practices for direct mail campaigns that can be critical to the success of your HVAC lead generation efforts.
Emphasize Your Brand
With direct mail flyers, visual appeal is everything. Eye-catching design and copy that incorporate your brand’s colors and logo are vital. The quality of materials and print job are also important to the overall appeal of the piece and will directly impact the response you receive from interested HVAC prospects.
Offer Incentives
Including some sort of a promotional offer is highly recommended when using direct mail. Incentives improve conversion rates because they grab the prospect’s attention and add value.
Incentives can be discounts, bundle packages, or any other financial deal that will make your HVAC mailer more appealing to the recipient.
Include a Clear Call to Action
Last but not least, it is imperative that your HVAC promotional mail has a clear call to action. For example, you can ask the reader to contact you via email or phone to claim the incentive you offered, or encourage them to follow you on social media for useful information and future promotions.
The ultimate goal of your direct mailer should be to make the HVAC prospect reading it, pick up the phone or click the Send or Follow button on their computer.
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