Whether you’re shivering through an Alaskan winter or sweating through a Nevada summer, HVAC businesses offer essential services right around the United States.
When a customer’s system breaks down on the coldest night or the hottest day of the year, there’s no-one they’ll be happier to see than YOU.
After all, no-one else can offer heating, cooling and ducting services quite like you. No-one else is as hungry for new business as you and no-one else will give them such great service that they become a loyal, life-long customer. The only question is how they will actually find you.
The answer is a killer digital marketing strategy.
In this article, we’re going to help you understand what a digital marketing strategy is. We’re also going to run you through the basics, including how to create a website for an HVAC business, how to optimize your content so customers can find your products and services, and how to run Google and Facebook Ads so that you will be the #1 choice in your local area.
Oh hey! We’re experts at that! If you’re looking to develop a digital marketing strategy to generate leads for your HVAC business, why not contact us?
Okay, So What Is A Digital Marketing Strategy?
Marketing is the process by which a business promotes its products and services to a customer. Sounds simple, right? Right. Digital marketing is simply the process of doing this on the internet.
With that in mind, a digital marketing strategy needs to make you stand out online. It’s designed to target the computers, tablets and smartphones of your customers and make sure it’s easy for them to find you in their time of need… whether they’re looking to organize an urgent repair or simply clean the gunk out of their heating and cooling ducts. In order to do this, digital marketing strategies typically focus on websites, social media, search engines and ads.
Before you create a marketing plan, there are a few things you need to think about:
- Who is your ideal customer?
- What’s your flagship service?
- What are your best value products?
- What makes you different from the other HVAC specialists in your area?
Many companies choose to employ a marketing agency to help with this. Agencies can conduct a review of your current online presence, analyze the strategies of your competitors, help you develop marketing goals and recommend specific actions you can take to achieve them.
However, it’s also entirely possible to do this yourself. If you’re feeling ready, read on.
Want to know more about marketing? Here’s a handy blog post we prepared earlier: What Is Marketing? A Look Through The Eyes Of A Marketer.
First Things First, You’re Going To Need A Website
The first step to finding new customers online is to create a website.
A website provides a platform for customers to get to know you. It’s an opportunity to let them know about your HVAC repair, maintenance and installation services and show off the furnaces, boilers, heaters and filters in your product range. Meanwhile, active social media channels will help you connect directly with customers and let them know about special offers.
So how do you make a website? It’s actually never been easier to build your own website, with a multitude of handy tools available online that can help you get up and running in minutes.
Here are some of the common ones we see a lot:
- Build a website with WordPress: WordPress is an online, open-source website creation tool written in PHP. It’s one of the easiest and most powerful website content management tools available today and can be very cheap to create.
- Build a website with Squarespace: Squarespace is an all-in-one solution for anyone looking to create a website or online shop. It has a very intuitive interface, making it very quick and easy to get started, but it’s more expensive than WordPress.
- Build a website with Wix: Wix is another simple and easy website builder that can get you off the ground in no time. Like Squarespace, you start by choosing a template and adding your own words and images, but this platform is slightly cheaper.
See? Building a website is easy. Of course, if you would prefer to ring in the experts, we’re here to help. Simply reach out via our website and we’ll be happy to help with your website needs.
Which website is best for my business? We at Beacon Media + Marketing recommend WordPress. Find out Why WordPress Is So Popular For New Websites.
Second, Learn About Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Once your website is up and running, you need to add content. Content is very helpful when customers are trying to find you via search engines, like Google.
It works like this: customers using search engines tend to use the same key words over and over again. If you start using the same key words on your website, Google will assume you’re an expert on that topic and it will start ranking you higher and higher on the search results page. It’s valuable digital real estate, because the #1 result immediately gets 31.7% of all clicks.
That’s 31.7% of all potential customers who could be looking to you first.
This process is called search engine optimization, but it’s usually referred to simply as “SEO”. The best way to put it into practice is to create frequent blog posts that answer common questions customers ask about your products and services, explain why you recommend the brands you do, and even discuss some of the newest trends in the HVAC industry.
Here are five simple examples of key words and phrases you could try:
- Best HVAC repair in (insert name of your area)
- Get the most out of your heating and cooling this winter/summer
- Best air conditioning repair in (insert name of your area)
- How to tell if my furnace filters need replacing
- Best baseboard heater to use in (insert name of your area)
The more posts you can get to rank on the search results, the better.
SEO is a complex and constantly changing field. Here are six expert ways to optimize your website using SEO so you can Drive More Traffic to Your Website.
Third, Let’s Talk About Digital Advertising
Once your website is up and running and you’ve got lots of strong content, you can think about creating some advertisements that will target (and keep targeting) potential customers.
As far as digital marketing strategies go, one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website is to run Google Ads. Google Ads allows you to target people who are searching for keywords associated with your product and services. In theory, this means you can get more bang for your buck because you won’t waste money on people who aren’t interested.
You’ve undoubtedly seen this type of advertising already. It usually appears in the top 1-5 slots on the results page of your Google search, marked “Ad”. You’ve probably also noticed that once you click on an advertisement for a particular brand, product or service, it will start following you all around the internet: every article you read, every video you watch, even social media.
Google Ads represents 77.8% of all search-related ad revenue in the United States. It’s big business, and there’s a good reason why: it can be very effective. However, it’s not as easy as handing over your hard-earned money and waiting for people to find you.
They come with pros and cons. The pros are that campaigns are highly targeted, measurable, and can lead to rapid results regarding sales generation. The cons are that they require an ongoing investment and that you be charged for every single impression and click.
With that in mind, you have to be smart and you need to have a strategy in place. You need to know who your potential customers are, where they spend their time online, and what tone and style of language will resonate with them.
You also need to come up with a specific goal for each campaign – in other words, don’t just refer people to your homepage. They’ve searched for something specific, so make sure you link them to a page where you can answer their questions. For example, link them to a product page for your new boiler or your duct-cleaning service.
This is not the right platform to increase brand awareness. The more specific you can be about who you want to target and what you want them to know, the more effective your ads will be.
If you’re not sure how to start, and you can afford to spend the money, trial and error is a great way to get a feel for how the platform works and what your customers are looking for. However, if you want to maximize your ROI, ask the experts at Beacon Media + Marketing.
How can you tell if your Google Ads are effective? We’ve created a handy guide. Facebook and Google Ads: What Analytics Should I Track?
Breathe. Okay. That’s a lot of information to consume in a very short amount of time. The good news is that we are here to answer all of your digital marketing questions. For us, navigating the wild world of SEO strategy is just as natural as replacing a boiler is to you.
So why not schedule a consultation?
Let’s fire up your HVAC business’s web traffic together (sorry about the pun).