Last year, the phrase “air conditioning service” was searched on Google, on average, 18,100 times a month. Wouldn’t it be cool if your HVAC website was the first service solution that popped up when a user typed in this keyphrase? With digital marketing, you can be.
Today, outbound sales development and inbound marketing are necessary for HVAC companies to find prospects, qualify leads, nurture relationships, and set valuable sales appointments that are likely to result in closed business.
For a bird’s-eye view of how your business can practice lead generation to generate HVAC service leads check out our blog here.
If you want to optimize your inbound lead generation program, consider following these leading HVAC digital marketing strategies:
Design a User-Friendly Website
An HVAC website should be the foundation of your inbound marketing strategy. Without a company website, you don’t have a direct way for your audience (or “users”) to learn about your business and the heating and air condition products and services you provide.
As you create your HVAC website design, it’s important to consider your target market’s journey and buyer personas. How do you want them to navigate the website? What do you want them to take away from your website?
When you first develop your HVAC website, it’s essential to start with the following web pages:
- Home: The home page is often the first look a user has at your HVAC company’s website. This page should briefly cover all the following pages and have a call to action (CTA) driving users to these pages for easy navigation.
- Solutions: The solutions pages should outline each HVAC product and service you offer. Additionally, it should provide users with an in-depth look into how your company accomplishes these solutions.
- “Why Us”: What makes your HVAC company stand out among competitors? This page should highlight any HVAC industry achievements or awards your company has acquired and any impactful case studies you’d like to share.
- About Us: HVAC service leads are often influenced to invest in a local, homegrown company. The About Us page is great for showing users where your company started versus where it is now.
- Blog: An HVAC blog should present users with answers to common HVAC questions. For example, if a user searches “why is my HVAC unit leaking?” with the right keywords and SEO strategy, they can easily find your blog at the top of the search engine results page. And don’t worry, we’ll get more into HVAC SEO strategies later.
- Contact: Lastly, the contact page of your website should be easy to find for all users. Here, users should be able to easily find your company’s contact information, such as the street address, email address, and phone number. Additionally, having a submission form on the contact page would be ideal because if a user has a question, comment, or concern, they can submit it in this form for your team to answer.
While having all these components in your website design is great, there’s so much more than having the right content for easy navigation.
For instance, research shows that by the end of 2021, 54.4% of website traffic (number of users on a website) came from mobile devices. Therefore, for a company website to be user-friendly, it must also be mobile-friendly. Having a mobile-first mentality when it comes to your HVAC website design gives you the ability to gain and retain the attention of users.
How often have you left a website before it finishes loading? As it turns out, it’s not just you because a fast-loading website is crucial to digital success. Web page loading time should only take 1 to 2 seconds. The longer the load time, the greater the risk you have of users leaving the website before it even loads for them, also known as a “bounce”. When you create your website, it’s essential that you follow all the website development best practices to ensure pages load quickly for all users.
Write SEO-Focused Website Content
Once you have a website domain and design ready to go, it’s time to start writing and implementing SEO-focused website content. Remember earlier when I said we’d get back to HVAC SEO strategies? This is the section where we expand on that, so let’s jump into it.
SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” which means that you have content on your website that aligns with what your target audience is looking for on search engines like Google and Bing. With an SEO strategy in place, your HVAC company has the opportunity to rank for specific keywords on search engines, ideally, on the first search results page for easy visibility.
Seems easy enough, right? Well, not exactly because there’s a lot that goes into it. Aside from following SEO best practices, there must be a strategic process in place for search engines to find it valuable and from a credible source.
When you start integrating SEO into your HVAC company’s website copy, it’s crucial that you follow these tactics:
Implement HVAC-Focused Keywords
Using HVAC-focused keywords in your web page copy is essential for ranking on search engines and getting the right users to your website. However, it’s essential not to mention the same keyword too often so search engines don’t identify the content as “keyword stuffing,” which can negatively impact the digital marketing of your HVAC company website.
Link From One Page to Another
Internal and external linking is vital for presenting your HVAC company as a thought leader in the industry. With links going from one page to another, your users can go on a seamless journey throughout your website.
Additionally, internal linking from one page of your website to another enables users to learn more about a specific topic they may want more insight on. For example, suppose you briefly mention preventative maintenance on one of your pages. In that case, you can direct the user to another page that discusses the benefits of having an HVAC preventative maintenance plan.
While internal and external linking is great for enhancing the user experience with your website, it’s also a significant inbound marketing tactic for search engines to understand what your content is about. When you post new web pages or blogs on your website, Google performs an action known as crawling to help users find what they are looking for. Linking from one page to another enables Google to crawl your website more efficiently, therefore boosting the visibility of your content.
Practice Local SEO Services
Local SEO services are crucial for getting website traffic and leads from the region you serve. While it may be nice that a business in Orlando, Florida, is interested in your HVAC service solutions, it doesn’t do you much good if your business is located in St. Louis, Missouri.
A local SEO campaign helps your business generate leads from your target market. When a potential customer searches for “HVAC services near me,” your company should be one of the first options, if not the top, to appear on search engines. You can localize your HVAC business by stating that you serve a specific region on your website. In addition to the web pages we listed above, many HVAC companies also create an “Areas We Serve” web page to help them boost local SEO rankings, ensuring each lead they get is in their target market.
Here’s an example of what local SEO looks like on Google:
While social media is great for connecting with friends and family, it’s also a powerful tool for building brand awareness and keeping ongoing customers engaged with your HVAC company.
Integrating social media into your lead generation strategy allows you to share stories from both clients and employees. It can help you generate new business opportunities and recruit more HVAC technicians for your business. Sharing relatable content such as testimonials enables individuals to feel more connected with your company. Plus, it adds a personal touch to your overall HVAC marketing strategy and encourages more users to trust what your business offers.
Additionally, social media gives you another platform to promote your company’s pages and blog posts. Since a company website is the foundation of digital marketing for HVAC companies, you must drive traffic to your website to learn more about your company, the products and services you offer, and the insights you’ve learned from your time in the HVAC industry.
For example, let’s say you share one of your blogs on social media that explains why a furnace may not be working properly. When a reader clicks on the link to the blog, they learn that their problem could be due to a lack of maintenance. From this section, they can be directed to a blog that explains how HVAC technicians check commercial heating and cooling systems.
If a reader sees value in the routine maintenance process blog, they can submit their contact information in a form to schedule an HVAC maintenance meeting with your company. And voila, you have yourself a lead from a social media post!
Invest in Google and Social Media Ads
While many HVAC contractors prefer to go the organic search route when it comes to inbound marketing, investing in digital advertising is a great way to maximize your marketing efforts and get more leads implemented into your sales pipeline.
When your company invests in digital advertising on Google and social media platforms, you have the opportunity to target users based on what they’re searching for on search engines. This digital advertising practice is referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Let’s set the scene for you. Let’s say that a person is searching on Google for “HVAC repair services.” If you have an active PPC campaign running on Google targeted around the keyword “HVAC repair services,” your company has the opportunity to be the top HVAC repair solution that pops up at the top of the search engine results page.
Additionally, the same concept applies to social media ad campaigns. If a user is actively looking for HVAC repair services, a social media advertisement can pop up on their Facebook or LinkedIn page for easy visibility. While you can implement both a Google and social media ads strategy, it’s essential to consider your target audience and where they’re most likely to look for a solution to their HVAC pain points.
If interested users click on the advertisement, they’re directed to a landing page designed to convert them from users into leads. Overall, the end goal of this landing page is for the user to submit their contact information so a member of your internal team can reach out and schedule a time to perform an HVAC repair.
Encourage Happy Customers To Leave a Review
Above any digital marketing strategy, word-of-mouth marketing still reigns supreme as the most effective way to generate new business opportunities. If an HVAC client has a positive experience with your company, it’s important that you encourage them to leave a review on one (or all) of the following company review pages:
Google My Business (GMB)
GMB is a great platform to build local SEO and establish brand credibility in your target market. With a GMB profile, potential buyers can easily find your company’s website, street address, phone number, and more. When customers leave reviews on GMB, they can help influence the decision-making process of other buyers and lead to more sales opportunities.
Yelp
Like GMB, Yelp reviews are essential for driving new business opportunities for your HVAC company. If a potential buyer sees that a business like theirs had a good experience with your company, they’ll look forward to the same quality of service when they call.
Asking for HVAC reviews on your company’s Facebook page is essential because it’s another platform where previous and ongoing customers can rate your services. In addition to sharing valuable buyer-focused content, potential buyers can look at your ratings and comments to see the impact you’ve made on businesses similar to theirs.
If the ratings of your HVAC services are high enough, Facebook can rank your company as a top company in your professional services and highlight your company as a trusted leader in the HVAC industry.
Key Takeaways
While generating client referrals may be one way your HVAC company gets new business opportunities, it definitely should be a tactic that you bank on for sustainable growth. For a business growth strategy to be predictable and yield long-term results, other techniques must be in place, including outbound sales development or inbound digital marketing.
When it comes to digital marketing for HVAC companies, you and your marketing team must do the following:
- Design and develop a user-friendly company website
- Write website content that prioritizes search engine optimization
- Share social media content that resonates with potential buyers
- Invest in PPC campaigns on Google and social media
- Encourage satisfied customers to leave a positive review
HVAC companies that want to get the most out of their business growth efforts often integrate outbound and inbound lead generation strategies to ensure they’re constantly getting new leads in the sales pipeline.
At Abstrakt Marketing Group, our marketing specialists provide clients with proven to be effective website design, social media, digital advertising, and HVAC SEO services. Additionally, our sales development representatives are well-equipped to practice outbound sales development to help you generate more HVAC service leads and close high-quality sales opportunities.
When you’re ready to maximize your HVAC lead generation throughput, contact the sales and marketing experts at Abstrakt Marketing Group!
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