No matter where your HVAC business is located, you can bet that every commercial property in the area has an HVAC system; therefore, everyone needs an HVAC provider. This also means that competition will be fierce, and becoming the preferred HVAC provider in your market will be no easy feat. Growing your HVAC business is achievable with the right growth strategy, but it’s going to require constant customer acquisition which won’t happen naturally, it requires work.
If you want to grow your HVAC business and become the leading provider in your market, here are some HVAC lead generation and growth strategies that will help you get started.
Building Your Online Presence to Generate HVAC Leads
The first growth strategy that’s important for HVAC companies is online lead generation. The digital age has made us all dependent on the internet. Whether we’re looking to make a purchase or just have a question, Google will more than likely have the answer. When a company is looking for a new HVAC provider, there’s a high chance that they will start their research online. In fact, 87% of consumers begin their shopping journey with digital. This is why it’s so important for HVAC companies to optimize their website for search engines—so that they appear first in search results above the competition.
Here are a few ways HVAC companies can improve their online presence to consistently generate new leads.
Design an Amazing Website
HVAC website design is extremely important if you want to consistently generate opportunities and become a leading provider in your market. Many HVAC companies think that their website is just an extension of their brochure—a quick summary and a brief overview of services will do the trick. However, your website can and should be so much more than this.
Your website is more than a place to house information, it’s your digital identity. And, believe it or not, most of the people who happen upon your website are already looking for HVAC services, so your website has the potential to generate a massive amount of HVAC jobs. This is why it’s so important to design a beautiful, conversion-focused website. When you make your website easy to navigate and optimize it in a way so that it’s easy to find in search engines, it’s easy to convert almost every visitor into a customer.
Focus on SEO and Content Creation
Designing a beautiful website isn’t enough to get you at the top of search engine results. To do this, you need to focus on search engine optimization (SEO) and everything that goes into it. This will help your company appear in more searches for key industry terms (HVAC services, HVAC inspection, AC repair, for example). It also helps you generate more website traffic; therefore, it helps you fill your sales pipeline with more qualified leads and close more deals.
There is a lot that goes into a good SEO strategy, but here are some of the main things your HVAC business should focus on:
The consistent creation and publication of high-quality, SEO-focused content. This is probably the most important component of any great SEO strategy. If you’re not consistently adding content to your site, Google is going to think you aren’t active and it will hurt your ranking. Plus, writing content that answers common questions and how your business solves those problems will attract more site traffic, engage users, and convert those users into leads.
Other ways to optimize your website:
- Optimize your website for mobile users (mobile accounts for approximately 50% of all web traffic, and Google will penalize sites that are not optimized for mobile)
- Optimize your page speed so that your website delivers fast load times (a tool like GTmetrix can reveal how your site performs in terms of speed while also revealing optimization opportunities)
- Focus on internal and external linking (adding internal and external links to your content helps boost SEO rankings and boosts website traffic)
- Improve user experience across your whole site (SEO gets a user to your HVAC website, but a good experience keeps them there longer)
With a good SEO strategy, you’ll blow your competition out of the water all while consistently generating new revenue.
Utilize Social Media
Creating a presence on social media can help your HVAC business immensely. Not only can you drive more traffic to your website this way, but you can also use it to interact with customers in your market. Younger generations in particular often use social media to get a feel for companies. Even if they came across your website first, they may navigate to one of your social media pages by finding out about it on your website.
If they like what they see, they may choose to work with you over the competition. Having a social media presence shows that you are a committed, well-established business. So make sure your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are all active. Consistently share digestible content, photos, news updates, and customer reviews to really wow social media users.
Run Pay-Per-Click Ads
While you’re still working on climbing in rankings on Google and earning visits organically, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a great way to drive more traffic to your website and generate leads. You only pay for the ad when someone clicks it, making PPC one of the most cost-effective lead generation strategies for HVAC companies.
B2B Appointment Setting for HVAC Companies
The second growth strategy that works well for HVAC companies is a B2B appointment setting program. Unlike building your online presence and letting potential customers come to you, appointment setting programs focus on a sales rep being the first one to reach out to a prospect. This may sound like a daunting task, but if you know how to structure your B2B appointment setting program, it’s actually quite easy to generate HVAC leads this way.
Here’s what you need to do to generate leads with a B2B appointment setting program:
Prospect to Find High-Quality Leads
The first step to designing a solid HVAC appointment setting program is prospecting. Once you build a strong list of potential customers, you can begin a sales program that will hopefully result in leads and new business opportunities. So, start by determining your appointment qualifiers. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What types of companies do you want to work with?
- How many square feet would you like the facility to be?
- What geographic areas will you be targeting?
- What types of decision-makers would you like to speak with?
Once you know all of this, you can build a strong list using a cutting-edge prospecting tool. Then, you can qualify those leads even further by beginning your sales program and starting to build relationships.
Nurture Qualified Leads
Even if you scrub your list a hundred times, there are some things you will never know about a prospect until you talk to them. So, you have to begin your sales program after you build a list of prospects. Nurturing leads will not only help you to find out more information about whether or not they fit the mold of your ideal customer, but it will help you to close deals. So, start calling, emailing, and keeping in touch with potential customers. Make sure you find out which ones will be ready to buy HVAC services soon so you can touch those leads more frequently and stay top of mind.
Use Email Marketing
Another essential component to any appointment setting program is email marketing. An email marketing campaign can help you generate more leads; plus, it’s a great nurture technique. If you think email marketing won’t help you generate revenue, think again—59% of marketers say that email marketing continues to generate the most ROI for their organization. Whether you’re using an email marketing automation tool to send emails out as part of a nurture campaign or you’re sending emails out to a list of subscribers, email marketing is an effective way to guide potential customers all the way down the sales funnel.
Email marketing also offers an amazing opportunity for your HVAC business to:
- Develop a stronger relationship with a prospect
- Send targeted messages to prospects based on their needs
- Provide valuable resources to prospects that they may not be getting from the competition (marketing assets, blogs to help them keep their HVAC system healthy, etc.)
- Convert more leads into appointments (which then hopefully convert into new sales!)
When all is said and done, email marketing should definitely be a part of your B2B appointment setting program; and if it’s not, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
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