COVID‑19 and the Impact on Your HVAC/P Company

You're listening to a Rocket Media broadcast. Prepare for launch as we share another great episode. COVID 19 and the impact on your H Vac Plumbing Company in the last few weeks, one thing has become increasingly clear for businesses around the world. There's no playbook for navigating the COVID 19 pandemic. These are uncharted times for everyone. So if you feel or lost or unsure about how to lead your H Vac or plumbing company right now, you're not alone. Over the last few weeks, our team at Rocket Media has handled questions from our clients such as how should I be communicating to my customers right now? What does the coronavirus mean for my marketing budget? Should we be rethinking our current marketing strategy? To be clear, you may not find the answers to those questions at the end of this article. The goal of this article is to arm you with valuable insight so that you can make smarter decisions that that are appropriate for your unique H Vac and plumbing company. To do that, we'll do a couple things reveal trends in H Vac consumer buying behavior up to March 14, 2020 Share what other clients of ours are doing in response to Covid19 so let's dive in the current state of the H Vac industry compared to many other local industries, the H Vac industry is doing quite well. According to recent Service Titan report, revenue for many H Vac companies has not been significantly affected to date. The report, which was released on March 14, 2020, details the completed job revenue for over 4,000 H VAC companies across the US and Canada. Other interesting data from the report Completed job revenue that on average is up about 10% year over year continues to be up 5% for the week of March 2 and up 4.4percent for the week of March 9. H vac companies who rely heavily on big box home improvement store sales or commercial work or restaurants or office buildings were financially impacted the most. However, other companies saw fairly consistent revenue. For March, a spike in job cancellations 150% was seen on March 2, immediately after the COVID 19 death. However, cancellations quickly decrease to their normal levels within a few days, incoming leak calls are only down 2% globally. And finally, future jobs on the books, which was up 3.5% nationally on average, continues to be up 2.5%. So what's the bottom line here? While the H vac plumbing industry may not be thriving compared to previous years, there is clearly still healthy demand for these services. You can see the full Service stripings report on servicedight.com for more industry trends and Insights Factors that are likely Protecting the H Vac and Plumbing Industry H Vac and plumbing services aren't luxury items. Recent surveys indicate that over the next six months, consumers are planning to cut spending due to COVID 19. However, most anticipate spending on less on discretionary items like fuel, fashion, luxury goods, toys and games. Homeowners don't typically consider H Vac, plumbing and electrical expenses to be discretionary items. That said, elective calls like maintenance visits may be lower, but you can anticipate there will be a demand for repairs and installations. Home comfort and reliable plumbing is more important than ever the majority of the US homeowners are staying home due to due to the COVID 19 quarantine efforts. With so many Americans stuck at home, we can assume that home comfort and reliable plumbing is not only top of mind, but essential. H Vac and plumbing is exempt from stay at home and even shelter in place orders. At the time of this article, California is the only state to see various shelter in place orders from local officials. The majority of U.S. cities and counties are under stay at home orders. However, in most states, service trades are exempt from these orders and can continue to operate normally. According to the San Francisco website, plumbers, electricians, exterminators and other service providers can continue business under Shelter in place and stay at home orders. What your peers are doing We've seen varying reactions from our H VAC and plumbing clients in response to COVID 19. A few of our clients reacted quickly and tightened their marketing budget. However, the majority of our clients are maintaining their marketing budgets and simply shifted budget to to service and products that are more top of mind now, such as air quality and water filtration products. Various clients have increased spend and are taking a more aggressive marketing strategy in reaction to changes in the industry due to COVID 19. In fact, one of our customers, Luke Cooper, COO of Cooper Heating and Cooling located in Colorado, sees this as an opportunity to increase his company's market share. While his competitors have pulled back on on marketing efforts, Luke and his team have increased their paid search budget for more visibility and are even planning to hire more technicians at this time. In a recent call with our team, Luke explained that he anticipates demand for his service will eventually bounce back and he wants to be fully staffed and prepared to absorb the jobs in his area. Our COVID19 marketing recommendations invest more in branding, not less. If you're financially able to do when other brands pull back, you can increase your share in voice at a much cheaper cost because there is less competition for attention and ad inventory. Keep your competitors close. As companies go out of business, competitors can fill the gap. Keep an eye on your competitors, competitors and conquest. If you if it's if you sense they are weak, be honest and ethical in your marketing. Don't over promise on what your air quality or water filtration products can do against COVID 19 this can backfire and have a lasting impression on your brand. Prepare to be there when the need is there. Most economics are predicting a bounce back in consumer demand. The main debate is when that bounce back will occur. Our advice is to keep as much staff as you can to afford. The worst thing you can do is to make hasty layoffs then to not have the ability to take jobs when demand returns. Instead, line everything up so that your team can just flip a switch to turn on. We also recommend that you have creatives ready for instant promotions. Want more marketing recognitions? Our CEO Ben Kalkman and our strategy manager Shawn Bucher were recently interviewed in an HCHR in their recent article how how to Market H Vac during COVID Pandemic. Need help navigating these tough times? Rocket Media can help. We realize that a push for marketing in the midst of these hard times seems inappropriate. But the reality is there's nothing gets better if we stand still. Now more than ever, it's important to be smart with your marketing, but we know that will look different for every H Vac and plumbing company. Whether you're an existing client or not, we can help you develop a marketing strategy that aligns with your company's budget and competitor landscape. We hope your team stays strong and healthy. We're here to help any way we can.