The HVAC Marketing System That Will Dominate 2026

If your business feels like it's feast or famine, like one day your board's crazy full and one day it's totally empty, hey, that business is actually really weak. Marketing is a system that's going to generate leads and drive results from them. So if this has ever been you, this might resonate. I'm John Wilson, and I'm the CEO of Wilson Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, and Electric in Ohio and Indiana. Today we're going to talk about what works, what doesn't, and how to think about growing your HVAC business through marketing. If this content is interesting to you, make sure you like and subscribe so you can see more stuff like it. Most HVAC owners think that HVAC marketing is essentially outside of their control and that it is primarily driven by big weather events, and that is just painfully wrong. After spending millions of dollars on marketing for our HVAC business, the pattern becomes very obvious. Marketing working consistently really comes down to 3 things. One, generating Enough demand. 2, having some demand levers that you can control and you can activate whenever you need them. And 3, responding to leads fast enough. And if any one of these breaks, your team doesn't stay busy and the business does not continue to scale. One of the most common themes that I see inside HVAC businesses is that they simply are not spending enough money on marketing. When I ask them, hey, how are you driving new customers? How is the business continuing to grow? The sentences I often hear are something like, We're word of mouth driven. We're all referrals. Everybody knows everybody. And when they say that, they feel proud that that is the reality of their business. But the reality as a business buyer is, hey, that business is actually really weak. Maybe they don't have enough profit to invest into more marketing. Maybe they just don't know how to market. Maybe they're in an in a market where adding advertising dollars won't actually help scale them. And if you're relying mostly on referrals or repeat customers or organics. Sources, although that they, they are great sources of lead flow, they are not going to drive a consistent and ever-growing amount of call volume. I've looked at so many companies where they're doing $2, $3, $4, $5 million and they're spending $30,000 a year on marketing. The owner's proud of it, but he's in the wrong. Spending more on marketing is a good thing because it means that the business is healthy and the business is driving consistent Leads. One of the biggest things holding back a business is just having more leads. It, it sounds so obvious, and yet so many people still mess it up. We bought a business in January of this year. The very first thing that we did was we cut down some of the non-essential marketing, and we just turned more of that into lead budget. We spent more on LSA, we spent more on Angie's List, we spent more on Modernize, and we just increase the amount of leads that we bought. And that company literally went from $100,000 a month to $240,000 in the first 30 days simply by buying more leads. It honestly is pretty close to that simple. Most healthy HVAC businesses are going to roughly spend around 7 to 10% on marketing. Obviously, there's a ton of examples that are spending way, way less. But whenever I see that, I question how healthy is this business actually? And is it really growing, or is the thing that they're trying to optimize for just, I spend less on marketing? At the end of the day, an HVAC business, a plumbing business, landscaping, any home service business is a marketing then sales business. You need a lead on the board and then you have to sell that lead. That's what it is. And you might not like that, but that is just how the business works. And if you're not focusing on that first step, which is generating consistent, ever-growing call volume, filling your board every day, then the business can never go anywhere because it really is, are your leads growing? Are you selling those leads? Here's a couple simple ways to tell if you're underinvesting in marketing. One, if you're under 5%, you're probably underinvesting in marketing. If the phone only rings once or twice a day, you might be underinvesting in marketing. If you have gaps in your schedule and you don't know how to fill them, you're probably underinvesting in marketing. If you're turning off ads on and off constantly, you're probably underinvesting in marketing. And if most of your marketing is not lead-focused, if it is brand-heavy and you're a small business, you're probably underinvesting in marketing. Back to my example of this business that we took over earlier this year, advertising budget was pretty brand-heavy, 80% brand and 20% leads, maybe even 10% leads. And we completely flipped that. And the business more than doubled in those first 30 days. It used to be that the schedule had a lot of gaps and the guys were never full, and now the schedule is full every day. The owner thought that marketing didn't work, but really we just weren't pushing hard enough on the levers that mattered. Now, most HVAC companies are relying on demand sources that they can't easily control, one of which is the weather. Hey, is it 100 degrees today or is it 0 degrees today? Well, obviously you cannot control that. It's also really hard to scale on the back of referrals or word of mouth marketing or how well your organic SEO is working. They're great sources and when they work, they work. But it's not something that you can control and drive the lever on. And that's the way to think about this, whether it's a lever or a dial. You want to be able to turn up your marketing when you need it and turn it a little bit down When you're busy, when you don't control it, your board gets empty, your sales stall, you start losing talent because you're not filling their boards, and it just becomes a downward spiral. Some of my favorite controllable demand types are SMSing our customers, calling our customers, LSA, the Google LSA, Angie's List. Even canvassing and knocking doors is a controllable lead type because the amount of input and energy that you're putting into that exercise of knocking on doors and booking appointments will immediately manifest into appointments. The companies that stay busy year-round and are growing continually 10%, 20%, 30% a year are the ones that have a few levers that they control like crazy, and they can scale the effort by adding more money to Google, canvassing more doors, or outbounding more customers. Here's a few of the different ways that you can work with Google. One, the Google Business Profile. That's where your name, your, your open hours, the number of reviews you have, your services are all housed. And the best way to think about it is it's like a mini website hosted by Google. So you want to input time and energy into it because people are going to be searching for companies and you're going to show up on the map pack. The next one is the local service ads where Google distributes leads based on rankings and reviews. It works, it works awesome, and tends to be the less competition in your area, the better it works. And finally, Google Ads, the OG of marketing, Pay-per-click leads, you can increase or decrease spend at your leisure and it is a keyword-focused search. So plumber Akron, Ohio, here we are. Understanding the difference matters because the way that you drive today's leads is different than a week from now's leads or a year from now's leads. Map Pack and your Google Business Profile is very important over the course of a year, but it's a little bit less relevant if your board is slow today. LSA will fill your board today. PPC will fill your board next week and your Google Business Profile will fill your board a year from now. So make sure you understand the difference as you are starting to ramp up your marketing so that you allocate your energy in the right spot. If your business feels like it's feast or famine, like one day your board's crazy full and one day it's totally empty, it is because you're relying on sources that you can't control. And that is a symptom of, hey, I need to change where I'm driving leads and how I think about it. If it's really big peaks and valleys for your lead flow and what your board looks like, then you need to be evaluating where am I spending my money, where am I spending my time, and how can I change this to make this a more consistent and ever-growing collection of lead sources? Something that was kind of funny was in 2023 and 2024, we began our outbound and speed to lead program, and over the course of '24, we grew by 50% in our marketing budget didn't move. We spent the same dollars. We spent $1.6 million in '23 and we spent $1.7 in 2024. But the business grew by 50%. And the biggest difference was we outbounded more of our customers and we focused on responding to the leads that we had already bought, which is one of the biggest mistakes that we continuously see. Something that most owners don't realize when they start buying leads is that they are actually just not responding fast enough. So if this has ever been you, this might resonate, but I'm going to go sign up for Thumbtack tomorrow and I'm going to try to drive some leads. You know, this guy on the internet told me it totally worked. I go make a Thumbtack account and I get my first lead. Well, I'm kind of busy right now, so in an hour or two I'm going to call them back. Well, I call them back in an hour or two and they already have somebody. They've already contacted someone. Someone's already given them a price potentially. And I'm just sort of like annoyed because I paid $25 for that lead. I didn't get an appointment out of it and I basically just lost. I've heard every version of this story over the last 10 years of my career, and it could be any lead source you can think of. PPC doesn't work. Angie's List doesn't work. Modernize doesn't work. Thumbtack doesn't work. You can say it with anything. And the problem is never that those sources don't work. The problem is always that the contractor does not have the systems inside their business to allow those sources to work. This is speed to lead. A lead comes in. How fast do we respond to that lead? How fast do we book that lead? And how fast can we be on site to sell that lead? That is the one of the biggest mistakes that small contractors make is they aren't emphasizing their speed to lead. Now, the reason that matters is as you continue to grow, your business will need more and more lead channels. And as we figured out those other channels, speed to lead became a much, much more important part of the process. Because often the first company to pick up the phone and book that appointment is the company that gets the job. And if you're responding that night or the next day or an hour later, that is just not fast enough if you're competing against me and our team is responding in 5 seconds. Let's get that appointment booked and let's invest our time and energy into response time because that matters a lot. As you start working on speed to lead and making use of the leads that you've already paid for, here's the way to think about it. If a lead comes in, what happens next? How fast does it happen? And how many times do I respond within 5 seconds with a text? Do I call within 5 minutes? How many more times do I contact them? How many more texts? How many more calls? How many more emails? How many touchpoints do I have with that customer? Before I say, hey, this lead is not a good lead. I have heard every version of Angie's List doesn't work a million times over from contractors all over the US, but someone out there is making it work because they are responding fast and they are driving positive results for their business. What actually makes HVAC marketing work is they are generating and investing into their marketing to generate enough demand. They have demand sources that they can control and they can scale up or down as needed, and they are responding to their leads quickly. Marketing's not just choosing that one banger channel that's going to totally knock it out of the park. Marketing is a system that's going to generate leads and drive results from them. What I've continually been impressed by over the years is the companies that win and the companies that get big are not the ones driven by some creative genius. They're the ones driven by consistent processes that are investing in the right tools and channels to continue to grow their business. And they're often simply the ones that respond to their customer the fastest. If you like what you heard today, make sure you like and sub.