Before you buy more HVAC leads, find out where they go.
Buying more leads while inquiries sit unanswered after five is paying to fill a bucket with a hole in it. Find the hole first, then decide whether ads are worth it.
Who this is for
An HVAC owner selling replacements and installs, thinking about more ad spend because the phone is quiet, who hasn’t yet measured what happens to the calls already coming in.
What we hear from operators.
- A form fill at 6pm gets answered at 9am, and by then they called someone else.
- Missed calls are not counted anywhere, so nobody knows the real number.
- Ad spend is judged on cost per lead, not on jobs booked.
- Nobody can say which channel produced last month’s best customer.
Do not hire us if
Your callback is already fast and almost no inquiry goes unanswered.
Then it’s a volume problem, and more spend on a page that already converts may be all you need. Measure first.
If it is the other case.
Check the numbers before spending on volume
Missed calls, response time, and what a replacement job is worth after materials and labor. If a typical job can’t carry the cost of getting it, we tell you and stop there.
Answer fast, at the hours you lose
Evenings and weekends are when replacement work gets searched for and nobody is at the desk. A quote page that captures the request and an immediate reply keep the job from going to whoever calls back first.
Report on sold jobs, not leads
Every lead is tagged with where it came from and matched each week to the jobs you sold. That, not cost per lead, decides which spend you keep.
Measure these four before you raise the budget
Each of these can be measured this week with what you already have. The point is not to avoid advertising. It is to know whether you are buying volume for a bucket with a hole in it.
- Missed-call rate, by hour
- Pull the call log and count what rang out, grouped by hour. Evenings and weekends are when emergency HVAC is searched for and when nobody is at the desk. Check whether your worst hour for missed calls is also when people search for emergency repairs.
- Median time to first response
- From form submission or missed call to an actual human reply. Not your policy, the measured median. On an emergency job, every hour without a reply gives a competitor time to answer first.
- Share of inquiries that get any reply
- The number nobody tracks. Count inquiries received against inquiries responded to over one month. A gap here is the cheapest thing on this page to fix.
- Cost per booked job, not per lead
- Cost per lead flatters whichever channel produces the most tire-kickers. Tracking through to a booked job can change which channel you would keep funding.
Where we stand
We built the quote page and lead capture for The Attic Monkeys, an attic insulation and dryer vent business in Brevard County, Florida, and we are launching its insulation ads and lead-to-job reporting now. It is not an HVAC contractor, and we have no HVAC replacement client yet. The leak is the same.