How To Build a Strong HVAC Marketing Plan in 2025

There is an old saying: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

When it comes to HVAC marketing, you could adjust it to say:

“If you fail to make an HVAC marketing plan, you plan to waste a lot of money.”

It might sound harsh, but it’s the truth.

The majority of HVAC business owners don’t have a clear HVAC marketing plan. They have no idea how to increase their HVAC leads, grow new customer referrals, or to leverage their satisfied customers.

In this article, we will look at how you can stand out from the competition with a clear HVAC digital marketing strategy in 2025. We will share some of the simplest, and most cost-effective ways to grow your revenue as a HVAC contractor.

As an HVAC marketing company, we have spent over 20 years working directly in the HVAC industry and helping HVAC business owners like you dominate their local market.

It’s not always easy, but once you have a clear HVAC marketing plan, it’s less stressful and much less expensive.

Let’s dive in.

“How Do I Market my HVAC Business?”

This question is the one most HVAC contractors start asking themselves as soon as they decide to go out on their own.

As an HVAC business owner, you are a master of your technical trade, but figuring out how to attract potential clients for your HVAC service is not in your wheelhouse.

Unfortunately, there are a million ways to try to market an HVAC business, but very few real answers to what works.

The key to HVAC marketing success has always been the same: find a way to get in front of customers and build trust with them.

Of course, thanks to digital marketing, this is a lot easier than it used to be. But it has also become much more convoluted and expensive.

Before spending money on HVAC advertising, new website design, directories, or local services ads, it’s a good idea to think about your goals.

Five Steps To Building a HVAC Marketing Plan for 2025

At Effective, we work directly with every HVAC business owner to create an annual marketing plan. This approach means all our marketing efforts are strategic and measurable.

By creating a marketing plan for the entire calendar year you can better predict your revenue, and know where you should allocate your marketing dollars.

Of course, the HVAC slow season needs a completely different approach to the busy demand season. This difference is a core reason why an effective marketing strategy can help make the year much more steady.

Here are five key steps to building an HVAC marketing plan that you can follow:

1. Start with HVAC Marketing Goals

You might have heard that old maxim from Peter Drucker that ‘What Gets Measured Gets Done.’ 

It’s a good place to start for an HVAC marketing plan.

Before you even think about your marketing efforts, figure out what your financial and marketing goals are.

Some examples of HVAC marketing goals are:

– How many new customer leads do you want per month?
– What do you want your average ticket sale to be?
– What percentage of revenue do you want to spend on marketing?
– How many maintenance plan customers do you want?
– How many new customer reviews do you want to gain?

You know that when diagnosing problems with an HVAC system, you start with diagnostics. It is the same with HVAC contractor marketing.

Some HVAC contractors are in growth mode, while others are content to maintain their current revenue. There is no right or wrong way to set your HVAC marketing goals, but you do need to know what you want to achieve.

Spend some time working with your HVAC techs, your CSR team, and your Service Managers to figure out the goals you want to target for 2025. Doing this as a team means everyone is focused on the same targets. 

Finally, don’t sweat on getting perfect goals in place; just start by listing down what you think you want to achieve.

As Dave Bowen, our Managing Partner, says, “Plans are written in pencil, not pen. Adjustments or changes can be made throughout the year.”

2. Setup HVAC Marketing Dashboards

Once you have clear marketing goals in place, the next step is to determine how you will track and measure your progress.

Having a clear marketing reporting tool is essential if you want to ensure that you are not overspending or losing money on your HVAC marketing.

Most HVAC customer relationship management tools (CRMs) have some built-in marketing tools, and you can also setup additional marketing tools for social media, SEO, call tracking, PPC, and GLSA.

It takes a while to set up your marketing reporting, but it’s worth it.

When you review your HVAC marketing campaign results each month, quarter, and year, you begin to see areas where you can improve your results.

Tools such as Birdeye can be used for reputation management, and email marketing tools such as Mailchimp also have excellent reporting.

Even having a simple review of your Google Analytics, Google Ads Manager, or Google Local Services Ads is a good start.  

3. Define Your Target Audience

One of the biggest problems we notice that limits the success of an HVAC marketing strategy is that the target customer is not defined.

Every HVAC business owner wants to make as much money as possible, but casting too wide of a net can result in a loss of marketing effectiveness.

It is much better to target a smaller local area, or a specific age demographic, or home type rather than try to offer ‘everything to everyone’.

Here are some specific questions you can ask about your target audience:

Household Types:

• Homeownership Status: owner or renter?
• Type of residence: Single-family home, townhouse, apartment, etc
• Home Age: new, more than 15 years old, etc
• Household Size: bedrooms, bathrooms, etc
• Geographic Location: zip code or city names

Income & Socioeconomic Factors:

• Income Level: Approximate household income range
• Occupation
• Education Level

Age & Family Status:

• Age Range
• Family Status: Children or elderly family members in the home

Defining your target audience has a huge impact on your HVAC marketing plan.

With a clearly defined audience you can formulate an effective marketing strategy, decide on the best marketing platform, and determine which offers are most appealing to a potential customer.

For example, here are some of the best demographic audiences that we have found work within the HVAC industry, and especially when looking to grow an HVAC business.

•    Adults 35-64 – depending upon your location, you may want to widen it to ages 25-64
•    Female skew – typically, females are highly involved in the purchase decision
•    Homeowners – target those who can make s buying decision.
•    Household income – we typically recommend 70k and above

The above demographics are very easy to target through many forms of digital marketing or HVAC advertising.

When deciding on your target locations, you should focus your marketing efforts on where you can attract new customers.

With tools like Google Ads, GLSA, and Facebook Ads, it is very easy to geofence the specific geographic areas where you want to market. If you are using streaming products such as Over-the-top radio and billboards (OTT), they are deliverable to specific ZIP codes and households.

Clearly defining your target audience helps ensure that you don’t waste money and that your HVAC marketing plan is more accurate and effective.

4. Choose Your HVAC Marketing Platforms

When developing a marketing plan for your HVAC business, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the various marketing channel options available.

Some of the most common HVAC marketing channels are:

TV Ads
Radio Ads
Streaming (OTT) Ads
Billboards
Print Ads
Website and Search Engine Results
Google Ads (PPC)
Social Media Marketing
Google Local Service Ads (GLSA)

Of course, each marketing channel option can be effective if used correctly.

When choosing the right marketing channel for your HVAC marketing campaign, you can split it into two options: lead generation and brand building.

HVAC Lead Generation

In 2025, most HVAC lead generation will be done via online sources. Consumers today will use their smartphones, tablets, and computers to find the right HVAC contractor.

They will search for ‘AC Repair’ or ‘Furnace Service’ to find you, so you must be visible.

Below is a list of platforms that are proven lead generators for HVACR companies:

Local Service Ads (aka Google Guaranteed)

LSA is what potential customers see at the very top of the search results. It’s a pay-per-lead service, so you only pay for the quality leads. Google allows you to listen to phone calls and dispute the bad ones. Example: If a consumer calls for a service you do not provide, contacts you from out of your designated service area, is a solicitor, is someone looking for employment, or calls the wrong company, these are disputable for a refund.

Search Ads (PPC)

These are the text ads just below the Local Service Ads on the search results page. The advantage of PPC ads is that you can customize the message for local customers and specific seasonal offers.

Performance Max

This newer Google ads platform shows text ads, sponsored ads on the local maps pack, short videos, and even ads in Gmail. Google determines which ad to show the searcher based on the search query.

Display Ads

These are visual ads that appear on partnering websites at the top, bottom, or side of a website. (Example: websites such as local news sites, national news sites, or sports).

HVAC SEO

Search Engine Optimization is crucial to keeping your website ranking organically. For HVAC SEO and local SEO to be effective, you must create a useful and readable HVAC website that ranks well and stands out from your competitors.


HVAC lead generation can be the most critical portion of the HVAC marketing plan. The budget will fluctuate throughout the year depending on the number of leads needed and seasonal demand.

However, consistency is important. Google does not like you to stop or pause their ads, because it interrupts their learning algorithms. You can increase the budget if needed to drive more phone calls.

The portion of your total marketing budget dedicated to lead generation can vary widely from 35% to 70%, depending on the company and its needs.

HVAC Brand Building

While many HVAC company owners obsess about leads, they often forget the value of growing brand awareness. Any small business that wants to keep its existing customers must keep winning them back through brand building.

Here are some of the key ways you can create an HVAC marketing campaign for branding:

TV/Streaming/OTT

This is still one of the best platforms for getting your message out to the public by creating a visual representation of you. (OTT, or over-the-top, is essentially streaming TV.)

Radio Ads

Many people may think radio is no longer relevant; however, it can be a great medium for frequency. Consumers typically have three radio stations they listen to regularly. When advertising on radio, you should consider multiple genres. Examples: country, Adult Contemporary, urban, News Talk, and Sports.

Billboards

Thousands of would-be customers can see a well-placed billboard each week on their commute and traveling around.

Social Media

This can fit into the digital or brand-building category, but we tend to place it in branding. It’s the lowest-cost branding platform we see in today’s market.

Grassroots Marketing

Many HVAC Contractors often overlook community-based marketing that keeps you top of mind. Your HVAC company should always be visible in the local community. Examples can include sponsoring Little League teams and high school sports teams.


HVAC Branding is the long-term approach to marketing for your contracting business. You will not typically see immediate results from brand marketing, but it will pay dividends.

Whatever HVAC marketing platforms you decide to use to grow your brand, you must commit to them long-term. If you choose radio, then commit to multiple stations, frequency on each, and keep your message consistent. Remember, you are building “brand” messages about who you are in the marketplace. Your HVACR company should become known as a trusted local business that provides high-quality HVAC work at a fair price. These messages resonate with consumers, so they will remember your company and your message when they have a need.

5. Choose the Right Marketing Offers

Nobody decides randomly to repair or replace their HVAC system. They have been considering or worrying about it for at least a few weeks, months, or maybe even years.

When consumers want to consider HVAC repair versus system replacement, they have a very different mindset.

For this reason, you should have a range of HVAC specials available depending on the type of customer, their location, and the life stage of their HVAC system.

HVAC Maintenance Plan Offers

• Money off an HVAC service call (Example: $50 off HVAC furnace repair).
• Free Service Call or Free Diagnostic – the public has become aware that it is not free of charge for the contractor to come out to your home or business to assess the problem (Offer free diagnostic with same-day repair).
• Tune-Up Offers – be aware that sometimes when a homeowner calls in to schedule a ‘tune-up’ on their system, the AC or furnace actually needs repair. 
• Financing – zero or low-interest offers have their place in the HVAC service world these days. Many repairs, such as compressor or coil replacements, can cost well above $1,000. (You should offer financing on every service call.).
• Equipment rebates and special financing offers toward a new system do have their place. When the repair is not the best option for the consumer, these can help close the sale.
  

However, we have found that the best practice is not to lead with these offers. They tend to attract the price shoppers. We’ve all had the potential customer say, “Well, you’re one of five estimates I’m getting.”  No thanks.

Financing and Rebate Offers

• 0% Interest – offers for 24, 36, and 48 months interest-free catches the consumer’s eye (Caution: the buydown amount can be upwards of 15% for you, the contractor).
• 12/18 Months No Interest – Another consumer favorite (as long as the total bill is paid off in full, the consumer incurs no finance charges. Of course, you, the contractor, pay a percentage).
• Manufacturer Rebates – Money discounted off a new system driven by the manufacturer is a great secondary offer, as stated earlier.
• In-House Rebates – We’ve seen many heating and air companies offer their rebates internally (Who says you can’t create your promotion.) Just make sure the selling price covers it. 

How To Set the Budget for Your HVAC Marketing Plan

The marketing budget for your HVAC marketing plan should be one that you are comfortable with financially.

We’ve seen too many HVAC businesses over-invest in marketing in this industry.

Ideally, an HVAC marketing budget of 3% to 8% of gross revenue is where we typically see contractors land.

Simply spending a lot more money on HVAC marketing will not make your business successful, Instead, you must be strategic, and only invest what is sustainable over a given time.

When it comes to HVAC digital marketing, allocating the dollars between lead generation and branding is critical. 
 

Stick to Your HVAC Marketing Plan

Once you have created a solid HVAC marketing plan, you must be consistent and persistent

So many HVAC company owners dabble in marketing, but they do not stay the course.

Building your brand takes time, as with any aspect of your business. Create an HVAC marketing budget that your business can afford and stick to it.

As your sales grow, you can always increase your investment.

At Effective Media, have an old saying, “You cannot market yourself out of business.” 

Throwing money at marketing will not fix everything. But creating an HVAC marketing plan and staying the course is key to your HVAC business’s growth.

Will Merritt
will@myeffectivemedia.com

Effective Media Solutions is an HVAC marketing company with over 20 years of experience in HVAC digital marketing and traditional HVAC advertising. We know how to grow your HVAC business and get the phone to ring. Call us today to see how we can help your HVAC business grow during the slow season and beyond.

“We Speak HVAC!”