Book the truck, not the visit.

Enough to hold position through your busy season in the areas your vans actually cover. We scope it from your average job value, your capacity and how contested your market is. For context, the average contractor spends 6% of annual revenue on marketing, and those investing at least 12% see net profits move from 5% to 9% — and we will say plainly if your target needs more budget than you planned.

It depends on campaign type more than on your market. Across 816 contractors the blended cost per lead is $104, made up of $34 branded, $149 non-branded search and $72 Performance Max. The more useful number is spend per paying customer, which in that same dataset runs $472 blended. A $149 lead that books beats a $40 lead that wanted a filter price.

For most residential contractors, yes. Local Services Ads usually cost 40 to 60% less per acquisition than search ads, and the Google Guaranteed badge earns attention from homeowners who do not know your brand. Search still matters for equipment, commercial and replacement keywords that LSA does not serve, so we run them together and report each one separately.

Almost always because the account was told to optimise for form fills or any phone call over 15 seconds. Platforms are excellent at finding more of whatever you count, so a loose definition produces price shoppers at scale. Redefining a conversion as a booked job, and feeding that back from your service software, is normally the single biggest improvement available in an inherited account.

It is, with guardrails. Left alone it will happily spend your budget re-buying customers who searched your brand name. Fenced off with brand exclusions and proper conversion data it is often the cheapest source of new work in the account: $72 per lead against $149 on non-branded search. We report it as its own channel so nothing takes credit twice.

By planning the year rather than reacting to it. Heat waves and cold snaps are when demand and prices spike together, and shoulder seasons are where maintenance plans get sold cheaply — spring and autumn cut effective cost per lead by 15 to 25% as competition thins. We shift budget into those windows instead of running a flat monthly number.

Where it integrates, yes, and it makes a real difference. Feeding booked jobs and revenue back to the ad platforms lets them optimise towards work rather than enquiries. Where a system will not connect, we build the closest reliable proxy from phone records and say clearly that it is one.

No. The ad accounts, phone numbers, creative and landing pages are yours from day one, so the whole programme can move with you. We do ask for a fair window, usually a quarter, because paid campaigns need learning time and a full weather swing before anyone can judge them honestly.

It is usually the fastest channel available to a new business, because it does not depend on the authority and review count you have not built yet. Search ads can be live in days. Local Services Ads take longer because of licence and insurance checks, so we start with search and add LSA as the reviews arrive.

Paid buys immediate volume and shows you which services, offers and areas actually convert. Those learnings then shape the organic plan, and over time HVAC marketing lowers what you need to spend to hold the same booking board. Most of our home services clients run both, with paid heavier in the first year.

Use the industry spread as a target rather than a hope. HVAC paid search converts at 9.51% on average, and the strongest market in that dataset reaches 15.0%. If your pages sit in low single digits, the page and the phone are where the next improvement is, not the bidding strategy.

In this trade, yes. Phone calls account for 70 to 80% of home services conversions, and a missed call in July is a job that went to the next company on the list. We measure phone enquiries properly, listen to a sample every month, and tell you what the office could change — even when that is the part no advertising can fix.

Ask who manages the account day to day, how often search terms are reviewed, and what appears on the report. An agency reporting impressions and visits is measuring its own activity; one reporting price per booked job is measuring your business. Confirm the ad accounts and phone numbers will be in your name before you sign anything.

They are, and it is worth planning for. 83% of homeowners start their search online and 22% now use AI tools such as ChatGPT to research or find recommendations. Paid search still captures the urgent demand, but we pair it with ChatGPT ads and AI visibility work for clients who want to be present in both places.

When the numbers justify it. Microsoft Ads carry less volume but often a lower price per visit and an older, higher-income audience that suits system replacement work. We test it once Google is producing reliably, rather than splitting a modest spend across platforms on day one.

Three levers. Keyword and negative keyword work so your ads only reach high intent demand in the service area you can reach. Ad copy and offers that qualify people rather than promising the cheapest price. And optimisation against real booked jobs, so the platform learns what a good customer looks like. Quality improvement is slower than volume and worth far more.

Audit, measurement rebuild, campaign and page build, then launch. You get the wasted-spend findings, a channel and budget plan with targets, new landing pages and a phone handling playbook for the office. Spend stays deliberately modest until the measurement is proven.

Yes. Commercial demand is thinner, more considered and far more valuable per contract, so the campaigns look different: tighter keyword sets, longer-form pages, and reporting built around opportunities rather than call volume. We set the targets from your pipeline maths instead of reusing a residential template.

A named senior paid media strategist who also joins the monthly session. You will know who writes your ads and who touches the budget, and you can reach them directly. Nothing gets handed to an anonymous queue once the pitch is over.