Seasonal demand is not a strategy. It is a symptom.

Four decisions and a plan. Service mix and branch priority, meaning which work and which markets get funded and which are declined; positioning and messaging, meaning why a homeowner or facility manager should choose you; channel roles by season, meaning what each channel is for in peak and shoulder months; and budget and measurement, meaning owners, spend by quarter and the numbers leadership reviews weekly. The output is a written marketing plan, not a workshop summary.

An agency executes a plan. This engagement writes one, and because we take no execution work inside it, the plan can say that a channel should be cut or that a branch should stop advertising until its booking rate improves. The deliverable includes a one-page brief written so any agency, including your current one, can deliver against it. Execution is scoped separately afterwards if you want us to do it.

A fixed fee quoted after a scoping call, with deliverables and dates written down before you commit. It varies with the number of branches, brands and markets in scope and the state of your CRM and call tracking data, so publishing a rate would mislead most readers. For budget context, The CMO Survey puts marketing at 9.0% of company revenue on average across industries. Book a meeting for a scope and a number.

No. We are not M&A advisers, not a transaction adviser and not a broker, and we give no valuation, tax or accounting advice. What we do is make the commercial marketing picture legible: which branches and service lines produce margin, what the maintenance base looks like, and how demand is generated. Capstone Partners' July 2026 update recorded 92 HVAC transactions with private equity add-ons at 41.3% of dealmaking, so that legibility is worth having regardless of your intentions.

Explicitly, because seasonality is the main reason HVAC marketing money is wasted. Peak weeks rarely need paid demand; shoulder season needs planned maintenance, indoor air quality and replacement campaigns aimed at customers you already have. We read installed capacity by branch against demand by month, then build a calendar where marketing pulls work into the quiet weeks instead of adding to a queue you cannot serve.

Because it converts marketing from a demand tap into an asset. An agreement base smooths seasonality, raises replacement close rates and reduces reliance on breakdown search traffic. ServiceTitan's platform data shows 87.5% of top performers running an active service agreement programme with paying members against 68.7% of the rest. The plan sets a penetration target, states which channels sell agreements and which renew them, and assigns the field and the call centre their share.

Because a lead is not revenue and the cheapest leads are usually the least profitable work. We rebuild reporting around booked jobs, average ticket, replacement close rate and margin by service line, which often reverses the ranking of branches and channels. With top performers booking 62% of inbound lead calls against 39%, a market can look like a marketing problem when it is a call-handling problem.

Substantially, and it is one of the first decisions. We measure each brand's local search strength, review volume and booked revenue before recommending whether to consolidate, keep local names with unified operating standards behind them, or run a staged migration. Consolidation looks cheaper in a spreadsheet and can cost real demand in markets where the local name is the reason people call.

Different question. HVAC growth consulting looks for the commercial constraint on growth wherever it sits, including the maintenance base, replacement close rate, pricing and branch mix. Marketing strategy consulting takes the commercial model as given and answers what marketing should do about it: service mix, positioning, channel roles, budget and measurement. Operators who already know their constraint usually want this one.

Yes, within the agreed scope. Customer and lost-call review is the fastest route to a positioning claim that survives contact with a homeowner, and technicians and install managers know which jobs are profitable and which marketing promises the field cannot keep. We agree the list with you, keep interviews short and confidential, and feed findings into the positioning platform rather than publishing them.

A sponsor, usually the owner, president or chief executive; the service and install leaders; whoever runs the call centre or dispatch; and whoever owns marketing today, even if that is a coordinator with a long list. Expect around two hours of interviews each in week one and a half-day decision session in week three. If the sponsor cannot attend that session, we move it rather than run it without them.

No, it is often the right first step, because the plan states what the first hire has to do and what stays with vendors. Where the question is really about structure and sequencing of hires, marketing team advisory covers it, and where you need someone to lead the function while you build it a fractional CMO is the engagement. Both are quoted separately and neither is required to use the plan.

Yes, and we will say plainly where it limits a conclusion. We work from financial records first, reconcile field service software, CRM and call tracking against them, and label which findings are solid and which are directional. Validity's 2026 research found 62% of organisations losing revenue to poor CRM data and 67% having campaigns delayed or scrapped because of it, so this is normal rather than disqualifying. Marketing operations consulting implements the fix.

Yes. The parent engagement is marketing strategy consulting, and the same method runs in neighbouring trades with the commercial mechanics changed, for example plumbing marketing strategy consulting, roofing growth consulting and electrical growth consulting.

Your team runs it, and every workstream has a named owner on your side. Many operators book a review at ninety days to check the leading indicators and adjust the sequence, which takes half a day and is optional. Where you want a standing numbers habit instead, scorecard advisory sets one up and hands it back. Execution, if you want us to do it, is scoped separately.