How do HVAC companies get leads?
Two ways: rent or own. Rented leads come from aggregators that sell the same homeowner to several shops — you pay to race your competitors to a phone call. Owned leads come from your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and pages that rank for the searches people run when the AC quits.
The owned system costs more up front and less every month after, because rankings and reviews compound while per-lead prices only climb. Our HVAC marketing service is the owned system, run for you.
How much should an HVAC company spend on marketing?
Tie it to the season, not to a flat number. The honest framing: spend a percentage of target revenue, weighted into the months when demand spikes, and use the published-pricing spread as a sanity check — agency retainers in the set we measured in August 2026 ran from cheap teasers to $2,800-and-up per month (measured record).
A shop that spends evenly across twelve months is overpaying in December and underbuying in July.
The re-weighting is the work. Each month, move budget toward the demand that is actually arriving — surge channels in the spikes, construction work in the troughs. An agency that bills the same amount for the same activities every month is selling you a calendar, not a strategy.
How we measure search demand
Method note for every number below: monthly search volumes are US-national Google Ads figures (fetched via DataForSEO on 2026-08-28). Texas-only volumes are not published, so use the shape of the curve, not the magnitude.
| Series | Trough | Peak |
|---|---|---|
| 'ac repair' | 165,000/mo (Dec 2025) | 673,000/mo (Jul 2026) |
| 'furnace repair' | 60,500/mo (Jun 2026) | 450,000/mo (Jan 2026) |
| 'plumber' | 450,000/mo (baseline) | 1,000,000/mo (Feb–Mar 2025 freeze) |
| 'roof repair' | 60,500/mo (winter) | 165,000/mo (spring 2025) |
| 'lawn care' | 49,500/mo (Nov–Dec 2025) | 135,000/mo (Apr 2026) |
The 'ac repair' curve is the HVAC calendar: about four times more demand in July than December.
What should you run in July?
Capture, not construction. July money goes to Local Service Ads, surge search ads, and Google Business Profile posts — the channels that turn existing demand into booked calls this week. The grid context is real too: ERCOT's all-time peak demand, 91,089 MW, was set July 22, 2026, and DFW's record is 71 days at or over 100°F. July is not the month to redesign your website. It's the month your website gets paid for.
What should you build in October?
Everything that pays in January and next July. Furnace content — the 'furnace repair' series peaks at 450,000 US searches in January. Maintenance-plan pages that smooth revenue across the shoulder. Review sprints while techs have time to ask. And the storm and freeze readiness pages that must exist before the weather does.
October is the cheapest month to build and the most expensive month to skip.
Two builds deserve the top of the October list. Maintenance-plan pages, because plan members call you first in July instead of searching. And your license trust content: Texas requires a TDLR license for AC work, and a page that shows your license number with the state's own link converts the comparison shoppers everyone else loses.
How much do HVAC leads cost?
Aggregator economics are simple: you pay per shared lead, the price rises with summer demand, and the same homeowner is sold to your competitors. Owned cost-per-lead runs the other way — falling as your pages and reviews compound. Track one number monthly: cost per booked job, by source. That number decides the budget, not a vendor's rate card.
A worked example of the habit: if July's surge ads book jobs at one number and the aggregator's shared leads book them at three times that, the December decision is already made — and you made it with your own data, not a sales call.
Which channels earn a slot on the HVAC calendar?
Ranked, with the season each serves:
- Google Business Profile + reviews — all year. The foundation everything else stands on. Post monthly, answer every review, keep photos current.
- Local Service Ads — the spikes. Pay per lead, capped budget, dispute the junk. Turn the dial up in June, down in October.
- Search ads — the spikes, plus install season. Emergency copy in July, replacement-financing copy in spring and fall (checked against the ad rules — financing terms in ads trigger federal disclosure requirements).
- Seasonal SEO pages — built in the troughs, harvested in the spikes. AC pages by May, furnace pages by October.
- Maintenance-plan marketing — shoulder seasons. The plan member is the customer who never comparison-shops again.
What doesn't earn a slot: brand display campaigns, jingles, and anything measured in impressions. If a channel can't be tied to booked jobs, it doesn't get a month on the calendar.
Does AI search change HVAC marketing?
Yes, measurably. AI Overviews appeared on 56% of the 298 trade-marketing search results we measured in August 2026 (our measurement; method available on request). The engines cite pages with direct answers, real sources, and visible dates. That's structure work, and it's the same structure that wins HVAC marketing in Austin or anywhere else. Our GEO service builds it without retired schema tricks.
What about the winter — is it worth marketing at all?
Yes, because winter is when the furnace curve pays for the summer discipline. The 'furnace repair' series peaks at 450,000 US searches in January — winter is not a dead season, it is a different season. Shops that treat December as downtime hand January's furnace calls to whoever built heating pages in October.
Winter is also when Texas heating readiness became a real customer question. After the February 2021 freeze, homeowners ask whether their systems — and their contractors — will hold up in a hard cold snap. A plain page that answers honestly earns trust in a way no ad can. Write it once, date it, update it each fall.
How this post is written
Three rules, on every post:
- Every number links a primary source or names our own measurement with its date.
- Published and updated dates are visible; silent edits don't happen.
- A named author signs it — Owen Nixon, and the byline links a real page.
What we don't do: this playbook doesn't cover TV or radio — we don't sell it.