HVAC
HVAC Marketing in Tampa Bay
In July you can't answer the phone fast enough.
In January it barely rings.
So you do what everyone in this trade does — carry the winter on the summer.
The problem is that summer isn't when you're competing on merit.
In July a homeowner with no cool air calls whoever picks up. Price barely matters. You barely matter.
January is when they choose you.
Nobody markets in January.
Busy season
May – September
Where it goes quiet
December – February
Typical job value
$6,000 – $14,000
Typical full system replacement range in the Florida market. Service calls and repairs are a fraction of that, which is why the marketing goal is planned replacement and maintenance plans rather than more emergency calls.
Tampa Bay runs cooling load most of the year, which flattens the curve compared with northern markets — but the failure spike is still brutal and still concentrated in high summer. The strategic work is planned replacement and maintenance agreements, and that gets decided in the cool months.
Why us for hvac
We're not marketing generalists. We know your trade.
Here's what we already understand about running a hvac business in Tampa Bay, before you have to explain any of it on a call.
- 01
The homeowner calling in July is not choosing you, they're choosing whoever answers. Merit-based selling happens in the shoulder months.
- 02
Systems near the coast take a beating from salt air, and outdoor units on the Pinellas beaches age faster than the same unit ten miles inland.
- 03
In Florida, humidity control matters as much as temperature. A system that cools but leaves the house clammy is oversized, and homeowners describe that as 'it just never feels right' without knowing why.
- 04
Maintenance agreements are the closest thing this trade has to recurring revenue, and almost nobody markets them — they get sold at the counter after a repair and never again.
- 05
A fifteen-year-old system that still runs is your best prospect and the hardest to reach, because nothing is wrong yet.
- 06
Your busiest month and your most profitable month are not the same month, and confusing the two is how contractors end up working brutal summers for thin margins.
Your year
What we'd be doing, month by month
HVACdemand in Tampa Bay isn't flat, so the marketing shouldn't be either.
December – February
Planned replacement and maintenance plans
The trough, and the only window where a homeowner is deciding calmly rather than desperately. This is where the year is actually won.
March – April
Pre-season tune-ups
Get into the home before the first heat wave. A spring tune-up is the cheapest route to a replacement conversation in a house you're already standing in.
May – September
Emergency capture only
Let search and the map pack carry it. Paid social spend in peak is competing with panic, which is the worst-value attention there is.
October – November
Retarget the summer
Everyone you quoted in July and lost is now calm and still has an old system. This is the cheapest audience you will get all year.
The 90-Day Blueprint
Here's exactly what the first 90 days look like.
No mystery, no monthly PDF full of impressions. This is the plan for a hvac business, and it's the same one we'd walk you through on the call.
- 01Days 1–14
Research and shoot
We pull the HVAC ads currently running across Tampa Bay — almost all of them are a stock photo of a condenser and the word 'financing'. Then we shoot your crew, a real install, and the parts of an old system a homeowner never sees.
- 02Days 15–30
Build and launch
Separate campaigns for emergency capture and planned replacement, because they are different buyers with different urgency. Maintenance agreement offer built as its own funnel. Tracking wired to booked installs, not form fills.
- 03Days 31–60
Test and refine
Hooks tested against each other. The replacement campaign gets the budget the emergency campaign doesn't need, since search already covers no-cool calls.
- 04Days 61–90
Build the shoulder-season list
Everyone who engaged and didn't convert becomes the retargeting pool for October and January — the two windows where this trade is actually chosen on merit.
The maths
25–40% on in-home replacement estimates
Typical close rate
roughly 3–5 estimates per closed replacement
Leads per closed job
$6,000 – $14,000
Typical job value
Judge this on booked installs and on maintenance agreements sold, never on raw lead count. A trade where a $89 diagnostic and a $12,000 replacement both count as 'a lead' makes lead volume close to meaningless.
What we run for hvac
Same system every time, ordered by what actually moves the number in this trade.
No-cool emergencies convert here before anywhere else
In July the job goes to whoever answers first
Meta Ads
03Creates planned replacement demand in the off months
Map pack owns 'ac repair near me'
You own everything.
The ad account, the Business Manager, the landing page, and every second of footage we shoot. Month to month, no annual lock. If we part ways, it all stays with you — including the videos.
The shoot
What we film on a hvac job
Half a day on site. We work around your crew instead of stopping them, and you get eight finished reels out of one visit.
- A fifteen-year-old system next to a new one
- Inside the air handler — what a neglected coil actually looks like
- Full install day, condensed
- Owner explaining how to tell your system is on borrowed time
- A tune-up visit, start to finish
- The crew putting down floor protection before walking through a house
Straight answers
What hvac owners usually say first
“We're flat out all summer, we don't need leads.”
Not in summer, no. The question is February, and whether you're discounting to keep a crew busy. Marketing in the trough is what stops the summer from having to carry the whole year.
“Everyone in HVAC advertises. It's saturated.”
Everyone runs the same ad — a stock condenser, 'licensed and insured', and a financing offer. That isn't saturation, it's uniformity, and it's the easiest kind of market to stand out in with real footage of your own crew.
“Homeowners only care about price.”
In an emergency, largely yes. On a planned replacement they care about who is going to be in their house for two days and whether it'll be done right. That's a completely different sale, and it's the one worth marketing for.
“We've tried ads and got tyre-kickers.”
Usually a tracking and targeting problem. A campaign optimised for form fills will reliably buy you the cheapest form fills available. Optimise for booked installs and the same budget behaves differently.
Questions we get
- Summer sells itself. Why would I advertise in it?
- You mostly shouldn't. In July you're not being chosen, you're being reached — the homeowner calls whoever picks up. Spend belongs in the months where a homeowner is calmly deciding who replaces a fifteen-year-old system, because that's a decision you can actually influence.
- Will this just bring more $89 service calls?
- That's the trap. Emergency calls already find you through search and the map pack. Paid social and video are how you get in front of someone whose system is old but still limping — the replacement conversation, where the ticket is fifty times larger.
- How do I compete with the big franchise operations?
- Not on ad budget, and not on fleet size. You compete on being a real named person in the county rather than a call centre. That is exactly what video does and exactly what they can't replicate — their marketing is centralised by design.
- What about maintenance agreements?
- They're the most underused asset in this trade. Recurring revenue, a warm list for replacements, and a reason to be in the home twice a year. Most contractors sell them at the counter and never market them. That's a whole campaign nobody local is running.
- How fast do leads get contacted?
- A form fill fires an instant text and email to you and the lead, and lands in your CRM with follow-up behind it. In a no-cool situation the second contractor to reply has already lost.
HVAC
Let's look at your slow season.
Fifteen minutes. We'll pull the hvac ads running in your market right now, look at what you're doing between December – February, and tell you what we'd shoot.
- We already shoot hvac work — you'll see the footage on the call
- Your slow window is December – February. That's the one worth planning for
- Typical job here runs $6,000 – $14,000, so we'll do the lead maths out loud
- You own the ad account and every frame we shoot
Loading the calendar…
Fifteen minutes on Zoom. We'll pull your competitors' current ads before we get on.