Most HVAC owners we audit are paying $90–$140 per lead. Their agency has them on broad-match Google keywords with no negatives. We fix that, then move budget to the channels that actually print revenue: LSA, Search, and a tight conversion funnel.
Industry Benchmarks · Q1 2026
Numbers averaged across ActionScale clients plus public Google Ads benchmark data. Variance based on metro size, competition density, and seasonality.
What we see on every audit
If your current marketing is doing any of these, you're paying for results you'll never see. None of them are your fault — they're the default settings most agencies leave on because they're optimizing for retainer revenue, not your phone ringing.
Meta has terrible intent for emergency HVAC. Nobody scrolls Facebook thinking "I should book an AC repair right now." Your customer's furnace just died, they're on Google, and they want someone there today. Agencies running Meta for HVAC clients do it because they get paid per platform managed, not per lead delivered. Skip Meta unless you have a specific membership program or seasonal tune-up promo.
The leads aren't bad. The dispute process is. LSA leads are billable but disputable — wrong city, wrong service, hangups. Most owners eat the bad leads in week one and quit. We see 30–50% of "bad" leads get refunded once disputes are filed properly. Effective CPL drops to $35–$55. The green Google Guarantee badge appears above all paid ads — non-negotiable for HVAC.
HVAC has the most extreme seasonality of any service category. Phoenix in July is a different business than Phoenix in February. Your campaigns need different keywords, different ad copy, different bidding by season. Most agencies run one campaign year-round and wonder why CPA spikes when seasonality shifts.
Free Tool · Built for HVAC
Our AI runs the same diagnostic on your site that we'd run before a paid engagement. No email gate, no calendar pop-up, no waiting. Paste your URL, get a real number.
The free Quick Score reads your homepage exactly the way a Google bot would.
Pulls your GBP, checks your local SERP, scores you on 6 spec-weighted categories.
Score out of 100, top 3 leaks, top 3 fixes, est. monthly revenue gap.
After the free score, you'll be offered the $14 deep audit with named competitors + screenshot evidence + a ranked fix list.
Seasonality
Summer (June-August): AC repair searches spike 80-120% vs winter. Bid hot on emergency keywords. Winter (December-February): furnace repair takes over. Shoulder seasons (March-May, September-October): tune-up campaigns and maintenance memberships convert best.
Most agencies run your campaigns the same way in March as they do in July. That's how you blow budget. Smart bidding, ad copy variation, and landing page emphasis should shift with the demand patterns specific to HVAC.
Real Numbers · Real Clients
Real businesses we've worked with. Real before-and-after numbers. The library is growing — full case studies move into our resources section as clients sign off on publishing their numbers.
HVAC Services engagement. Full case study moves live once client approves publishing.
HVAC Services engagement. Full case study moves live once client approves publishing.
HVAC Services engagement. Full case study moves live once client approves publishing.
Industry FAQ
Free Resources
Free tools and learning resources for HVAC owners. Live on the home page in the resources section and growing weekly.
Paste your URL, get a real 100-point score with HVAC-specific findings in 15 seconds.
Top 5 named competitors in your zip, their actual ad copy, fix list ranked by revenue. 30-min delivery.
Input your ticket size + close rate, get your target CPL and HVAC benchmark. The math your old agency never did out loud.
Real numbers from 40+ HVAC accounts
Most HVAC marketing agencies are running broad-match Google Ads, paying for traffic from people Googling "HVAC technician school" and "how to clean my AC filter myself." If your CPL is $130+, that's almost certainly the diagnosis. The fix is two weeks. Here's what's actually going on in your category.
HVAC has the most extreme seasonality of any service category we work in. Phoenix in July is a different business than Phoenix in February — different keywords, different ad copy, different bid strategy, different landing-page emphasis. Most agencies run the same campaigns year-round and act surprised when CPL spikes 60% during shoulder seasons. We rebuild the calendar quarterly: emergency repair keywords lead in summer, system replacement leads in spring/fall, maintenance memberships pre-sell in shoulder seasons.
The other thing nobody tells HVAC owners: Local Service Ads (LSA) is non-negotiable in 2026. The green Google Guarantee badge sits above all paid ads in HVAC searches. If you're not in LSA, three competitors are splitting the bulk of urgent demand at the top of the page while you're stuck in position 4 of paid Search. We see effective CPL drop to $35–$55 on LSA after disputes — better than any Search-only setup we've audited.
Where HVAC accounts hemorrhage budget
I've audited 40+ HVAC marketing setups. The same five issues show up in nearly every one. None require advanced expertise to spot — they require someone who actually understands HVAC search intent.
What HVAC owners actually ask
Across 40+ HVAC accounts we've worked on, healthy CPL ranges $55–$85 across Google Ads + LSA combined. Below $55 and you're either in a small market (under 200k metro) or undercounting leads (often missing phone calls in attribution). Above $100 and you almost certainly have broad-match issues, missing negatives, or sending traffic to a generic homepage. LSA-only effective CPL after disputes runs $35–$55 in most markets.
Probably not for repair. AC repair and furnace repair customers go from "fine" to "need help now" in 30 minutes. They're on Google or LSA, not scrolling Facebook. Where Meta CAN work for HVAC: maintenance membership programs ("$19/month, 2 tune-ups a year, priority service"), seasonal tune-up promotions, and brand-awareness in highly competitive metros. For straight repair lead gen, save the budget for Google + LSA.
5–10 business days from application to live, dependent on Google's background check and license verification. The bottleneck is the background check — Google works with a third party (Pinkerton) and processing time varies by state. Most HVAC LSA applications get approved on first submission as long as your license + insurance are current and your business is registered properly. We handle the paperwork.
Mostly false. Performance Max needs 50+ conversions/month of clean signal to optimize. Below that, PMax is just expensive Google generosity — it sends you bottom-of-barrel inventory at premium rates. Most HVAC accounts shouldn't enable PMax until they have stable Search + LSA producing 50+ leads/month. When the timing is right, PMax adds 15–25% incremental volume. Before that, it's a budget leak. We disable it in 70% of audits where it's running early.
Two pieces. (1) Call tracking with CallRail or your call-tracking platform — every campaign gets its own dynamic phone number, so when a call comes in, you know which keyword/ad/landing page produced it. (2) Offline conversion uploads back into Google Ads from your CRM (ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Workiz, Jobber). When a lead becomes a booked job in your CRM, that data flows back to Google Ads, which then optimizes bidding toward booked-job leads instead of just form-fills. We set up both during onboarding.
Minimum $1,500/month in ad spend to be competitive in any HVAC market. Sweet spot $4,000–$8,000/month for most regional HVAC operators serving a metro of 250k+. Below $1,500, the auction punishes thin budgets — Google de-prioritizes low-spending advertisers. Above $10k/month, you should be running multi-channel (Search + LSA + Meta for memberships + retargeting + local SEO) — at that level, single-channel underperforms.
Local pack ranking is proximity (your business location) + relevance (GBP categories + on-site content) + prominence (reviews + citations + local press). You can't change proximity, but you can dominate relevance and prominence. Most HVAC competitors winning the 3-pack have: 100+ Google reviews with 4.7+ stars and recent activity, complete GBP with all 9 categories filled, weekly Google Posts, 50+ photos, schema markup on their site, and 30+ consistent NAP citations. We rebuild this systematically. Read more →.
Yes — and it's one of the highest-leverage changes you can make. Emergency searches ("AC repair tonight," "furnace not working emergency," "24-hour HVAC service") have completely different intent than maintenance or installation searches. Emergency landing page should have: phone number above the fold (clickable), "24/7 service" messaging, response-time guarantee ("tech dispatched within 60 minutes"), and a 3-field form max. Conversion rates on a dedicated emergency page run 2–3× a generic homepage.
Related services for hvac
The services we deliver to HVAC operators. Pick one or stack them — most clients run 2–4 simultaneously.
Related Industries
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