Local Services Ads charge per lead against a budget. For most trades that is straightforward. For HVAC it is not, because demand does not arrive evenly; it arrives on the first genuinely hot week and the first hard freeze, and a budget set for an average month is exhausted by Tuesday.
What the programme is and what it covers is the same for every trade. What follows is what differs for heating and cooling.
Job types decide your lead mix and your cost
HVAC has more selectable categories than most trades: AC repair, AC installation, furnace repair, furnace installation, ductwork, thermostats, maintenance, and each behaves differently.
Repair leads are cheaper and more numerous. Installation leads cost considerably more and are worth several times as much when they close. A contractor who enables everything and then judges the account on average cost per lead is averaging two different businesses together and learning nothing.
Look at cost per booked job by category and turn off what does not pay. Many HVAC accounts are quietly subsidising a category the owner has never examined separately.
Budget in a shape that matches the year
A flat monthly budget is wrong for this trade in both directions.
In peak weeks it runs out early, so you disappear at exactly the hours you most want to be seen. In shoulder months it goes unspent, or worse, spends on marginal leads to use itself up.
Raise it deliberately before a heatwave or a freeze and lower it afterwards. This is the same logic as holding budget in reserve for storm work, event-shaped demand needs event-shaped spending.
Your hours are an eligibility setting
Local Services Ads will not show you for a search made at a time you are closed. For a trade that sells emergency work, that makes the hours field a revenue decision rather than an administrative one.
The corollary matters more: if you are shown at 9pm, someone has to answer at 9pm. Missed leads are charged in placement rather than money, and persistent non-answers push you down. Setting yourself open around the clock while calls roll to voicemail is worse than honest hours.
Dispute the leads that are genuinely invalid
HVAC generates a recognisable set of bad leads worth reclaiming:
- Tenants who cannot authorise work, and landlords who are not local
- Callers outside your service area, particularly at the edges of a wide radius
- Parts requests, people wanting to buy a capacitor rather than book a visit
- Wrong trade entirely, which happens more in mixed categories
Review these weekly and dispute the clear cases; accepted disputes are credited. Do not dispute leads that simply did not book; that is not what the mechanism is for, and it is covered in what actually decides your position.
In peak season, more leads may be the wrong goal
The counterintuitive one, and the one most likely to save money.
During a heatwave your constraint is not demand, it is trucks. Buying more leads than you can serve produces long waits, cancelled appointments and the kind of dissatisfaction that turns into a review or a refund claim.
When you are booked three days out, the right move is often to reduce spend, not increase it, and to put the budget into the shoulder weeks where you have capacity and your competitors have gone quiet.
Reviews do double duty
Your Google Business Profile rating feeds your Local Services Ads placement, so review requests are not a separate marketing activity from your ad spend; they are an input to it.
Because HVAC review requests tend to cluster in busy months, the profile can look dormant for half the year. Asking year-round, including on maintenance visits, keeps both the profile and the ad placement steadier.
Frequently asked questions
Which HVAC job types should I enable?
Judge them separately rather than together. Repair leads are cheap and plentiful; installation leads cost far more and are worth far more. Measuring average cost per lead across both averages two different businesses and hides which one is paying.
How should I budget across the year?
Not flatly. Raise it before a heatwave or a freeze and lower it afterwards. A flat budget runs out early in peak weeks, when you most want to be visible, and drifts into marginal leads in quiet months.
Should I set my hours to 24 hours?
Only if someone answers. Local Services Ads will not show you outside your stated hours, so the field is a revenue decision, but persistent unanswered leads suppress your placement, which makes dishonest hours worse than accurate ones.
Should I spend more during peak season?
Often less. In a heatwave the constraint is capacity, not demand. Buying leads you cannot serve produces long waits and complaints; the shoulder weeks, where you have trucks free and competitors have gone quiet, are usually the better place for that money.
Where to start
Break last season’s leads down by job type and work out cost per booked job for each. Most HVAC accounts have one category quietly consuming budget that the owner has never looked at on its own.
Real Time Marketing has worked with home service contractors since 2016: HVAC, plumbing, roofing, electrical and other trades, nationwide, from our office in Bradenton, Florida. Agreements are month-to-month. See our Local Services Ads management for HVAC or book a strategy call.
