HVAC clicks are expensive, which means every leak in an account costs more than it would in most trades. When one click can run well into double digits, a few bad settings add up fast. Here are five mistakes that show up often in HVAC ad accounts, and what to do about each one.
Your Ads Run When Nobody Can Answer
No-heat and no-AC searches don't keep office hours. If your ads run around the clock but your phone goes to voicemail at 6 p.m., you're paying for clicks from people who will simply call the next company on the list. Decide who actually picks up, and when, and build the ad schedule around it. If you do take after-hours emergency calls, run ads then and say so clearly. If you don't, either pause the ads or send those clicks to a page that offers a callback first thing in the morning.
Nobody Is Tracking Phone Calls
For HVAC, most leads come in by phone, not through a form. If the account only counts form submissions, it will look like the campaign produces almost nothing while your phone rings. Call tracking, including calls from the ad itself and calls from your website, is what tells you which keywords and campaigns actually produce conversations. Without it, decisions about where to spend are guesses.
Repair and Replacement Share One Budget
A "furnace not working" search and a "new AC unit installation" search are different jobs with different values and different cost per click. Put them in one campaign and the budget tends to flow to whichever gets clicked most, which is often the cheaper, lower-value work. Separating repair, replacement, and maintenance into their own campaigns lets you set a budget for each and see what each one actually costs you per lead.
Parts, Training, and DIY Searches Are Getting Through
HVAC has its own flavor of wasted clicks: people searching for replacement parts, filter sizes, thermostat wiring help, HVAC school programs, or technician jobs. None of them are about to book a service call. A negative keyword list built for the trade, and checked against the search terms report regularly, keeps that spend from piling up. The search terms report is where you see what people actually typed before clicking, so it's worth reviewing every week or two, especially early on.
Your Location Settings Are Too Loose
Google's default location option can show your ads to people who are merely interested in your area, not people who are in it. For a business that drives trucks to customers, that's a poor fit. Targeting people located in the areas you really serve, and excluding the ones you don't, keeps clicks inside your real service area. Check this setting on any account you didn't set up yourself.
What I Charge, and Why
I build HVAC company websites for a flat $499 — no monthly fee for the site itself. If you want me running Google Ads on top of that, it's $750/month management, and you fund your own ad spend directly with Google — I don't mark it up or take a cut. Most HVAC clients land in the $800-2,000/month ad spend range depending on how many calls they want and how competitive their market is. We set that number together before anything goes live, and you can cancel the management side after month one with no contract holding you in.