“You should be marketing your HVAC business!”
Does even reading this statement make you cringe? You’ve probably heard it, seen it, and thought it before.. But that doesn’t change one very important fact: marketing your business online can be EXPENSIVE.
Anyway, you’ve been running your business just fine for years without online marketing. Why make a risky investment?
The fact of the matter is that online marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. Your HVAC business can actually ease into it all by yourself and avoid making pricey mistakes completely!
Step 1: Get acquainted with three important letters: S.E.O.
In order for your website to rank high in search engines (where the majority of consumers are searching) you need learn what the search engines like.
The process of making your website “search engine friendly” is called search engine optimization, or SEO for short.
Right now, Google is dominating search engines. They have over 75% of the market share, mostly because they are so committed to continuous improvement.
Google’s continuous improvement approach involves many algorithms. You know, those complicated set of rules used by computers.
Their search engine algorithms are actually updated 500-600 times.. Per year.
All this talk of algorithms and search engine optimization may sound complicated, but with a little patience you can manage SEO for your own HVAC business.
Check out our beginner’s guide to SEO in 2017 to get started. We also recommend Moz’s Whiteboard Fridays as an SEO resource.
If you don’t have the time or desire to run your own SEO, we strongly suggest you find someone who can. Yes, it is our best interest if you’re looking for affordable, professional SEO services – but it’s definitely in your best interest as well.
Step 2: Brush up on the new sales funnel.
We’re going to give it to you straight because we think you can handle it.
That “traditional” three-step sales funnel is growing obsolete. Unless you’re marketing to a very secluded or older market, you should get familiar with the new sales funnel.
We know, we know. It’s painful to look at.
The purchase process has changed drastically now that everyone is online. The days of door-to-door sales, cold calling, and even traditional advertisements are long gone.
Consumers only want direct interaction with businesses on their terms. They don’t want you to tell them your HVAC business is right for them, they want to come to that conclusion themselves.
So instead of spouting information at the consumer with radio advertisements and print ads, form your strategy around their purchase process. Marketers have dubbed this the “buyer’s journey”.
This journey takes place online. After ingesting content (articles, reviews, white papers, etc.), they weigh their options and what they’ve learned through their own research to make a purchase decision.
For the most part consumers will no longer take a company’s word for it. Instead, they are contacting companies and sales after they’ve almost completed their own research.
By creating high quality content like blogs, not only will you improve your rank, your HVAC business is providing answers to your potential customer’s questions when they come up. This allows them to convert quicker and establishes you as a trusted industry expert.
Step 3: Take action.
After you have a feel for which approaches are currently effective for online marketing, you can start taking action and using them for your HVAC business.
Get started with the following:
- Define your buyer personas/target market so you can better understand their questions and concerns.
- Research which keywords would be optimal targets for your business.
- Add these keywords throughout your website (in a way that makes sense, avoid “keyword stuffing”).
- Begin publishing blog posts to your website twice a week or more. Focus on answering questions in-depth and proving you know your industry.
- Promote blog posts on social media (the more platforms, the better – as long as you can keep up with them).
- Install Google Analytics for your website to track website traffic and other metrics.
- Check if your website is mobile-friendly. If it’s not, you may want to consider responsive web design.
Marketing your HVAC business online will take a little work, but it doesn’t have to be money pit! Whether you manage your own online marketing or hire it out, you’re building an online presence that’s ultimately crucial to success in 2017 and beyond.
