Tag Archives: Marketing

Dec '19

True Client Stories: The $5000 Screw Job

Does it feel like your digital marketing company is trying to get away with something shady? Perhaps your marketing expenses seem to steadily climb without generating consistent leads. Hundreds, if not thousands of heating and cooling professionals are going through the exact same story. The only question is:

How will your story end?

In today’s HVAC Webmasters podcast, Jason and Nolen share some red flags that could shed some light on your marketing company’s sketchy practices. If you spot any of these tactics, it might be time to start shopping for a new marketing agency. Look for these following signs…

SEO for HVAC Pros: Red Flags

Blackbox pricing covering up where your ad money goes
Sudden bumps in results immediately after you call to complain
No visible evidence that your website has changed
3rd party expense reporting not directly from Google

3 Signs You’re Getting Cheated

Marketing money is an amazing thing. On one hand, you can invest it into the perfectly tuned advertising campaign and earn a double return on your money! On the other hand, you can trust it to an enthusiastic management team, only to see it slowly disappear with little reward.

Sadly, the latter story is one we hear all the time from HVAC professionals around the country. Unless you have the time, energy, and experience needed to execute your own marketing plan however, you’ll probably have to find a dependable company to handle it for you. You may have already chosen a team, and find yourself wondering if they really have your interests at heart.

The easiest way to spot a shady firm is to look for these three red flags:

Blackbox pricing structure
Inconsistent payoffs
Lack of visible change in your website

A Google Analytics Report — Does Your Reporting Come Directly From Google, or a Source Recommended By Your Marketer?

Red Flag #1: Blackbox Pricing

Money is the ultimate test of character. You can tell a lot about a company by how willing they are to share their spending habits! In the same way, you can quickly get a feel for a marketing firm through their pricing structure.

If we could have our way, every digital marketing firm would have to bill month to month. That’s because monthly billing gives HVAC contractors the ability to examine results and judge whether their investment is paying off. It’s a challenging code to operate by (for a marketing business), but it motivates us to continually produce results!

Bundle Beware

Annual Bundle Deals

On the other side lies annual contracts. Annual billing (or even longer term contracts) takes away that flexibility from the client contractor and gives it to the marketing professional. Blackbox pricing further complicates the picture by preventing heating and cooling professions from seeing how their money is spent.

Say you purchase an annual service package with website design, SEO, GMB, and PPC. The company quickly puts up a basic website, PPC campaigns start up, and results start coming in. Can you actually tell how much of your package budget was spent on each segment? That brings us to our next concern: reporting.

Reporting

3rd Party Reporting

When you invest money in Google Ads, your reporting should only come from one source. Can you guess where? Google Ads. Handing the crucial task of reporting over to anyone besides Google, you’re asking for trouble.

Time and time again, we’ve heard of marketing firms (especially PPC-only companies) bumping click price above the actual cost, then pocketing the difference. That’s in addition to the money you’ve already paid them to manage your campaigns. If a client complains, the firm can easily manipulate the results.

Red Flag #2: Inconsistent Results

Have you ever called into your marketing firm and complained about lack of results, only to see a sudden uptick in leads? As consumers, we like to believe that our phone call is the driving force behind the change. It also makes it feel like we have a voice in the management of our investment.

In reality, it means that your marketing company had the power the entire time to affect those results, but didn’t until you called.

Inconsistent results in your lead generation can indicate shady practices in ad spending. If your leads started slowing down a couple months after your phone call, it’s very likely your PPC management team has reduced the amount of budget going into the campaigns. You could know this for certain, if you had access to the Google Ads account or the direct expense reports. But your marketer’s third party reporting company (if there is a third party at all) makes sure that you can’t know for certain.

A Snippet From an HVAC Blog Post — Regular Blogging is Extremely Helpful For SEO. Does Your Marketing Team Provide It?

Red Flag #3: No Visible Change

Blackbox pricing, shady reporting, and inconsistent results are all frustrating practices. What’s even more alarming is a complete lack of action in non-PPC related activities. There’s a reason why bundled marketing packages show mixed, but ultimately short-term results.

Time and time again, budget for website optimization gets sacrificed so that more money goes to PPC, which means more money can get siphoned out.

If you’ve seen very little or no change in your website design over the past few months (assuming you’ve paid for it), ask why. There’s no reason why a marketing firm couldn’t produce some timely website progress unless they simply didn’t care about it. We’ve seen a business left struggling to survive because their marketing firm never took the time to complete and verify their Google My Business account. That’s something that anyone can do.

Moving Forward

At HVAC Webmasters, we know the frustration and anger that comes with getting ripped off by a shady marketing firm. That’s why we started our business in the first place, to provide dependable (results-driven) service that earns your investment every month. And yes, we bill month to month.

If you’d like to see the difference we can make for your HVAC company, give us a call at (800) 353-3409!

Other Resources From HVAC Webmasters

Related Articles and Podcasts
– Streamlined SEO for HVAC Contractors: Tips and Traps (Article)
– Should You Halt SEO During Slow Seasons? | Search Trends (Podcast)
– You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Win at HVAC SEO (Podcast)

Helpful Services From Our Team
– HVAC Website Design
– HVAC Local Search Marketing
– PPC Advertising for HVAC Companies

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Oct '19

6 HVAC Facebook Post Ideas That Will Convert in 2024

I’m Nolen Walker with HVAC Webmasters. Over the past 15 years, I’ve worked with thousands of contractors, so when I explain the qualities of the best Facebook post ideas, I know what I’m talking about.

Of course, not all of these will work 100% of the time, but they are proven ways to help generate more HVAC leads for your company, resulting in more revenue.

1) Post Landing Pages for Direct Offers

One of the most proven ways to generate leads through your Facebook page is to send your followers to the landing pages you created for lead-generating offers. The key here is to ensure that you have a compelling featured image that gets pulled into the Facebook post.

To do this, you need to optimize the image’s size for Facebook and then ensure that you add the proper open graph tags that lead to your website. There are several ways to do this, but this is one of the more effective ways to engage your reader.

It is also essential to make it very clear to the reader where you are sending them. For example, they might think they are clicking on a blog post only to find themselves in the middle of a form that needs filling out; this can leave them frustrated or confused, and that is the last thing you want.

However you decide to link your readers to these direct offers, this is one of the tried and true ways to generate those direct leads that can eventually lead to more revenue for your company.

2) Post-lead-Generating Blog Posts

The first part is to learn how to do a blog lead generation analysis. Once you have done this, you must take the blog posts that generate the most leads and post them to your Facebook page.

An intriguing blog topic and title will ultimately engage your audience. They will want to click and read the post, and then they will find a call to action within the post itself. Therefore, you want to ensure that it is as close to the intro as possible.

This call to action typically solves a reader’s problem or answers something the reader wants to understand.

A study has shown that websites generate more leads by using a call-to-action text in the introduction. The anchor text call to action accounts for between 47% and 93% of a post’s leads.

Do your homework, determine which posts get the most action, and push those with calls to action for increased leads.

3) Include Landing Page Links Within Captions

The best marketers understand the importance of using visuals like images and videos in your Facebook strategy. For example, Facebook posts with pictures see 2.3X more engagements than those without pictures.

To make even better use of those higher engagement rates and turn them into valuable lead generation opportunities, you might want to include links to your website’s description of the images, especially for cover photos and profile picture descriptions.

These links allow interested people to get to know your company better than ever. Your profile and cover photo descriptions turn into prime virtual real estate. Whenever someone views your cover photo, they can access a download link.

Make sure that you shorten those links and add your UTM codes. These allow you to track the clicks that happen. Again, there are a variety of tools that will do these things for you.

Ultimately, the goal is to generate as many leads as possible, and adding links to your image descriptions is a proven method.

4) Use Videos to Promote Lead-Generating Offers

While Facebook’s overall organic reach continues to drop amid controversies linked to the social media giant, tweaks to the Facebook algorithm have helped mitigate the increase in the amount of content generated on the platform.

Videos are the one big exception to this. As a result, videos have helped marketers stay relevant and continue to reach their target audiences. Facebook’s algorithm favors overall video content. Video posts have a 135% greater organic reach than traditional photo posts.

Videos increase lead-generating offers through your Facebook page. The key here is to use videos to generate and promote those lead-generating offers. With a video, you can use a verbal call to action as well as in the video’s description, calling users to “download,” “register,” or something similar.

More and more businesses are using videos to reach their customers and share these lead-generating offers. Make your videos interesting, informative, and fun, and you will find a more significant response to your campaigns.

Videos are Great for More Complicated Concept Explanations.

5) Use Facebook Live

Much like the videos, Facebook Live might be an easier way to go about it. Videos can be intimidating if you are not familiar with the process, not to mention that they take time to create.

Facebook Live has shown that people comment up to 10 times more on Facebook Live videos than they would on regular videos. This method is more about generating conversation and promoting.

If you have an event, show the setup live. You can also promote an offer by hosting something like a Q&A through Facebook Live. Live sessions encourage comments and interaction, which generates more leads.

While these don’t have actual tags that you can use, you can use a verbal call to action through the live video and make sure that you repeat it more often than you would for a standard video.

Viewers may join late and miss the first call to action, so giving them multiple chances increases conversions.

Live Facebook sessions are a great way to deliver a sense of spontaneity so that your followers feel like they might miss out if they aren’t visiting your Facebook page. That’s a great way to develop new leads for your business.

6) Create a CTA Button for Your Facebook page

While this might not be a post, developing leads that you will not want to miss out on as you market your business is essential. Facebook allows business pages to add a pretty simple call-to-action button at the top of the business’s Facebook page.

It might seem simple, but it can be powerful in helping drive traffic from your Facebook page to your actual website. Best of all, this can include contact sheets, landing pages, and any other lead-generating forms that you might have.

Even more importantly, you can choose from a variety of pre-made buttons. Things like “Contact Us,” “Shop Now,” “Book Now,” “Watch Video,” and so on will allow you to customize your call-to-action button to make it more precisely tailored to your page.

Most of all, the call-to-action button gives you the ability to be versatile. Most marketers will choose a call to action and stick with it for an extended period.

But with the button, you can switch up your call to action so that it doesn’t feel stale and overused. That is an invaluable feature.

While Facebook Ads are the most widely utilized promotional avenue for companies, investing in Facebook Posts can also yield a favorable ROI for heating and cooling companies.

Leveraging Facebook Posts for Your HVAC Marketing Campaign

Facebook posts alone are insufficient to promote your HVAC company online. Instead, they must be one part of a broader digital marketing strategy involving SEO and digital branded signaling.

I spent millions to create a software tool called DataPins for my HVAC Webmasters’ clients. The DataPins tool allows HVAC technicians to snap a photo of the job and consolidate it with other Local SEO signals, including E-E-A-T and schema markup.

You can share pins on Facebook to help drive your followers and social media engagement. However, the most powerful aspect of pins is building digital branded signaling throughout the web.

By aligning your Facebook marketing with your overall digital marketing campaign, you can use Facebook Posts and other tools to increase lead generation and grow your business.

Jan '19

Only The Marketing Man Shall Pass (Podcast)

Marketing is the key to any HVAC business. Nolen Walker, a former home service business owner himself, knows there are three fundamental things every contractor needs to succeed:

Low-Cost HVAC Leads
Phone Calls
Market Branding

Thoughts of a Marketing Purist

Identifying these three fundamentals as the basis of a successful home service company, Nolen Walker transitioned his business into a digital marketing agency. Why help only himself rake in profits on home security when he could help a great deal more contractors. Since he was friendly with many heating & cooling business owners, he formed a brand known as HVAC Webmasters.

Because of his access to HVAC contractors, it was easy to get started marketing on their behalf. Once they saw that the results were so positive, the brand expanded even further. Today, there’s a line out the door for HVAC companies hoping to get onboarded to HVAC Webmasters. The results are self-evident, but a contractor must first fail before realizing the true importance of marketing, especially in 2021. If marketing exists and sales follow, everything else falls into place without extraneous effort. Examples of “all else” include:

Accounting
Customer Service
Inventory
Service

If you fixate on marketing as the basis for your understanding of business, the other aspects are easier to figure out—the principal reason why is money. Marketing leads to sales which leads to financial gain. With more money, more resources become available. Everything from buying more HVAC trucks to hiring more technicians becomes plausible. And all of these things seem to fall into your lap when money is streaming in.

Trying to do any of these things without the consistent flow of sales is effectively impossible—the absence of marketing onsets the presence of bankruptcy. The concept might seem overly simplified, but simplicity is underrated in many cases. If you can run your heating & cooling business without intolerable stresses, you are winning at life in more ways than one. The team at HVAC Webmasters can help you get there if you buy into a marketing-first approach.

Every HVAC Contractor Needs Marketing

There’s a considerably wide range of HVAC contractors. There are 2nd and 3rd generation workers who have inherited businesses from their legacy. There are brand new “green” contractors getting into the industry as a vocation of their own. Several contractors fall somewhere between those extreme ends of the spectrum. The commonality between all of them is their imperative need for marketing. We’ve worked with individuals and teams of all kinds.

Legacy Contractor: A 2nd, 3rd, or 4th generation contractor
New Contractor: A brand new contractor who is starting their career

Of course, not every marketing strategy will be the same. But a company like HVAC Webmasters tailors marketing campaigns to fit the specific circumstances of the client. For example, a 3rd generation company heir is unlikely to need a domain name since they’ve had one for years. As a result, their site should also rank more quickly. Conversely, a brand new HVAC company will need a brand new domain and could take longer to establish ranking. That’s how it is, and that’s how we handle it at HVAC Webmasters on a case-by-case basis.

What HVAC Webmasters can provide

Our team does many quality tasks to send strong signals to Google that your HVAC company deserves recognition on search engine results. Tasks sometimes allude to Google Maps listings, social media profiles, or even business citations (NAP). The basis of any of these results, however, is a strong push for organic SEO. To become optimized online, you will need a custom website for your HVAC company. You will also need strong content writing, PPC, reviews integration, and much more. The primary advantage of going with HVAC Webmasters is that we can provide each of these things for you at an affordable price. Some of our signature services include:

Design
Organic SEO
Paid Advertising
Reviews
Social Media

There’s more to marketing than meets the eye, and SEO is an ongoing process that doesn’t rest after initial onset. Optimization is consistently evolving because Google’s algorithms are constantly improving, getting more intelligent, etc. The goal of HVAC Webmasters is to keep pace with Google and help you deliver the most outstanding experience to visitors. To be clear, visitors enter your website and Google My Business profile, social media pages, and other web entities. When a consumer with pre-existing knowledge of your company performs a Google search, you want the results page to be branded in your favor. A results page like this is known affectionately as your Google Homepage. Since a website is no longer the only digital entity representing your brand online, you have greater responsibility for diversity in your web presence.

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