How to choose an HVAC marketing agency: test it before the rush, not during it

Start with the cost of getting this wrong. These figures are illustrative assumptions, not a quote from any agency, so swap in your own. Say you sign a 12-month contract at £1,500 a month and spend a further £1,000 a month on advertising. That is £30,000 committed whatever happens. Committed is not the same as wasted: some of those ads will still bring jobs, and a new website may outlast the agency. The loss you cannot recover is different. Say the agency spends its first months on that website and reports clicks, and the autumn passes with no push on service visits. If that costs you ten replacement jobs you would have won, at an assumed £3,000 each and a 30 per cent margin, that is £9,000 of lost profit, on top of whatever share of the £30,000 bought nothing, and it arrives in the weeks you can least afford it. US readers can read the same sum in dollars.

Your job book first: last year by month

Begin with your diary, not an agency's pitch. Heating and cooling demand follows the weather. In Great Britain, 75 per cent of domestic gas consumption was for space heating in 2024, and usage is driven by external temperatures, according to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. In the United States, the Energy Information Administration found that space heating and air conditioning made up 52 per cent of an average household's annual energy use in 2020, and that these uses are mostly seasonal. ENERGY STAR suggests a spring check for cooling and an autumn one for heating, because contractors are in demand once summer and winter come.

That gives you a way to test an agency. Servicing and check-ups can be booked in the shoulder months before the rush, so they are the part of its work you can judge before the rush. So hire early enough to watch that planned work happen, and judge the agency on it first.

Pull last year's calls by month and split them into emergency and planned. Mark the shoulder months, the spring and autumn weeks between the peaks, and count the service visits booked in each. Every number the agency later reports needs that baseline.

Then list what you are registered and certified to do, because an agency can only advertise that. For heating and cooling engineers (HVAC contractors in the US), the list differs by country. In Great Britain, anyone paid to work on gas appliances in people's homes has to be a Gas Safe registered engineer competent in that work. If you install or service air conditioning in Great Britain, each engineer needs a personal F gas qualification, even when working for someone else, and your company, including sole traders, must be certified by an approved body to service stationary equipment containing F gas operated by others. In the United States, technicians whose work could release ozone-depleting refrigerants must hold Section 608 certification. Check your own state's contractor licence rules as well.

Next, ask whether you need an agency yet. A government study of heating and cooling employers in England, surveyed in 2021 and 2022, found that 93 per cent relied on word of mouth, 83 per cent on repeat business from existing customers, and only 25 per cent on online promotion. Read that with care: 687 employers completed the survey out of a sample of 22,460, a response rate of 3 per cent, and it reports firms' own account of winning work, not customer search behaviour. If referrals and returning service customers already fill your diary, a freelancer to keep your Google Business Profile tidy, or running Google's Local Services Ads yourself, may beat a retainer.

Narrowing the field: ask for one heating season's record

Ask each agency to walk you through one busy season for a heating or cooling firm: what ran in the shoulder months before it, what ran during it, and what it reported. Google's Local Services Ads is one to probe, because Google lists an HVAC category for the UK that requires a business check, public liability insurance and, where applicable by local law, a business licence on a country level. In the US, Google treats HVAC as an urgent category and adds a further level of screening that includes background checks. Ask who will complete that verification. It concerns your insurance and licences, so it should happen in your name.

Ask where any leads come from. If a lead-generation partner is involved, read its adverts. On 11 December 2024 the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a ruling against Lead Pronto Ltd over paid ads for "Gov Boiler Funding" and "The Free Boiler Scheme", which misleadingly implied association with or endorsement by the UK Government. The ASA said the brands did not make clear that they were primarily a lead generating business that provided consumers' contact details to boiler installers. An installer should know what a partner's ads say before they carry its name. For England and Wales, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme gives a grant towards replacing fossil fuel heating systems with a heat pump or biomass boiler, which leaves a new gas boiler outside it, and hybrid systems that pair a gas boiler with a heat pump do not qualify either.

Whether an agency works only with trades matters less than whether it answers these questions with numbers. The Social Target, which publishes this guide, is a marketing agency and has an interest in being chosen. Our approach to heating and cooling firms is on marketing for HVAC companies and heating engineers.

Across the table: the shoulder-month test

Ask what the agency would do in your shoulder months. A good answer is about planned work. The Health and Safety Executive recommends a yearly service of gas appliances, flues and pipework by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and installers in England's government study said servicing and repair work kept customers coming back. Listen for plans to book service visits and renew service agreements in the weeks before the season, with a number attached: how many visits, in which weeks, against last year's count.

Then ask what happens to the advertising spend when your crews are full. On Local Services Ads, Google says after you've reached your monthly max, your ad won't appear for the remainder of the month unless you adjust your budget. A cap set in a quiet autumn can switch your ad off for the rest of a cold month, and a cap that never bites can pay for jobs you cannot serve. Ask who watches it. Then ask about poor leads. Google says leads determined to be invalid or low quality are not charged, and charged leads may be credited if later judged low quality, though lead credits aren't available for advertisers in EMEA, meaning Europe, the Middle East and Africa. UK firms should ask how the agency handles that gap.

Finally, ask who answers an urgent call when the heating fails at night, how fast, and how missed calls are counted.

On paper: a break clause before the busy season

Match the term to your year. A 12-month term signed in autumn, with the first exit point at month six, means the whole rush passes before you can leave. Ask for a break clause that falls after the autumn shoulder months and before your busy season, so you can decide on what you saw in the service bookings.

Write down what "not working" means on the day you agree terms. Name the measures: booked jobs, cost per booked job and shoulder-month service bookings, counted against your own job system. Name who calls it, how long the agency has to fix it, and what you get on exit: ownership of your ad accounts, your Google Business Profile, your Local Services profile, your call tracking numbers and the raw reporting data.

Then add a claims clause. In the US, state rules can require your licence number in advertising, and Texas requires air conditioning and refrigeration contracting companies to include the affiliated licensee's licence number in advertising designed to solicit business, with listed exceptions. Check your own state's board for its rule. Tax-credit copy needs the same care. A 2026 install cannot use the energy efficient home improvement credit: the IRS cut-off is improvements made through December 31, 2025, and Public Law 119-21 ends the credit for property placed in service after that date. So the agency should not advertise it.

Last, the review clause. The Federal Trade Commission's final rule bars US businesses from creating or selling fake reviews, and from buying ones they knew or should have known were fake, so put a plain ban on invented or bought reviews in the contract.

Weeks one to six: the report

Ask for a report every week for the first six weeks, then monthly. Weekly reports early on catch a broken tracking line before it costs you a season. The report should show calls answered and missed, booked jobs by source, emergency jobs against planned jobs, replacement quotes sent and won, and service agreements signed, renewed and lapsed.

Insist on cost per booked job, never cost per lead. Google says you're charged for each valid lead you receive through your Local Services ad, and a valid lead is not a job. Our piece on which marketing number actually matters explains why one number close to a sale beats a dashboard of comfort numbers.

Make the report reconcile with your own job system. When the two disagree, yours wins until the agency shows why.

Reviews at 30, 60 and 90 days: service bookings each time

Each review asks the same question in a sharper form: are planned service visits being booked in the shoulder months, and does the agency's count match yours?

The registration number matters at day 30 because in Great Britain consumers can check a business is registered by texting Gas and the business registration number to 85080, and a mistyped number fails that check. By day 60, a service-booking count running behind last year's same weeks is the earliest warning you will get. At day 90 the decision rests on the shoulder-month record rather than on a promise about the rush. If day 90 lands just before your season, that is the point of timing the hire this way.

For a view on your own heating and cooling year, tell us about your business. If another option suits you better than an agency, the reply will name it.