HVAC Contractor Marketing
Marketing Built for the Shop You Actually Run, Not the Average One.
A 6-truck service and replacement company, a 2-person owner-operator, and a light-commercial mechanical shop do not need the same plan, and I do not sell them one. We start from your trucks, your season, and your job software, and build the channel mix from there. The first step is an audit of your HVAC marketing, by channel, against what a booked job should cost you.
- Every HVAC segment in scope: residential, light commercial, specialty, service-agreement shops, multi-trade
- One scoreboard: every call, form, and job traced to what it cost
- Run it for you, or equip your team to run it in-house
- Your accounts, your data, your leads, in your name from day one
HVAC companies we have worked with
Who we build for, in the order we build.
Every HVAC company is in scope. The order below is where our research, pain data, and playbooks are deepest today, and it never limits who we talk to.
Residential service and replacement
Independent shops roughly $1M to $20M, 10 to 99 employees. Repair calls in season, replacement sales year round, maintenance plans in between. This is where our verified research base and funnel live.
Owner-operators under $1M
You answer the phone, run the calls, and do the marketing at 9 pm. The first job is intake and follow-up automation so the calls you already get become booked jobs, before we buy you 1 more.
Family and multi-generation companies
A name the town knows, a review profile that does not show it, and a website from the previous generation. Reputation, Maps, and a site that converts the trust you already earned.
Service-agreement shops
Revenue lives in renewals and the plan base. Email and text that keep members, win back lapsed ones, and turn installs into plans.
Light commercial and specialty
Maintenance contracts, property managers, geothermal, ductless, IAQ, hydronics. Longer sales, fewer buyers, different searches. Content and search built for the decision maker, not the homeowner.
Multi-location, franchise, and PE-backed
Several markets, one scoreboard. Territory gaps, location pages that are not doorway pages, and reporting a board can read.
How it works
2 ways to work with us. Same standards either way.
We run it
Our team runs the marketing and sales engine on the channels the audit picks, 1 channel or all of them. For the flagship engagement, I sit in the seat as your HVAC Growth Operator: 1 monthly fee, the team, network, and partners behind it, and resources moved every 30 days toward what is paying. Ad spend is separate.
We build it in-house with you
For owners who do not want to pay an outside agency forever. We set up the plan, systems, tools, and reporting, help you hire and train the people to run it, then step back. Equip, execute, expand. I stay available on call.
Either way: accounts in your name from day one, no lock-in, exclusive leads that ring your number alone, and a weekly number for what a booked job cost.
What we do, in order.
Diagnose before prescribing. The channel mix comes out of the audit, not off a rate card.
Audit
Where every call and job came from last season, what each one cost, and where the phones, the profile, and the site are leaking.
Intake first
If the shop cannot answer and book what it already gets, we fix that before we buy 1 more lead. Missed-call texts, after-hours routing, booking rate.
Tracking
Call tracking, form tracking, and the connection to your job software, so a lead becomes a job in the data and the scoreboard is real.
Own the market
Google Business Profile, reviews, and the site. The base every paid channel stands on.
Buy demand
Search, Local Services Ads, Meta, ChatGPT Ads, in the order your market and season call for, each priced by booked job.
Keep the customer
Estimates followed up, plans renewed, past customers brought back. The cheapest jobs you will ever book.
Scale
New markets, new verticals, new channels, added when the scoreboard says the last one is earning.
Where is your shop leaking?
Then it repeats every 30 days against the numbers, not against a checklist.
The 2 mistakes that cost contractors the most.
Buying leads before fixing intake
The ad worked. The phone rang. It went to voicemail at 4:40 on a Friday in July. Every channel charged you either way. A shop that books 40% of its calls does not need more calls first. It needs the other 60%.
Renting your own marketing
The agency owns the ad account, the tracking, sometimes the domain. Leave and you start over. Every account we touch is in your name from day one, and if we part ways you keep all of it.
Both show up on the audit in the first 2 weeks. Neither shows up in the report your current agency sends.
Results
Watkins Heating and Cooling.
$60,000+
in new installation revenue inside 3 months, from organic search alone. No paid spend behind it.
Source: HVAC Digital Marketing client records, Watkins Heating and Cooling. One client, one market, one period. Not a projection of what another market will do.
Installation intent, not traffic
The work went into the searches that end in a system replacement, not the ones that end in a blog visit. That is the difference between a traffic report and a revenue number.
What it took there is not what it will take in your market. That is what the audit is for.
What every client gets.
- Leads that are yours alone. Never shared, never resold.
- Every account in your name from day one: ads, analytics, website, domain, tracking, data.
- Month to month, unless we agree otherwise.
- My cell. Account questions answered within 24 hours, usually minutes.
- A weekly update: what we did, what happened, what a booked job cost.
- Strategy reviewed every 30 days. No cookie-cutter plans.
Who you are working with
I have been in HVAC marketing since 2009, and I own a piece of the trade.
I left the 75th Ranger Regiment in 2005 and went straight into marketing. I started working on HVAC in 2009 and it has been the focus since. I buy and help run HVAC companies as well as market them, so when we talk about what a booked job costs, or what a slow October does to payroll, I am reading the same scoreboard you are.
Bring me the shop as it is: the trucks, the season, the software, the last agency. If I can help, I will say so. If the honest answer is fix your intake and call me in the spring, I will say that too, and it costs you nothing either way.
You always have access to the CEO. Text me a question right now and see.
Henry “Hank Hugh” Hernandez, Founder, HVAC Digital Marketing
Special Operations, 75th Ranger Regiment
Combined team track record
Combined team track record across our team, network, and partners
Growth Audit
Find out what a booked job costs you. Then find the cheaper ones.
3 questions to start. We look at your market, your season, and what you are running now, and come back with where the jobs are leaking and where the fastest wins are for a shop your size. Straight answers, no pitch. If we cannot help, we say so.
HVAC contractors only. Your answers stay between us.
Start here. 2 minutes.
Fee is always separate from ad spend. The number lands in the proposal after the call.
Questions HVAC contractors ask us.
Do you work with shops my size?
Yes. Every segment and size is in scope. What changes is the order we do things in. A 2-truck shop starts with intake and Maps. A 40-truck shop usually starts with tracking and the ad accounts. The audit sets the order.
Do you only do residential?
No. Residential service and replacement is where our research and playbooks are deepest, so it is where we build first. Light commercial, specialty, and multi-location work are in scope, and we say plainly on the audit where our evidence is thinner.
Can you take over from my current agency without a gap?
Usually. The first job is getting your accounts, tracking, and data into your own name, then we run the audit on what they built. If the accounts are theirs, text me the situation and we walk through getting them back or rebuilding clean.
What if I want my own team to run it?
That is the second way to work with us. We set up the plan, systems, and reporting, help you hire and train, then step back. Ask about it on the call.
Who owns everything?
You do. Ad accounts, analytics, website, domain, tracking, and data are in your name from day one. If we part ways, you keep all of it and nothing has to be rebuilt.
Do you offer market exclusivity?
Your leads are always exclusive to you, never shared or resold. Exclusivity of the whole market is available as a paid add-on in some markets, and we tell you on the call whether yours is one of them.
What does it cost?
It depends on the market and what is in the way, and our fee is always separate from ad spend so you can see what you are paying for. We put the number in the proposal after the call, not before it.
Bring us the shop as it is.
Trucks, season, software, last agency. We come back with where the jobs are leaking and what to fix first.