How Much Should an HVAC Company Spend on Marketing?

You’ve probably heard the rule. Spend 5% of revenue on marketing. Maybe 10% if you want to grow.

That rule isn’t wrong. It just doesn’t tell you much. It doesn’t know your close rate. It doesn’t know what a lead costs in your town. And it doesn’t know how many jobs you want next month.

So let’s skip the percentage for a minute. Here’s how I’d figure out an HVAC marketing budget if I owned your shop.

Start with cost per lead, not a percentage

A percentage tells you what you can afford. It doesn’t tell you what you’ll get for it.

Cost per lead does. It’s the one number that connects your spend to your phone ringing. Once you know it, the budget mostly writes itself.

Here’s the order I’d work in:

1. Know what a lead costs in your market.
2. Know how many leads it takes to book one job.
3. Decide how many jobs you want.
4. Multiply.

That’s it. No magic. Just math you can check every month.

What an HVAC lead actually costs

The industry-typical HVAC lead runs $150 to $400 or more. That’s the range I list on my HVAC marketing page. Plenty of shops pay the top of it and don’t know why.

It doesn’t have to be that high. Here’s what I’m seeing in accounts I manage right now:

A couple of things to notice. Duct cleaning is an add-on service, so it’s cheaper to win. AC replacement and heat pump installs will cost more per lead. They’re also worth a lot more per job.

And Local Services Ads charge you per lead, not per click. That makes them one of the easiest places to see your real cost.

Work backward from the jobs you want

Start with the job count, not the dollar amount. How many extra jobs a month would actually move your business?

Then use this:

Monthly ad budget = (Jobs you want ÷ Close rate) × Cost per lead

Example only. These are made-up inputs, just to show the math. They’re not a client result.

Say you want 20 more jobs a month. Say you close 1 in 3 leads. That means you need 60 leads.

• At $150 a lead, the low end of typical, that’s $9,000 a month.
• At $100 a lead, close to what my Jacksonville client pays on LSA, it’s $6,000.

Same jobs. $3,000 a month apart. That gap is why cost per lead matters more than any percentage.

Now plug in your own close rate. If you don’t know it, that’s your first project. Pull your last 90 days of calls and count the booked ones.

Spend by season and service

HVAC demand isn’t flat. Your budget shouldn’t be either.

• Summer: AC repair and emergency calls. Push spend when the heat hits, not after.
• Winter: Furnace repair and heat pump calls. Same idea, other direction.
• Spring and fall: Tune-ups and maintenance plans. Cheaper leads, and they fill your slow weeks.
• Year-round: AC replacement, heat pumps and mini-splits. These cost more per lead but carry the biggest tickets.

Don’t let one service eat the whole budget. Give each one its own campaign and its own number. Then you can see which ones pay and move money there.

Where the money goes

Most of your budget should sit where people are already looking for you.

• Local Services Ads. You pay per lead, and the Google Guaranteed badge builds trust fast. Watch them, though. Track every lead in WhatConverts, flag the spam and unqualified ones, and tune your service types and areas so you stop paying for junk.
• Google Ads. Built around each service, with its own ad group and landing page. That’s how you control what you pay for an AC replacement lead versus a tune-up.
• Your Google Business Profile and reviews. No ad spend, but it’s where a lot of calls start. Keep it current and keep asking for reviews.
• Your website. Every dollar above lands here. If it’s slow or hard to call from, you’re paying for leads you never get.

You don’t need every channel on day one. Start where the intent is highest, prove the cost per lead, then add.

Ad spend vs. the management fee

Keep these two separate in your head. Ad spend is what Google charges. The fee is what you pay someone to run it.

With me, ad spend is separate and you control it directly. There’s a 3-month starting commitment, then month to month.

And I back the whole thing with a guarantee. Make back your full investment (my fee and your ad spend) in 90 days, or I keep working free until you do. The only requirements: you answer your phone, you respond to leads in a reasonable time, and you don’t change the offer or website in the first 90 days.

Whoever you hire, ask them one question. “What happens if this doesn’t pay for itself?” The answer tells you a lot.

What to track every month

A budget is a guess until you track it. Here’s what I’d watch:

• Cost per lead, by service and by channel.
• Close rate, so you know how many leads one job takes.
• Cost per booked job. This is the number that tells you if marketing is paying.
• Where every call came from. If you can’t answer that, fix it before you spend more.

If your cost per lead is near the top of that $150–$400 range, something’s leaking. Usually it’s bad keywords, untracked calls or leads nobody followed up on.

Want me to look at your numbers? Fill out the form below. I’ll tell you what your leads should cost and what I’d change first.

Sources

• HVAC Marketing — Brands That Last: industry-typical HVAC CPL, air duct cleaning CPL
• Brands That Last home page: “Real Brands That Last Client CPLs” section
• LSA client figures: pulled from the clients’ Local Services Ads accounts (anonymized)