What You Need To Know Before Hiring A Marketing Agency For Your HVAC Company

I think you’ll agree with me when I say:

It’s really hard to hire a marketing company that will give me “real results,” not empty promises.

Well, it turns out, you really can hire a great marketing company if you know what to look for.

A great marketing company that will increase your online presence, that will help you convert traffic, and will help you get more of the business you prefer without having to worry about the success of your marketing campaign.

In today’s post, I’m going to share with you a case study for a Heating and Air Conditioning company that we worked with and how we were able to add $8000 worth of additional business per month and how that changed the overall culture of the company.

Hello, everyone my name is Dan and I am part of the team at Gold Mine Marketing.

Before joining Gold Mine Marketing, I worked in the HVAC industry for over 20 years starting in 1995.

I started my HVAC career as a helper, then promoted to an installer, and finally I moved into sales and that was pretty much by default. I say this because I was selling work not because I was a good sales closer but because people could see that I was good at what I did. I loved to install which led me to start my own company in 2005 because I believed that an HVAC company was a potential gold mine.

And I’m sure you would agree that your company is also a “potential gold mine.” Or you would not have started it in the first place, am I right?

So here I had a van, a helper and myself but very little business. The problem was that I didn’t have enough steady business. I mean the summers were always busy but for the most part I just didn’t have a steady stream of business and it really affected my self-confidence as a business owner-- even as a boss.

Telling the workers to take the day off felt like I was letting them down-- and I was. Workers need to work, and you can’t build a business without steady income.

Then one day the Yellow Pages, which was the best marketing techniques at the time, contact me and I bought a big advertising page. It costed over a $1000 a month but it didn’t do as it promised. It didn’t bring in the influx of business that I was hoping it would. And there are reasons for that, I’ll explain a little later why.

I bought another page in another book and the same thing. I was lucky if I broke even.

Luckily word of mouth worked great for me, but it was not enough business to scale and not enough to keep me and my helper busy year-round.

The bottom line was that my business was not growing, and it was taking a toll on my spirit.

Luckily for me a few years later I bought out another company and that brought a burst of new business. But after that settled down I realized once again that I had to invest into digital marketing.

So what did I do?

I hired one of the biggest HVAC related Digital marketing companies in the marketing industry. They promised to work with me and help me increase my visibility and I signed up for a 6-month contract for their services. Within 2 weeks I knew I made a mistake and within 2 months I was upset from watching thousands of dollars go down the drain per month. They did nothing for my website. I received no new business, I could barely find my site by page 3-- and that was after 4 months after hiring them.

It was a terrible experience and the website they built for me was so ugly . . . I think it convinced people not to call me once they landed on my page.

Yes, it really was that bad.

Finally, after 6 months of throwing away thousands of dollars down the drain I was released from my contract.

And I kid you not, my wife and I celebrated.

If I could just be honest with you, all games a side.

This experience led me to believe that all marketers once they had your money, would just take your money and I honestly thought I would never work with another marketing company again. But time went by and once again I realized that I needed to find a marketing company that would work. I needed to figure out what would take my company to another level. And I was willing to take full responsibility for my results.

I started studying marketing. I invested thousands of dollars’ worth of training. Thousands of hours’ worth of video training. I studied social media, website building, conversions factors and most importantly, I studied branding. After all my research, I then started to work on my own company’s web presence. And voila.

I quickly improved my company’s brand and within a few short months I had my company ranking on the first page of Google. During that same time, I started to run paid ads and we consistently started landing new jobs. The steady work that we brought in provided the money to start rebranding our company and the moral of the entire company started to improve. Our ads were being seen all over the internet and we started pretty much a new company through this process.

This success was so impactful that other companies started hiring us to do the same thing for them and that’s how Gold Mine Marketing was born.

This leads me to this question . . .

Why do so many marketing companies fail to get their clients good and consistent results?

Let me just state that if you can take anything at all from this post it’s this million-dollar question. Believe me when I tell you that this is the question ALL million-dollar companies have successfully answered. And now it's your turn. With that being clearly identified let us help you solve this question once and for all.

To best answer this question we must understand that this is a two-part question. (Which reminds me of what Socrates wrote, “The quality of the answer depends significantly on the quality of the question.”This question is a prime example of the power questioning can have upon the success of one’s life and business. Both are intertwined.)

To fully grasp what we are trying to solve let us begin by dissecting the question. The first part we must fully understand is “what” the problem is.

Answer: Underperforming marketing results. Not enough leads.

The next question to answer is why?

In other words, why is the marketing mistake happening?

(Continue to keep in mind that we are talking about a business that is currently marketing or has hired a marketing company in the past. If your company has not previously hired a marketing company then take good notes as this is what will help you increase your chances of success so you can take your business to another level.)

The third question is “who gets the blame for the mistake?”

A fourth question is, “who is responsible for solving it?”

Let’s start with the easy question first. We know we have a lack of leads generated by our website.

If you are a responsible business owner that wants to be successful then you better begin by blaming yourself for both your successes and your failures.

Let us agree on one thing. No one should care as much as the contractor, if a business is struggling it falls on the contractor. If you don’t have enough work, it falls on the contractor. And there are two ways to solve any problem in any business.

1. Hire a consultant to identify the root of your problem. Then you can opt to pay him to help you fix it. (This may require a significant investment on the owner’s part).

2. Or find and solve the problem yourself.

Of course, you could just continue to deal with the pain of a stagnant and mediocre business. You can also continue to keep your crews wondering if there will be any work the next week. Unfortunately, most contractors will do just that. And you want to know why they continue. Which is really a mind set or psychological questions that is at the root of all success and failure.

The psychology of a mediocre contractor.

Before we continue let me address one extremely important issue that is the real reason why your contracting business has not and may never take off. Take note this next few sentences may change the future of your entire family.

Here we go.

Many and I mean MANY contractors are fear driven. They may never admit it because it takes courage to do so yet it is the fear of failure that keeps them from admitting they are mediocre, which proves my point, that they are fear driven.

But it’s true.

Think about that for one minute. I mean really think about it.

In fact, put yourself in the middle of this conversation, so just reason with me for a minute.

Let’s suppose that you have worked in the industry for 10 years when one day you realized that you wanted to own an HVAC company yourself.

Why did you decide that?

I’ll bet it’s because you see that the HVAC industry is a potential gold mine and you wanted a piece of the action. Right?

Now, as a result of a whole lot of word of mouth you have 2 to 8 guys that are working for you and you are doing good, but you haven’t grown as much as you once dreamed you could.

Sound familiar?

Ok let’s keep going.

Then one day you woke up saying to yourself, “I’m getting sick of the trade. Or the customers in my town are just too difficult and I’m sick of it.” If you have ever said that.

(Sound the alarm. Sound the alarm.)

I know I did. My wife and my children are witnesses.

Here is the good news.

If you have ever said this to yourself . . . it’s because you are giving out a loud cry that you are stuck.

It’s a sign. That’s all it is and it’s a great thing.

Other signs are words like this.

I’m so sick of it.

I’m stuck. I’m frustrated.

I’m over whelmed.

I need help.

Realizing that your business was stuck and needed some un-stucking.

You then decided to invest and hire a marketing company, but it didn’t work. Your company did not get the kind of results you expected, and it broke your spirit.

I have been there.

In the end you felt like you were just donating money away and by the end of your contract you wanted out. Yet you still have the dream of building your business as the largest company in town, but you are still wrestling with the thought of hiring another marketing company.

But do you know why you didn’t make any money with the last marketing company you hired?

It’s because you didn’t hire the right company.

Perhaps the right company was to expensive and you didn’t want to pay “that much.”

So, you took a smaller less expensive option. In most cases I find that contractors know that it requires you play big, that you play to win. But the money you have to put up front causes contractors to get separation anxiety and, so they step back into safety. Into less money up front yet they still want the results from the bigger marketing option.

In other words, they play to lose, from day one, they are unconsciously playing to lose.

Why?

They are fear driven and the fear they will lose money makes “causes” them to play small. (The Law of Cause and Effect).

Just think about it.

We keep old trucks on the road because we fear that if we spend too much on the truck it will separate us away from our money. It’s be-“cause” we are attached to our money, and all attachment leads to pain. They are attached to their money and they rather have less money than take a chance to make more money and, so they remain bound with their mediocre results.

The reality is that most contractors are having a hard-enough time convincing themselves to hire a marketing company which means that if they are having a hard time investing into this part of the business then it’s highly unlikely they will invest into a branding company.

It’s true.

Most contractors have a scarcity mindset and they are fear driven. In their eyes, they don’t see marketing as a means to more profits they see marketing as a liability and just another opportunity for a marketing company to take away their hard-earned money.

Apart from the contractor’s fault, it’s also the marketer’s fault.

Why?

Let me explain.

Time and time again, I find myself surfing the websites of potential HVAC companies that I would like to work with and here is what I find.

No clear message.

The website does not attract customers and more than likely it’s driving them away.

Bob’s Heating and Air’s website has an old work truck on the website is not enticing at all. And the slogan “Good Quality Work” should not have to be the main selling point, it should be expected. And on and on I find that most contractors all over the web do the same thing. They have no unique selling proposition, no big promise. The big problem is that without that promise it makes it really hard for the marketing company to pitch you out. It makes it nearly impossible to differentiate you from the rest of your competition.

As for the marketing companies: why they don’t help you clarify your message is unknown to me.

Maybe it’s a branding issue, or maybe it’s just too much work to sit you down and want you to change your logo. It’s hard enough to get you as a client so I’m sure they don’t want to scare you off with all the additional work it requires to create a new “look.”

But the bottom line is that without a clear message they fail to get you the type of results you want.

And you fire them.

That’s the first problem.

When we work with our clients that’s the first thing we strive to resolve. And we easily figure it out by asking these simple questions.

What is your promise to all of your customers? Is it speedy service, what is it? You may be attracting clients with that proposition and be unaware of it.

In my case I found myself closing deals by saying that if they ever have a warranty problem I will show up on the same day and repair it at no service charge. For years, time and time again I would tell clients that till one day when I was rebranding the company I realized after all those years, that warranty was my unique selling proposition. And you may be using it at every sale and not realizing it.

Unfortunately, in most cases the contractor doesn’t know it and the marketer doesn’t ask.

That is why I feel Gold Mine Marketing has the upper hand when it comes to getting results for A/C companies. Through experience I have learned that it is better to work with marketers that specifically understand your industry.

In my opinion, I want to work with a marketing company that can help me understand my message so it resonates with new prospects. I don’t want a website. I want a magnet site that attracts and keeps the potential customers on my page till they call me.

You see, that’s the big mistake most companies make. They don’t have a clear message and if your message is not clear it's very unlikely anyone will call you. You must make people feel good about calling you.

Since then we have worked with many companies and we have not only branded them but much more.

What did we do exactly? 3 Main Steps To Help Your Company's Marketing:

1. First as we stated we help HVAC companies re-brand themselves and we rebuilt that site to get that message across. A site that is pleasing to the customer that helps the customer understand the unique selling proposition.

2. The second thing we do is once we refine the message and introduce it to the website, we then optimize their website. This means we help customers improve their organic rankings. Our chief aim is to move them from 3rd page google search to a first page appearance. Not to go into detail but this requires a lot of work on the back of the pages. Using keywords, back links, adding content, and much, much, more.

3. The third thing is we help you get your conversion rate up by putting your message in front of your favorite type of customer.

Here is the thing, we help HVAC contractors get more of the specific type of work they enjoy doing. We achieve that by creating a laser focused marketing campaign that targets those specific type of clients. The kind of work they could never get enough of and the type of work they want to do each and every day. Because here is the reality, who wants to do the kind of work they least like?

I remember hiring a marketing company many years ago, and the marketer asked me. Name all the types of work you know how to do I’m going to put it in the key words. We came up with all kinds of work, much of which included the type of work I didn’t want to do. I also remember telling him, “But I don’t like doing that type of work.” To which he responded, “don’t worry.” It just helps to get found easier on the web. And he was right-- it did make me easier to get found, unfortunately I received a lot of calls for work I did not want which caused me to lose time and money.

Lesson learned.

Don’t market for the type of work you don’t want to do.

That being said, I’ll close with this question.

Do you have a dream of creating a successful company with steady growth that your entire staff can be proud to be a part of?

If you do and you are serious about your company’s growth right now is the time to get started.

Here is the thing, I know what it’s like to have a dream and feel that it's too far out of my reach.

I been there done that.

In fact, everyone who knows me can vouch that I have failed more than many other men have tried. This means I had to drive the fear out of my life. I had to keep trying despite the loss of money and I have been ripped of more times than I can count but that’s ok. I’m ok. I’m still happy, a little bruised but happy. And I’m proud of myself for having the courage to try repeatedly. And if you want to fulfill your dream of owning a continuously growing company that is filled with happy employees, then it will require they see your company growing. Lest they may start to worry about their future in your organization.

The good news is that I’m eager to share my experience and I share that through my marketing and coaching services. If you have a dream and you want to grow your business, Gold Mine Marketing will help you succeed.

You don’t have to do this alone.

Let’s just be honest, you wouldn’t have started your company if you didn’t see a potential gold mine. Let Gold Mine Marketing turn that potential into results.

Call to speak to a Gold Mine Marketing Web Specialist (424)263-5898