HVAC marketing pays when spend, ad hours and staffing rise and fall with the weather in your service area, and every job carries the source of the call that started it. Google Ads Keyword Planner estimates show US searches for furnace repair swinging more than sevenfold over the past year. Judge each month by what it booked and sold for its place in the season, not against one flat monthly target.
Quick answer
- Put last year's months side by side: calls, booked jobs, sold systems and new maintenance agreements per source, from your field service software (the system your office uses to schedule, dispatch and invoice).
- Plan the ad budget month by month along the search curve, capped by how many jobs your trucks can run.
- Show ads only in hours when someone answers and can book.
- Give repair work and replacement work their own campaigns and their own counts.
- Fill the quietest weeks with tune-ups sold through maintenance agreements.
- Remove any line that promises the federal home improvement tax credit on a 2026 installation.
When do people search for AC and furnace repair?
These are Google Ads Keyword Planner monthly search estimates for the whole US, pulled through DataForSEO on October 4, 2026, for September 2025 to August 2026. Read them as the shape of a year, not as a count of your customers.
| Month | ac repair near me | furnace repair | Both |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2025 | 301,000 | 110,000 | 411,000 |
| Oct 2025 | 301,000 | 301,000 | 602,000 |
| Nov 2025 | 110,000 | 301,000 | 411,000 |
| Dec 2025 | 135,000 | 368,000 | 503,000 |
| Jan 2026 | 201,000 | 450,000 | 651,000 |
| Feb 2026 | 201,000 | 301,000 | 502,000 |
| Mar 2026 | 201,000 | 165,000 | 366,000 |
| Apr 2026 | 201,000 | 110,000 | 311,000 |
| May 2026 | 165,000 | 74,000 | 239,000 |
| Jun 2026 | 246,000 | 60,500 | 306,500 |
| Jul 2026 | 246,000 | 110,000 | 356,000 |
| Aug 2026 | 201,000 | 90,500 | 291,500 |
Furnace repair ran from 60,500 in June to 450,000 in January, more than seven times as many. The AC search moved less, between 110,000 and 301,000, and its highest months in this window were September and October 2025. Combined, January was the busiest month and May the quietest, at 239,000.
The national line blends Phoenix with Minneapolis, so ask whoever runs your ads to pull the same searches for your service area. Keyword Planner accepts a location down to a city and a date range for viewing search volume trends (Google, checked 2026-10-04).
How should budget, ad hours and staffing move with the weather?
Write a budget for each month and campaign, then turn it into a daily figure. Google says a campaign may spend up to twice its average daily budget on a given day, and no more than 30.4 times that budget across a month (Google, checked 2026-10-04). A $6,080 month therefore goes in as $200 a day, and a cold snap can pull a few days well above it without breaking the month. At the Google Ads Keyword Planner US average of $46.82 a click for ac repair near me (October 2026), $200 buys about four average clicks; local prices differ, and that average is not what your account will pay.
Leave winter as a whole to the bidding. Google describes seasonality adjustments, a setting that warns Smart Bidding (Google's automatic bidding) about a coming change in conversion rates, as ideal for short events of 1 to 7 days. It says they may not work as well beyond 14 days at a time, and that Smart Bidding already manages seasonal events (Google, checked 2026-10-04). A forecast heat wave of a few days is the nearest HVAC fit, and only if you expect a sharp jump in calls that book and the board has room for it.
Match ad hours to answered hours. Google Ads ad schedules set the days and hours ads show (Google, checked 2026-10-04). Local Services Ads offer "All day", "Only during my business hours" or custom hours, and outside them a free version of your listing may still appear (Google, checked 2026-10-04).
The same curve sets the staffing calendar. Furnace searches jumped between September and October, and AC searches between May and June, so hiring, overtime and call-taker schedules belong before those jumps, not after them. Once the board is full for days, more spend buys calls you turn away. Have whoever answers the phone log every caller turned away for lack of an open slot.
Why count repair calls and replacement sales apart?
A repair visit and an installed system are different sizes of ticket, and one month can bring many of the first and few of the second. Lumped together as "jobs", they hide which source sells systems. Keep repair searches and replacement searches in separate campaigns, each with its own budget, so January's repair calls cannot drain the money meant for replacement shoppers.
A replacement can begin as something else, such as a repair call, a tune-up or a second opinion. Have the source of that first call copied onto the estimate and onto the signed sale, so a system sold in March still credits the January ad that rang the phone. Before you buy or renew field service software, test on real jobs that one source field survives from the booked call to the signed contract.
Watch what Google Ads itself counts as a conversion. If both calls and form fills sit in the Conversions column, they add up into one number. That number still says nothing about systems sold.
Which channels fit the peak and which fit the quiet weeks?
| Channel | What you pay for | Peak months | Quiet months | Count |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google search ads | Each click | Repair campaigns up to capacity | Replacement and tune-up campaigns | Booked jobs and systems sold from ad calls |
| Local Services Ads | Each valid lead | Schedule set to answered hours | Lower budget | Charged leads, booked, completed |
| Business Profile | Nothing | Hours and holiday hours kept current | Reviews and photos | Calls from the profile, jobs from them |
| Maintenance agreements | Tech time on visits | Members first on the board | Tune-ups booked into empty weeks | Renewals, visits, estimates from visits |
Local Services Ads charge for each valid lead, which includes answered calls, voicemails, messages and booking requests (Google, checked 2026-10-04). Google is moving them into its main ad platform as Performance Max (an automated campaign type) with per-lead billing kept. Google dates the first phase to August 2026, for select US home and storefront service advertisers with HVAC among the named categories. It also says past campaign-level performance metrics will not migrate to Google Ads (Google, checked 2026-10-04). Download last winter's monthly reports before the move, since those months are what this winter gets compared with.
On the Business Profile (your free Google listing on Search and Maps), Calls is the number of times someone tapped your call button (Google, checked 2026-10-04). It is not answered calls, and it is not jobs.
What can an ad say about tax credits, rebates and financing?
Only what the program or lender says today. For the federal energy efficient home improvement credit, as changed by Public Law 119-21 of July 4, 2025, the IRS states: "The credit will not be allowed for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025" (IRS, checked 2026-10-04). Search your ads, landing pages and quote templates for it.
The federal Home Energy Rebates are run by states, territories and tribes, and the Department of Energy says they "are now available in select states" without naming which, and points homeowners to their state or territory energy office for status (DOE, checked 2026-10-04). Name a state or utility rebate only with a link to its program page and its end date on file.
Financing lines carry their own rule. For closed-end credit (a loan repaid in set installments), Regulation Z section 1026.24 says an ad that states the amount or percentage of a down payment, the number of payments or period of repayment, the amount of any payment, or the amount of any finance charge must also state the down payment, the terms of repayment over the full term of the loan, and the "annual percentage rate" using that term, noting if the rate may increase. The same section allows an ad to state only terms the creditor actually offers (CFPB, checked 2026-10-04).
Revolving plans, such as a financing credit card, fall under a different section, 1026.16, with its own triggering terms (CFPB, checked 2026-10-04). This is a summary of the rule, not legal advice, and I am not a lawyer; ask your lender for ad wording it has approved.
What should each source report every month?
One source per job, picked from a fixed list: search ads, Local Services Ads, Business Profile, agreement member, referral, truck or yard sign, repeat customer, other. Then seven counts per source, as numbers only.
| Count | What it means | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Calls and forms | Answered calls, voicemails, forms, Local Services leads | Call tracking, ad accounts |
| Booked | A job placed on the schedule | Field service software |
| Completed | Visit done, invoice closed | Field service software |
| Replacement estimates | A written quote for a new system | Estimates, by first source |
| Systems sold | A signed replacement | Sales, by first source |
| Agreements | New and renewed maintenance plans | Agreements list |
| Turned away | Callers with no open slot | Call-taker log |
A tracking plan for a lead business shows how to write down which tool records each row and who checks it.
How do you read a busy month next to a quiet one?
Illustrative: this six-truck heating and cooling company is imaginary, and so is each figure in its January and May; no client's data went into them.
| Source and month | Ad spend | Booked | Completed | Estimates | Systems sold |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search ads, January | $9,000 | 120 | 104 | 18 | 6 |
| Local Services Ads, January | $4,500 | 48 | 42 | 6 | 2 |
| Search ads, May | $3,000 | 34 | 30 | 7 | 3 |
| Local Services Ads, May | $1,200 | 12 | 11 | 2 | 1 |
| Agreement tune-ups, May | $0 | 140 | 140 | 9 | 3 |
Three formulas carry the reading. Cost per completed job is ad spend ÷ completed jobs. Cost per system sold is ad spend ÷ systems sold. Close rate is systems sold ÷ estimates.
Per completed job, search ads cost $86.54 in January ($9,000 ÷ 104) and $100 in May ($3,000 ÷ 30), so May looks like the month to cut. Per system sold, the order flips: $1,500 in January ($9,000 ÷ 6) against $1,000 in May ($3,000 ÷ 3). May's estimates also closed more often, 43 percent (3 ÷ 7) against 33 percent (6 ÷ 18) in January. Which line wins depends on what a repair and an installed system each leave you after parts, labor and any financing fee, and those figures come from your books.
Local Services Ads cost $107.14 per completed job in January and $109.09 in May, but $2,250 per system sold in January against $1,200 in May. The tune-ups wrote 9 estimates and sold 3 systems without a dollar of ads, as many systems as May's search campaign. If January's log also shows callers turned away, extra January spend would have bought more of them; that money belonged in the replacement campaign or in May.
For a verdict on the people running the ads, set January against last January, not against May; judging an HVAC agency by booked jobs walks through that comparison.
What should your agency show you before each season?
- The same month last year, by source, from your field service software rather than from the ad report.
- A budget per campaign for the next three months, with the date each change takes effect.
- Ad hours in Google Ads and Local Services Ads next to the hours your phones are answered.
- Repair and replacement campaigns reported apart, down to estimates and systems sold.
- Whether booked or sold jobs are sent back to Google Ads (offline conversion import), so bidding learns which clicks became paying work.
- Last season's Local Services Ads reports, saved before the move into Google Ads.
- Every ad line about a credit, a rebate or financing, with its source and date.
My own media buying on Google Ads and Meta Ads ran from October 2023 through September 2025, nearly $700K in spend. These are the answers I would want in writing before the first cold week.
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Frequently asked questions
When should an HVAC company raise its ad budget for winter?
When searches in your area start climbing and the schedule still has open slots. In Google Ads Keyword Planner's US estimates (pulled October 2026), furnace repair searches went from 110,000 in September 2025 to 301,000 in October, so have the larger budget, the extra phone coverage and the techs in place before that jump. Pull the same search for your own metro first, because the national curve adds together very different climates.
Should my HVAC ads run overnight?
Only during hours when a person answers and can put a job on the board. Google Ads lets you pick the days and hours your ads show, and Local Services Ads offer all day, your business hours or custom hours. Ads that run while nobody picks up still cost money, and in Local Services Ads a voicemail can be a charged lead.
Can I still advertise the federal tax credit on a new heat pump?
Not for an installation done now. The IRS says the energy efficient home improvement credit will not be allowed for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so take it off ads, landing pages and quote templates. Federal home energy rebates run through the states and are available only in some of them, so check your state energy office before an ad names one.
What must an HVAC ad include if it mentions monthly payments?
For a closed-end loan repaid in set installments, Regulation Z section 1026.24 says an ad naming a down payment, the number of payments or period of repayment, a payment amount or a finance charge must also state the down payment, the terms of repayment and the annual percentage rate, using that term. The ad may state only terms the lender actually offers, and revolving card-style plans follow a different section, 1026.16. This is a summary, not legal advice; ask your financing company for ad wording it has approved.
How far does $10 a day go in Google Ads for an HVAC company?
Not far on repair searches. Google Ads Keyword Planner's October 2026 US estimates put an average click at $46.82 for the search ac repair near me and $28.38 for furnace repair, so $10 buys well under one average click a day. Local prices differ from the national average. A small budget goes further on a narrow service area and the hours when demand is highest.
How do maintenance agreements help in the slow months?
They put paid work on the schedule when searches drop, because tune-up visits can be booked into the quietest weeks. Each visit is also a look at an aging system, so a replacement estimate can come from it without any ad spend. Record the agreement as the source of every estimate and sale those visits produce.