Questions to ask before your HVAC company hires an agency

Late February is a sensible time for a heating and cooling owner to choose a marketing agency. The winter calls are thinning out, spring tune-up season is a few weeks away, and anything that has to be working by the first hot week needs to start now. It is also when the pitches arrive, and most of them could have been written for any trade at all.

These are the questions we would want an HVAC owner to put to any agency, including us. None of them needs a marketing background, and every answer is one you can check.

What happens in the first ninety days, and in what order?

A good answer starts with measurement, not ads. Before any new spend, every phone number on your website, your Google profile and your ads should be tracked, and you and the agency should agree on what counts as a booked job. Without that, July volume hides waste and nobody can tell you which channel paid for itself.

The next item should be the Local Services Ads application, if you are not running them already. Google’s help pages put the average screening time at three to four weeks after the documents go in. HVAC is one of the categories where Google runs background checks on the business, the owner and the technicians who work inside customers’ homes, and asks for general and professional liability insurance. Since October the badge at the end of all that is called Google Verified; the money-back guarantee attached to the old badge is gone.

An agency that promises to “switch on Local Services” in week one either has not done it before or is counting on pre-badge ads, which Google ranks below companies that have finished verification.

Ask for the plan in writing, week by week. If it reads the same as the plan a roofer or a dentist would get, it was not written for you.

Do they know what your state requires in an ad?

This question sorts agencies faster than any other, because the rules are specific and easy to look up:

• Texas. Under 16 Texas Administrative Code 75.71, all advertising by air conditioning and refrigeration contractors meant to solicit business must include the affiliated licensee’s license number. The same rule wants the number and company name on both sides of every vehicle in letters at least two inches high, and the number on every proposal and invoice.
• California. Business and Professions Code section 7030.5 requires the license number in all forms of advertising, and section 7027.1 makes it a misdemeanor to advertise work in a classification you do not hold. Heating and air conditioning work sits under the C-20 classification.
• Florida. Statutes section 489.119 requires the registration or certification number in each advertisement, regardless of medium.

Search ads, Local Services profiles, social ads and the website all count as advertising. Ask where your number will appear, including inside a search ad. Checking after the meeting is fine. Being told it does not matter is not.

What would they take down this week?

A careful agency reads your live pages and ads before proposing anything new, and in a heating and cooling account this year two problems should jump out.

The first is the federal tax credit. In fact sheet FS-2025-05, published last August, the IRS confirmed that the 25C energy efficient home improvement credit is not allowed for property placed in service after December 31, 2025. Heat pump landing pages written while the credit was live often still promise it. An agency that leaves that copy running into the spring has not read the account.

The second is financing language. Under Regulation Z, an ad that states a monthly payment, a number of payments or a repayment period must also state the down payment, the terms of repayment and the annual percentage rate. A banner with a monthly figure and nothing else does not meet it. Ask how they would word one that does.

How do they think about reviews?

BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey, published earlier this month, has three numbers worth taping to the office wall. 47% of consumers will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews. 74% only care about reviews written in the last three months. And 89% expect the owner to respond, while templated or generic replies make half of them unlikely to choose the business.

For a heating and cooling company the middle number is the dangerous one, because the work comes in waves. A shop that collects forty reviews during a July heat wave and then stops asking looks stale by the January cold snap, which is exactly when a homeowner with no heat is comparing three profiles on a phone.

Ask who sends the review request after each job, who writes the replies, and how they keep the process inside Google’s rules. If the answer involves a discount for five stars, or only asking customers who seemed happy, end the meeting there.

Can they talk about your market, not only your clicks?

Ask what they know about the year ahead. AHRI’s December release, issued on February 13, put 2025 shipments of central air conditioners and air-source heat pumps at 7,749,529 units, down 20.0% on 2024. The same release counted 3,644,596 heat pumps shipped against 3,247,426 gas furnaces.

An agency need not predict the market, but it should know the replacement mix is moving toward heat pumps and that your pages, ads and quote follow-up have to move with it.

The monthly report should follow the same logic. Clicks and impressions do not answer the question “is this working”. Calls answered, repairs booked, replacements sold and maintenance plans signed, by channel, do. Ask for a sample report before you sign anything.

Use the homeowner checklist on the agency

ENERGY STAR publishes ten tips for hiring a heating and cooling contractor, written for your customers. Several of them work just as well when you are the one hiring: find out the license and insurance requirements, call references, get written and itemized estimates, and sign a written proposal before work starts.

Hold the agency to the standard your best customers hold you to. Proof of what they have done, people you can call, and a written scope that says what is included and what is not.

What to do this month

• Write down your license number and your state board’s advertising rule, then check every live ad, profile and page against it.
• Search your own site for “tax credit” and “25C”, and take down anything promising a federal credit on a 2026 installation.
• Count your Google reviews from the last three months. If the number is thin, start asking after every job now, before the spring rush.
• If you are not on Local Services Ads, start the application this month so the checks finish before the first hot week.
• Ask every agency you are talking to for a written ninety-day plan and a sample monthly report, and lay them side by side.

How the year runs for heating and cooling companies, from the March stock-up to the November cold snap, is set out on our HVAC marketing page. If you want to see how Local Services Ads and search campaigns work together before spring, that is on our Google Ads page.