PPC stands for pay-per-click advertising. It’s a key part of any marketing plan and especially important for HVAC companies. It essentially means that you place ads online and you only pay for them when someone clicks on them.
HVAC companies need to stand out during periods of extreme weather, and during slower times, when you can make ends meet by providing people with tune-ups or installing new systems.
You see Google Ads every time you search for something. The ads are the words, links to websites and photos that appear under the word “sponsored.” Sometimes, this is the content that appears at the very top of a search results page.
Other times, they appear on the right side of the page. PPC ads can also appear in videos, emails, and banners on certain websites. The companies that appear in these places are only charged when someone clicks on their ad. Typically, the amount a company pays for each click (known as cost per click, or CPC) depends on the industry the business falls in.
Most small to mid sized HVAC companies spend $2500 to $12000 per month on advertising. You want to make sure you’re spending this money wisely, in the right places. Many HVAC companies use part of that budget to hire a third party vendor to handle their PPC needs. These companies are called HVAC PPC Management Companies. At SEO Design Chicago, we handle PPC campaigns for many HVAC businesses. In this post, we’ll explain the value of a good HVAC PPC management company.
What’s the Difference Between PPC and SEO?
PPC ads are something businesses pay for to get their company’s content in the most visible places on a search results page. You don’t pay, however, unless a person clicks on a link or performs another action you determine ahead of time. Google, for example, has you set up a goal before creating your ad, like having a person call you after seeing your number in an ad or signing up for an email newsletter.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a free way to get your company’s content into other highly visible places on a search results page. These are the websites that appear underneath sponsored ads, featured snippets, map results or “people also ask” questions.
Your natural impulse may be to assume that the free route is better. However, it’s tricky to get your company on page one of search results for free and it takes awhile to increase your page rankings in Google. If you would like to see faster results, PPC ads should be your first choice.
A great HVAC PPC management company, like SEO Design Chicago, will manage both strategies or just one of them for you.
Learning about PPC, which involves understanding how Google Ads and Bing Ads work, is something you could learn on your own. You’ll have to study:
- The best keywords for your ads
- The correct amount to bid on those keywords
- The strategy of long tail keywords
- Writing effective text and finding great images
- How to read ad analytics reports, that show how often your ad appears and how often it’s clicked on
- How to move forward with new strategies based on that data
You can take an online course in PPC management, read books about the topic, or watch YouTube tutorials. We even offer training to you or your employees. But what is your time worth? What’s the cost of each hour of your time? Every hour you spend learning about digital marketing is an hour that you take away from other things you need to do to run your HVAC business. A great HVAC PPC management company like SEO Design Chicago will likely be a better use of your time and money.
How a Good HVAC PPC Management Company Will Maximize the Value of Your Ad Budget
When you optimize website content to rank high in search engine results (the free route to getting eyeballs on your company), you can only do so much. And it takes 3-6 months to see results. And getting to page one is hard with organic traffic, especially when you’re competing for things like “HVAC in Hollywood.”
What tends to show up on page one of Google search results are lists from news organizations. They always rank high in free traffic because they have so much content on their websites. Google gives higher search results placement to companies that are constantly publishing new content, like news organizations.
The other issue is that if you do get lucky enough to rank in the free section on page one of Google search results, you may get a lot of visitors to your website who leave right away because your content isn’t quite what they were looking for, or visitors who like what they see, but don’t actually take any actions, like:
- Making a purchase
- Reaching out for more information with a phone call
- Following you on social media
- Getting an estimate
In other words, you have a low conversion rate. People see your site, but they don’t convert (or take) any action.
When you implement a PPC strategy, your conversion rate will likely be higher.
The conversion rate for Google Ads varies but most recent research shows that the average clickthrough (CTR) rate is 5.06%. The reason the conversion rate is higher with PPC strategies is that you are able to better control exactly who sees your website content. For example, when you implement a PPC plan, you can target who sees links to your website based on common demographics like location, age, gender, career, interests, marital status, and more. So a PPC ad for HVAC in Hollywood will only show to certain people, like homeowners, who live in a Hollywood zip code.
With PPC ads, you can measure who is clicking on your links. If no one does, that’s OK in terms of good value – you don’t pay. But if people do click, but then aren’t taking any actions like calling you, you know you need to do something different. The page they see after clicking may need to be redesigned or reworded so that it more clearly matches what the ad promises.
A good HVAC PPC management company will help you interpret your results to get a great understanding of who is clicking on your links and what they do once they get to your site.
If you don’t like the way your ads are performing, a good HVAC PPC management company can help you redesign or rewrite your ads and website. Or, we can advise you on how to tweak your PPC strategy, like targeting different audiences or areas, so that you see better results.
The Steps a Good HVAC PPC Management Company Takes to Create and Implement a PPC Plan for You
At SEO Design Chicago, we have worked with dozens of HVAC companies over the last decade to make sure their online ads pay off in the long run. We usually follow a process like this:
- First, we work with you to learn more about your target audience, including their income levels, marital status, location, needs, and more.
- Then, we work with you to figure out what your goals are. For example, more sales is the common major goal, but we help you zero in on your ad goals like getting phone calls, people requesting an estimate, signing up for email marketing, etc.
- Next, you tell us what your budget is for PPC ads. We’ll work with you to determine the most you want to pay for each click. Remember that you can change this amount at any time, pause it for a certain period of time, and more. We’ll also research what your competitors are paying.
- That brings us to the next most important thing a great PPC company does – keyword research. We research what keywords your competitors use to attract customers. We then help you decide if you want to target the same keywords, or if what people pay for those keywords are too expensive. We also help you research the best times and days to run your ad to see the highest conversion rate.
- We then set up your Google Ads campaign on your behalf and bid on the keywords we identified together. We’ll regularly monitor the auction to see the order in which your ads are shown to people searching for those keywords.
- Lastly, we review all available Google ad data with you and suggest changes to the strategy moving forward.
What Makes a HVAC PPC Management Company Great vs Just OK?
First off, experience is a huge factor in what makes a PPC management company great. For example, SEO Design Chicago has been in business for over a decade. You can look at our Google Reviews and learn more about how we’ve helped companies manage everything from web design to SEO to PPC. HVAC marketing is one of our areas of specialty.
We explain our price structure up front. Whether you use us or not, always look for a company that clearly explains their prices during your first meeting with them. If the company starts to tack on last minute surprise charges, it’s probably time to look for a different company.
We’re also a great HVAC PPC management company because we keep learning. We didn’t just graduate from college and stop learning. We start each day with learning more about PPC ads. We have a huge team so we can do our work fast. At SEO Design Chicago, we have over 30 content creators, designers, developers, analysts, and client relation specialists. We value every client, and carefully manage our staff so that each and every client gets the attention they deserve.
Contact Us today!