HVAC marketing plan: a 12-month plan for a replacement-focused contractor

What is an HVAC marketing plan?

An HVAC marketing plan is a 12-month schedule that says how many replacement jobs you want, how many booked estimates that takes, what you will spend on each channel each month, which offer you will run, and which numbers you will check. If it does not start with jobs and end with a weekly scorecard, it is a wish list.

I write the offers and buy the ads at Scale Theory. Most plans I see are a list of channels with a budget next to each. That is backward. Channels come last: they are the tools for hitting an estimate target set by your sales numbers and install capacity.

This plan is written for a residential contractor where central AC and heat pump replacements and new installs are most of the profit. It uses Texas seasons, but the structure works anywhere with a long cooling season. We are new to the US market and have no HVAC client results to publish, so every number below is a labelled planning assumption you replace with your own.

How do you set marketing goals backward from booked estimates?

Pick the number of replacement jobs you want from marketing this year. Divide by your close rate to get booked estimates. Multiply booked estimates by a realistic ad cost per booked estimate to get ad spend. Then check that your comfort advisors can run that many estimates and your crews can install the jobs.

A booked estimate is a qualified homeowner booked for an in-home estimate on your calendar, at a set time. It is the one number every part of the plan feeds.

The $320 comes from our planning funnel: a $100 to $130 blended cost per lead, 60% passing the qualifier and 60% of those booking. Your close rate is the assumption to check first. If yours is 40%, the same 150 booked estimates become about 60 jobs. If it is 20%, they become about 30.

Two checks before you lock the target. First, can your advisors run the extra estimates in the week they are booked? An estimate that waits ten days goes cold. Second, can your crews install the extra jobs without the backlog passing about three weeks? If not, the plan needs a hire before it needs more ads.

Which marketing channels work best in each season?

Google Search does the most work when systems fail, because homeowners search the day it happens. Meta does more work the rest of the year, reaching homeowners who are thinking about a new system before they search. Follow-up and reviews run all year, because they work on leads you already paid for.

The off-season offers are covered in more depth in our post on HVAC off-season marketing. Whatever the season, the ads lead with full system replacements and new installs. We do not run ads for single repairs, window units or one-off mini-split heads.

How should you split the budget across the year?

Hold the $4,000 minimum every month and change the split, not the total. By default Meta gets $2,500 and Google Search $1,500. In peak cooling months, roughly May to September in Texas, flip it to Google $2,500 and Meta $1,500. Over a year that is $48,000 in ad spend.

Ad spend is paid by you directly to Meta and Google. Our fee is $2,500 a month, so the first year with us comes to $30,000 in fees and $78,000 all-in at the minimum. The first 90 days are paid in two halves: $3,750 on signing and $3,750 once we have booked 3 central AC or heat pump estimates of $5,000 or more into your calendar, or at day 90. The full terms are on our pricing page.

Spend also follows your calendar. If the install backlog passes about three weeks, we turn spend down rather than book estimates you cannot install, but not below the $4,000 minimum while we run the account. If you have spare crews in peak, that is the time to raise the total, not the slow months.

What does a 12-month HVAC marketing calendar look like?

Each month has one main offer, a budget lean and one operations task. The operations tasks matter as much as the ads: rebate enrollment, financing, calendar slots and crew capacity decide whether the ads turn into jobs. Here is the calendar we would start from for a Texas replacement contractor.

The July review is a decision point, not a report: if cost per booked estimate is far from plan, change the offer or the page before the second half of summer. November is when quiet summer estimates get a call, because some of those homeowners chose to wait. The texts that run in between are in our post on HVAC lead follow-up.

What should you track every week?

Nine numbers, every week, in one report: ad spend by channel, leads, qualified leads, booked estimates, cost per booked estimate, estimates run, jobs sold, speed to first reply and install backlog. Together they tell you whether a problem sits in the ads, the follow-up, the sales visit or the install schedule.

We send these in a Friday report. If booked estimates are fine and jobs sold are not, the issue is after the estimate, and our post on HVAC booked estimates covers the step before it.

What should you review each quarter?

Every three months, replace planning assumptions with real numbers. Recalculate your close rate, your ad cost per booked estimate and your gross profit per job, then rerun the backward math for the rest of the year. If the target moves, the budget and the calendar move with it.

The questions for each review:

• Is the close rate on paid leads close to your normal close rate? If not, check lead quality and follow-up before blaming the ads.
• Which channel has the lower cost per booked estimate this season, and is the split right?
• Did the backlog pass three weeks at any point? If so, the next peak needs crew planning in March, not June.
• Is the break-even still met? Break-even is your monthly fee plus ad spend divided by gross profit per replacement job. Illustrative only: at $6,500 a month and $3,500 gross profit per changeout, about 2 jobs a month covers the marketing cost.

How does an HVAC marketing plan change across Texas?

The structure stays the same statewide. What changes is how long peak lasts, how much heating matters and which utility rebate you can put in an offer. DFW has a shorter peak and more freezing nights than Houston or San Antonio, and each area has its own utility program and rules.

Texas summer demand is real and measurable. ERCOT, which serves about 90% of the state's electric load, lists a record peak demand of 91,134 MW on July 22, 2026, marked as unofficial until final settlement. Your peak marketing months line up with the grid's.

NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals show how the season differs by metro:

The heating fuel column comes from the Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey for each metro. Statewide, about 61% of occupied homes heat with electricity and about 35% with utility gas. At DFW, about 22 days in June reach 90°F against 7 in May, so the flip to Google can wait until late May. Heat pump and AC plus furnace offers both have real audiences in winter, with North Texas leaning more on heating.

Utility rebates change the offer calendar:

• Oncor pays incentives to approved service providers, which are passed on to customers. Oncor says its residential programs "typically run from February through November" each year, subject to funds. Put rebate messages early in the year, and check funding before you advertise them.
• CenterPoint Energy in its Houston Electric area says incentives "start at $200", applied to the installation invoice through a participating contractor, for equipment from 15.2 SEER2.
• CPS Energy in San Antonio lists rebates of $90 to $310 per ton for central AC and heat pumps, with higher rates for early replacement of a working system.

If you are not enrolled with your utility, or the equipment does not qualify, leave the rebate out of your ads. The season-by-season detail for each metro is in our Texas HVAC marketing playbook, and open metros are on our Texas HVAC marketing page. The system that runs this plan, from ad to booked estimate to Friday report, is on our HVAC Profit Machine page.

Sam

Co-founder. Audits, strategy and media buying

Sam runs every strategy call and buys every ad. Before going HVAC-only, he ran a performance marketing agency: SEO, Meta and Google ads, CRM automation.

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