Google Ads and Local Services Ads for San Diego HVAC companies.

An HVAC company pays Google for calls in two ways: search ads in Google Ads charge for each click, and Local Services Ads (LSA) charge for each lead. An HVAC account in San Diego County holds urgent and planned buyers side by side, with demand that swings with the weather, and that shapes how I apply ordinary Google Ads management to it.

How Local Services Ads work for HVAC

Local Services Ads are the listings usually shown at the very top of the results with a review rating and a phone number, and HVAC has been one of their categories for a long time. Google screens a business before it can run them.

You pay per lead instead of per click, and each lead goes to one business. That’s the main difference from a marketplace that sells the same homeowner to several companies. The ad shows your review rating, so reviews for HVAC companies affect what these ads return.

Repair and replacement need separate campaigns

A search for “AC not cooling” in Escondido in August is urgent. That person calls the first credible company, and the click either becomes a job that day or is gone. A search for “cost to replace AC and furnace” comes from someone weighing a high-ticket purchase over days or weeks, reading reviews and collecting estimates.

In search ads I give repair its own campaign aimed at a phone call, and replacement its own campaign aimed at a booked estimate. Each has its own budget, so a hot week of repair clicks can’t use up the replacement money.

Budgets that follow the weather

HVAC demand in this county is uneven by place and by month, and a flat budget ignores both. Inland cities like El Cajon, Santee and Poway run much hotter than the coast, and some of the county’s worst heat arrives in late summer and early fall. During a heat wave, repair searches jump and a fixed daily budget can be spent by mid-morning. In a mild coastal week the same budget chases far fewer urgent searches.

I set budgets and target areas by job and by season: cooling repair inland in the heat, furnace repair when the cold nights start, and ductless or heat pump installation near the coast, where many older homes have no central air.

Searches an HVAC company shouldn’t pay for

Many HVAC searches come from people who will never hire you, and negative keywords keep your ads away from them. Typical examples are people looking for parts or a thermostat manual, do-it-yourself repair videos, HVAC jobs and training, and a manufacturer’s warranty phone number.

I also schedule ads for the hours a person answers your phone. You pay for an emergency repair click at 11pm that reaches voicemail, and you get nothing for it.

Measuring by booked job, not by click

I judge each campaign by what a booked job cost, by type of job. With call tracking I can tie a call to the campaign that produced it, and with your office’s help mark whether it became a repair, an estimate or nothing. A replacement lead is worth many times a tune-up call, so the two should never be averaged into one cost per lead.

Maintenance plan sign-ups are the hardest to judge. The first visit is a small ticket, and whether the click paid for itself depends on how many of those customers stay on the plan, which is a number from your books and not from Google.