Tttp://hvacseo.net - On this video Josh Nelson of HVAC SEO explains why Internet Marketing & SEO is so important for HVAC Contractors.
Transcript of the Video Recording - Why SEO & Internet Marketing is So Important for HVAC Contractors:
So let's start just by talking about why search engines and Internet marketing is so important for plumbing and HVAC businesses. It all starts with the notion that there is a major transition in the last five to seven years, from what we call offline marketing to online marketing.
It wasn't that long ago, even if we just go back five to seven years, where the Yellow Pages, a wrap truck, maybe a sign on your building was enough to really market your HVAC business in a pretty proactive way, and get your phone ringing on a consistent basis.
The majority of the people, when they needed HVAC repair services, pulled out the Yellow Pages, flipped open to the section that talked about AC repair or AC installation. If you had a nice sized ad, you could pretty consistently get your phone to ring with people looking for you.
Now, in that period of time, the five to seven years, people stopped going to the Yellow Pages at the same velocity that they once did. They're not going there anymore. So it creates a void and it says, "Man, where are they going?" If they're not going to the Yellow Pages, they have to going somewhere when they need these types of services.
The answer is, for the most part, they're going to the Internet. They're going to Google. They're going to Yahoo. They're going to Bing. In some cases, they're going to Yelp. They're going to Citysearch. They're going to Angie's List, but they're going online.
As a matter of fact, a survey of 2,000 consumers found that more than 86 percent of them use the Internet to find a local business. So why is Internet marketing important? It's important, because that's where your consumers are looking when they want to find your services.
We did do some keyword research just to get a feel for how many searches there are on a monthly basis for the plumbing and HVAC related terms. We were able, by looking at the trends, to find that there are over 20 million searches every single month, for the types of services that you provide.
So the potential is significant. I mean, there is lots of opportunity and having a strategy to make sure you're showing up when those searches are taking place is important. It's going to help you grow your business.
Just to give you an example, Internet marketing really will help you get more inbound calls and help you grow your business. We worked with a relatively large plumbing contractor down in the Tampa market. He was a big time Yellow Page advertiser. He had been in business for over 20 years and found that the number of calls he was getting from his various marketing efforts wasn't producing at the same result that it once did.
It was relatively early in the curve on getting involved in the Internet. He set up a website and he paid an SEO company, but he just wasn't ranking well; he didn't have a good strategy for showing up for the services that he provided.
What we found in working with him was... One of the strategies we like to put in place is putting a call tracking number in place so we can see how many calls are actually coming in via the website and the various online channels. Early on, in the first month, he got about 11 calls via the Internet, and we consider that probably to be mostly organic-related calls. Somebody typed in his specific company name, they were just looking for his phone number, and that's where those calls came from.
After getting optimized and having his website built with some of the strategies I'm going to be sharing throughout the course of this webinar, he found himself better positioned -- showing up for those searches as people were looking -= and by the third month, he had 57 inbound calls in that one-month period, directly via the web. Which is a pretty big jump; it's more than five times more calls just in a few-month period.
By the ninth month, he had 125 inbound calls via his web Internet marketing channel, and now averages over 130 to 140 calls every single month, directly via the web. It just goes to show you that by having a proactive Internet marketing strategy in place, you can get a lot more inbound calls and get a lot more business to your HVAC company. That really is just encapsulating this whole concept that Internet marketing is very important. There's a huge opportunity for you as an HVAC contractor, so if you harness that opportunity you can see an increase in your business.
