Your HVAC Business
Frequently Asked Questions
- What do you mean by Marketing Leverage?
- How is Internet-based marketing more accountable than traditional marketing?
- Why do you consider marketing an investment and not an expense?
- Why should I automate marketing?
- Why should I outsource my website development and online marketing?
- What is the value in a website?
Internet Terminology
Internet Marketing/Facts
- What is a good response rate for a direct mail campaign?
- How many people are online?
- How many people are actually searching for air conditioning products and services?
- How much actual business is conducted online?
Internet Marketing Strategies
What do you mean by Marketing Leverage? The ability to communicate more often with your potential customers and existing customers without additional cost. Using Internet-based technologies your costs are typically fixed on a monthly basis without reasonable limitation to how much communication is done online or via email.
How is Internet-based marketing more accountable than traditional marketing? Internet search engines and marketers work under a performance based model. You only pay if someone clicks on your advertisement. As a result, the industry has created many tools available to track everything from the usage on your website to the performance of advertisements. Traditional marketing outlets typically do not provide this service. Therefore it is up to the ac company to individually track the effectiveness of each advertising campaign which is resource intensive and administratively challenging.
Why do you consider marketing an investment and not an expense? This is a philosophical approach that must be taken to understand the rate of return on marketing and advertising spending. Small companies, especially HVAC companies, do not have the luxury of large marketing budgets. Therefore, they must make every dollar count and only spend money where it provides a return. All other advertising should be stopped. b. With the performance-based advertising model online, companies can quickly learn which strategies and advertisements provide the highest rates of return and allocate funds to marketing that actually makes money.
Why should I automate marketing? To make use of technology so that you can focus on your core business. Let?s face it, during the heat of summer or the freezing cold of winter, the focus of HVAC companies is on the business and servicing customers. HVAC business owners do not have the time to follow up with every lead or simultaneously launch and track multiple advertising campaigns or the money to pay a full-time resource to perform the job that a computer can do automatically.
Why should I outsource my website development and online marketing? HVAC companies are not experts in advertising and marketing, let alone experts in Internet-based marketing. Internet-based marketing is a very specific niche. Search engines and content providers are continually changing the way that there algorithms work in order to provide better service and content. As a result, it is a full time job just to keep track of the changes within the industry ? a job that HVAC Business Solutions performs. Just like a home owner should diagnose and fix their air conditioning equipment, ac companies should not update and implement Internet marketing campaigns.
What is the value in a website? The website is a virtual representation of your business. It is a way to project your company image and communicate the products and services you provide ? 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Many companies outside the HVAC industry are completely virtual ? they online exist and transact business 100% online. Given that there is over $34 billion in commerce conducted online, it is a good idea to establish a presence and cut out a slice of this very large pie.
Internet Terminology
HTML Hyper Text Markup Language ? it is the language used by computers to display websites. Just like a computer knows that a ?.doc? file is a Microsoft Word document and knows how to display it, similarly Internet browsers understand how to properly display ?.html? files.
Keywords The words used by people to search for information on the Internet. Search engines will match the search phrase being searched and determine how relevant your website is to that keyword or keyword phrase.
AdWords A service provided by Google that allows a person to advertising on the Google website and affiliate sites after a search is conducted. There are host of tools provided to help manage advertising campaign, monitor CTR and budget CPC.
Single opt-in When a user requests information from a website and the user is not confirmed. Most services frown upon distributing email to distribution lists containing single opt-in email addresses.
Double opt-in The industry standard for email marketing. Required by most services that perform mass email campaigns. Double opt-in refers to the fact that the user must confirm their request for information from a website. This second step removes most fraudulent activity and validates email addresses provided.
SEO Search Engine Optimization. A method of increasing the relevancy of a website so that it is displayed near the top of the organic search results for a specific group of keywords.
CPC Cost per Click. How advertising is mostly paid for on the Internet. Search engines use an auction style advertising method whereby an advertiser set the amount they are willing pay each time the advertisement is clicked.
CTR Click through rate. A measurement of effectiveness of an online advertisement. A CTR of 1% indicates that users will click on the ad 1 times out of every 100 times it is displayed.
Internet/Marketing Facts
What is a good response rate for a direct mail campaign? A good response rate for a direct mail campaign is 1%. b. Remember this is response rate, not purchase rate, which would drop the percentage even lower.
How many people are online? In U.S. there are over 150 million users actively online every month. On Google, the most dominant search engine there are over 31 billion searches conducted every month.
How many people are actually searching for air conditioning products and services? In August of 2008, on Google only (one of many search engines), there were over 14 million searches for the combination of keywords pertaining to air conditioning.
How much actual business is conducted online? $34.3 Billion Q3, 2008.
$34.2 Billion Q2, 2008.
$33.6 Billion Q1, 2008.
Significantly increase your return on marketing!
Most HVAC companies waste their marketing
budgets targeting the WRONG customer.
Identify the RIGHT customer and increase
sales with our Free Report.