The HVAC year, as your customers search it
Search moves about two weeks ahead of the weather. Everything below is dated accordingly.
No trade follows a calendar like HVAC, and no trade wastes more marketing effort by acting on the calendar two weeks late. The pattern is simple once you see it: searching happens before calling, and both happen before you notice the weather turned.
The shape of the year
| March–April | Preventive maintenance: "AC tune up", "before summer service" |
|---|---|
| May–July | The peak: "AC not cooling", "emergency AC repair" |
| August–September | Failures and replacement: "new AC cost", "AC installation" |
| October–November | Heating season opens: "furnace not working", "furnace tune up" |
| December–February | Commercial contracts, planning, and the quiet you should be using |
Timing shifts by region. Southern markets open earlier and run longer, northern ones have two peaks rather than one.
What to publish in February
Everything you want working in July. A page takes weeks to be found and start ranking, so a page published in the first hot week arrives after the decision has been made. February and March are when the summer’s pages get written.
- A page per service per town. AC repair, central AC maintenance, duct cleaning, in each town. The longest lead time, so it goes first.
- A straight price page. "How much does a new AC unit cost" is searched days before the purchase. An honest range with an explanation of what moves it earns the call that follows; silence sends them to whoever will talk about it.
- A repair-or-replace page. The most-asked question in August, and it needs months to be findable by then.
- A maintenance-plan page. A different buyer entirely, a property manager or a facility, reading before contacting rather than calling in a panic.
What to do during the peak
Nothing that takes an afternoon. When the phone is going, the only marketing worth doing is the kind that takes seconds:
- Answer fast, or say when you will. In peak season a customer contacts three companies at once. Whoever replies first usually gets it.
- Ask every customer for a review, same day. Summer gives you the most customers you will see all year. It is the best review-building window there is.
- One photo a day from the field. A minute on the profile. Across a summer, the accumulation is real.
The shoulder seasons are the point
Most HVAC companies treat spring and autumn as the gap between the money. They are the opposite: they are when maintenance plans are sold, when commercial contracts get reviewed, and, critically, when you have the time to write the pages that carry the next peak.
October is the real March. That is when the summer’s pages get written.