How to market a new HVAC business is mostly a sequencing problem: a handful of assets have to exist before paid channels make sense, and your state's licensing rules reach some of them before your first ad runs.
This page is the first-year version of the HVAC marketing guide: what to build, in what order.
The field you are starting into
Census County Business Patterns counted 111,207 employer establishments in plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contracting in 2023; about 58% had fewer than 5 employees, about 77% fewer than 10, and the counts are locations, not companies, with plumbing included.
The solo end: another 178,663 establishments in that group had no paid employees in 2023, with $14.0 billion in receipts, about $78,000 each on average.
New names keep arriving: the Census Bureau recorded 519,090 business applications in construction in 2025, about 36% more than in 2019, though those are EIN filings across construction, not operating HVAC companies.
Survival is not the hard part: of private construction establishments opened in the year ended March 2015, 83.3% lasted a year and 57.5% lasted five, both better than the all-industry rates of 79.6% and 50.2% (BLS Business Employment Dynamics, whose counts include exits that were sales or mergers, not only failures).
The legal groundwork that reaches your marketing first
The SBA says most small businesses need a combination of licenses and permits from federal and state agencies, with fees that depend on what you do and where.
Your name is marketing too: the SBA lists four ways to register one (entity name at the state level, trademark at the federal level, DBA, domain) and warns that a DBA "doesn't provide legal protection by itself."
The USPTO adds that rights in a mark you only use locally "only apply to the geographic area," that federal registration creates nationwide rights, and that creative and unique trademarks are easier to protect than ones that merely describe the service; the base application fee is $350 per class, filed electronically, on the USPTO's fee schedule effective January 19, 2025.
Licensing can lock the name: Ohio's Construction Industry Licensing Board says a contractor license "may be assigned to only one company name (no DBAs)," so settle the trade name and confirm your board's rules.
Your ads carry rules too: California requires your license number in all forms of advertising, Florida in every advertisement regardless of medium, and Texas in all advertising that solicits air-conditioning and refrigeration work, while Arizona lets internet ads skip the number if they link to a site that prominently displays the name and number, which the Arizona ROC says must not be the footer.
Other states are narrower, and Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana have no state HVAC license; the state-by-state rules are in HVAC advertising rules.
Certification has one honest form: EPA Section 608 certification belongs to the technician who opens the refrigerant circuit, not the company, so write "our technicians hold EPA 608 certification."
Naming runs deeper; HVAC company branding covers it.
Build local search before you buy attention
Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance, and prominence, that complete and accurate profiles are more likely to show up, and that no one can pay for a better local ranking.
For a company that travels to customers, start with Google's service-area rules: hide an address customers do not visit, keep one profile per staffed location, and set up to 20 service areas by city, ZIP, or region within about 2 hours' drive.
Radius areas cannot be set, and virtual offices and P.O. boxes are ineligible.
The profile name must match your real-world business name; adding cities or services to it isn't permitted and could result in suspension.
Reviews come from a habit, not a promotion: Google allows asking with a link or QR code, and prohibits offering discounts, freebies, or anything else for posting, changing, or removing a review.
Google Business Profile for HVAC covers the profile field by field, and local SEO for HVAC covers what ranks beyond it.
The first-year order
License, name, profile, in that order
Confirm your state's licensing and name rules, settle the trade name, and match the profile name to it exactly.
Set the service area Google's way
Set the cities, ZIPs, or regions you serve, inside the profile's 20-area limit.
Ask for a review after every job
A link or QR code is allowed, incentives are not, and job one's review still works in year three.
Make the website book the call
Click-to-call placement, booking forms, and estimate requests turn visits into jobs; at Sourcely, where Gabe Meierotto worked just before LaserAway, he ran click-to-call tests and conversion rate rose by up to 50% in some cases.
Apply for Local Services Ads early
Google treats HVAC as an urgent category in Local Services Ads and lists the extra screening: background checks, insurance, and licenses where local law requires them; the process takes 3 to 4 weeks on average after documents go in, so apply in month one.
Add one paid channel at a time
Judge each on booked calls and sold installs, and start the next only when you can attribute the first.
Time the work around the peaks
Whatever month you open, finish the profile, reviews, and booking path before the season when homeowners are searching.
A first year, illustrated for an October opening
What marketing costs a new shop
No sourced number sets a marketing budget for an independent startup, so treat any percentage as a guess.
The closest honest anchors are franchise contracts: what two national systems require of new locations.
One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning's 2026 franchise disclosure sets a royalty of 6% of gross revenue (minimum $1,500 a month), a brand fund of 1.5% of the first $5 million of yearly gross revenue, and required local marketing of 6% of the year's gross revenue starting in the third month after opening, with up to $18,000 of grand-opening marketing over roughly 90 days.
Aire Serv's 2026 disclosure sets a license fee of 5% to 7% of gross sales, a marketing, advertising and promotion (MAP) fee of 2% of gross sales, and required local marketing of $60,000 in the first 12 months and $75,000 in the second 12 months.
The same disclosures put the initial franchise fee at $43,000 for One Hour and $45,000 for Aire Serv, each for a territory of about 100,000 people, and the total initial investment at $143,273 to $286,702 and $113,808.50 to $271,708.50; neither grants an exclusive territory.
Aire Serv's 2026 disclosure reports average gross sales of $1,561,361 and a median of $944,801 for the 172 US franchised businesses open all of 2025, franchisee-reported revenue rather than profit; 57 of the 172 reached the average.
These are two named systems' 2026 contract terms, not benchmarks.
How to size it from your own numbers is on HVAC marketing cost.
How to get your first HVAC customers
The six sources customers come from are compared in how to get more HVAC customers; for a new shop, two of them come first.
One is the map pack, which is why the profile, service areas, and review habit come before anything paid.
The other is the people you have already worked for, which is why the review ask starts after job one.
A website that books the call, and paid channels added one at a time, are the scaffolding.
More Booked Installs works that scaffolding for HVAC companies: conversion rate optimization and local SEO together at $5,000 a month, run by Gabe Meierotto, who was Director of CRO at LaserAway from 2018 to 2023, where sitewide conversion went from 3% to 11% under the testing program he ran.
Start with the free audit while you set up: a prioritized plan within 3 business days, no call required.
Frequently asked questions
What should a new HVAC company do first for marketing?
Complete your Google Business Profile, ask every finished job for a review, and make your website easy to call from. Those three cost labor instead of ad money, so build them before the channels you pay for.
Do all states require a license number in HVAC advertising?
No. California, Florida and Texas require it broadly across advertising, Arizona lets internet ads skip the number if they link to a site that prominently displays the name and number, other states are narrower, and Kansas, Missouri and Indiana have no state HVAC license. Confirm your state's rule with its contractor board.
Can a new HVAC company advertise itself as EPA certified?
No. EPA Section 608 certification belongs to individual technicians who open the refrigerant circuit, and EPA does not certify companies. The accurate claim is that your technicians hold EPA 608 certification.
How long before a new HVAC company shows up on Google?
No sourced number covers a new HVAC company specifically. Google says service-area edits can take up to 48 hours to show, puts average Local Services Ads screening at 3 to 4 weeks after documents are submitted, and its SEO Starter Guide says some changes take effect in hours while others take several months.
Is buying a franchise a shortcut for new HVAC company marketing?
It buys a brand and required marketing machinery, not customers: Aire Serv's 2026 franchise disclosure requires $60,000 of local marketing in the first 12 months on top of a 2% MAP fee, and One Hour's requires 6% of gross revenue starting in month three. Neither 2026 document grants an exclusive territory.