Quick version: in April and October the emergency calls stop, but most HVAC accounts keep bidding on emergency searches and keep sending every click to a page written for somebody with no heat. Move the budget to maintenance plans, replacement planning and air quality, fix the page they land on, and the quiet stretch produces work.
Shoulder season is the four to six weeks in spring and again in fall when the weather is mild and nobody’s system is failing. Every contractor I work with sees the same dip, and the usual response is to turn the marketing down, which makes the following quarter worse.
The trouble with hvac marketing in those weeks is that most accounts are built for one kind of buyer, the one whose system just died. The ads, the landing page and the content all speak to that person. In shoulder season that person is not searching.
Here are the five things I see break every spring and fall, and what to do about each one.
1. Demand drops and the budget does not move with it
Search volume for emergency HVAC terms swings harder than almost any other category. AC not cooling peaks in July. Furnace not working peaks in January. In April and October both of them fall away, and there is nothing you can do to bring them back.
What you can control is where the money sits when that happens. Most accounts hold the same daily budget on the same campaigns, so the spend keeps going out against a smaller pool of buyers and the cost per booked job climbs even when the cost per click does not.
| Time of year | What homeowners are searching | Where the budget should sit |
|---|---|---|
| Peak summer | AC not cooling, emergency AC repair | Repair search ads, call-only ads, map pack |
| Peak winter | No heat, furnace repair, boiler leaking | Repair search ads, call-only ads, map pack |
| Spring shoulder | AC tune up, maintenance plan, AC replacement cost | Tune-up campaigns, replacement planning content |
| Fall shoulder | Furnace tune up, heating replacement, duct cleaning | Tune-up campaigns, indoor air quality, financing pages |
| Every month | HVAC company plus town, best HVAC contractor | Google Business Profile, reviews, local landing pages |
The bottom row runs all year and it is the one most contractors underfund. A homeowner comparing three companies in April is reading reviews, not ads.
2. The ads keep bidding on emergencies that stopped happening
Open the search terms report for the last thirty days and sort by cost. In a shoulder month you will usually find money going to emergency phrases that produced clicks and no calls, and to broad phrases that pulled in people trying to fix it themselves.
Two changes handle most of it. Bid down or pause the emergency ad groups once the weather turns mild, and switch on the tune-up and replacement campaigns that have been sitting paused since last season. You do not need a bigger budget for this. You need the campaigns it sits in to change with the season.
A ppc agency running HVAC accounts should be doing this on a calendar without being asked. If your April report looks the same as your July report, nobody is watching the weather.
The swing is sharper in some markets than others. On Long Island it is severe, so anybody handling ppc management long island for a heating and cooling company should have the spring plan and the fall plan written before the season changes, not during it.
3. The landing page is written for an emergency
Most HVAC landing pages open with a phone number, a same-day service promise and a form headed Request Emergency Service. That page does well in July. In April it asks a homeowner who is thinking about replacing a fifteen year old system to behave like somebody with water on the floor.
Shoulder season traffic needs its own page. It should talk about system age, what a replacement costs, what the financing looks like, how long an install takes, whether they need to be home for it and what happens to the old unit. The call to action can be a booked estimate at a time that suits them rather than a call this minute.
This is ordinary landing page work work, and the second page takes an afternoon to build. Keep the emergency page. Just stop sending April traffic to it.
4. Maintenance plans have no page of their own
Maintenance agreements are the thing that carries a heating and cooling company through the quiet months, and most companies give them one line on the services page.
A plan deserves a full page. People search for this, and terms like ac tune up cost and hvac maintenance plan hold steady in the shoulder months while the emergency terms fall off a cliff.
- What gets checked on each visit, written in plain language rather than a parts list.
- How many visits a year and roughly when they happen.
- The discount plan members get on repairs, and whether it covers parts, labour or both.
- Whether priority scheduling means same day, next day or something vaguer.
- The price, or at least a range, because people compare plans on price.
Once that page exists it becomes the destination for the spring and fall campaigns, and it gives you something to send existing customers when renewal comes around.
5. Publishing stops in the quiet months and July pays for it
Anything you publish takes weeks to get indexed, ranked and settled. The article you write about sizing a new system in April is what earns clicks in the heat, so content written in the quiet stretch is doing peak season work.
Shoulder season is also the only time you have the hours. Write the pieces that answer what your techs get asked in the truck. How long a system should last. Why one bedroom is always warmer. What a SEER2 number means for a monthly bill. What a ductless setup costs against adding a zone to the existing system.
None of that is fun to write and all of it gets searched. If you are working with a digital marketing agency on Long Island and the content stops every time the calls slow down, ask why, because the slow weeks are the only ones with room in them.
What to do with the next quiet stretch
Look at the calendar and decide now what happens in the next shoulder period. Move the ad spend onto tune-ups and replacement planning, build the maintenance page, write three articles and leave the emergency campaigns bid down until the weather turns. That is a week of setup that covers six weeks of quiet.
If you would rather have someone go through the account with you before the next one, Max Pull Marketing will look at how your ads and your site handle the seasons and tell you what to change. The contact form on the site is the fastest way in, or call the office on (631) 253-8090.