A growing number of marketing trends, strategies, and tactics can be seen these days, with customer behavior shaping how industries work. For heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) industry, marketing services isn’t as easy as selling merchandises. There’s a lot of things going on in there, in addition to branding and overall visibility.
Driving customer engagement is a good thing, as more people fancy personalized messaging and content. HVAC companies can start creating valuable opportunities in order to reach more people, retain customers, and drive more revenue.
The truth is, customers developed a certain expectation when it comes to content personalization. This comes as a result of a digital experience, when brands started providing ‘just-for-me’ recommendations. It concludes a more personal and intimate connection between a company and its audience, which sets the bar higher.
The question now is, how can HVAC companies do it? Just like other industries, paying attention to the behavior of consumers is one way to find the sweet spot. Get to know some useful ways to drive engagement in social media and other online avenues.
Understanding Competitive Advantage
HVAC contractors and providers easily jump on the online trends such as creating social media pages and even websites. Now, these aren’t the end of the tunnel—brands need to publish and create content that the audience will find interesting. The online world is a complex place, but if brands can pay attention to what competitors are doing, it’s easy to step up and get on with the fundamental shifts.
A lot of HVAC companies simply rely to the word of mouth and outdated marketing to get more customers. This is a kind of business that can live through recommendations, after all. However, with the advent of technology, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning firms can easily reach more people in nearby areas by taking advantage of integral tools like geotagging.
With the existence of social media pages, companies can easily pop up into people’s pages using the sponsored post or advertisement. This is the new breed of marketing techniques that promise good results. Utilizing the available tools help companies to gain a competitive advantage, compared to those who don’t have any online visibility.
More than social media, HVAC firms can also start paying attention to other marketing tactics like email marketing, content marketing, and social marketing. Website creation comes as an important online asset too, as it helps people to find the business through the search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc.
These things aren’t just there for nothing. In fact, big companies are already utilizing these tools and techniques to tap and reach more people in key locations. Those who run a small HVAC business can explore the possibilities online with the help of professionals. After all, the process takes time, ensuring the results will turn out awesome and help you achieve your goals. Small to big initiatives such as curating pages and websites provide an edge, as more people can reach out to you using their mobile phones and other gadgets.
Growth-Focused Initiatives
Paying attention to growth is always the priority, as sales come in when HVAC companies established their presence. By improving the branding, service, and connecting to more people, companies can get more bookings for services such as repairs and installation. With growth, it simply means that companies pay attention to ways on how to generate more profit to the point of expansion.
Before getting to that point, business owners need to have a systematic way on how to make consistent sales. How can this happen if you’re only doing the bare minimum? Flyers, newspaper advertisement, and word-of-mouth can only get you minimal sales. People are now on their phones and social media, so business owners need a shift in marketing techniques.
By adapting to these ‘new norms’ HVAC companies can improve a buyer’s overall experience, foster new connections, and yield positive brand image. Elevating the online efforts is one sure way of attending to the needs of customers, as outdated techniques provide lesser traction.
Here’s some of the best marketing initiatives to try to drive engagement for your HVAC business.
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Set Up Easy Booking System
The beauty of technology is, it makes our lives easier and more efficient. Now, you only need to connect to the Internet to enjoy countless of digital experiences. The same thing applies to the HVAC industry, as customers need a simplified journey from browsing services down to booking appointments.
Different social media platforms like Facebook, provide entrepreneur features to back systematic selling. Here’s a chance to simplify the booking experience so people don’t need to contact the HVAC companies. Having an e-commerce website is also a plus as you can easily process bookings and payments in one platform.
The importance of doing this is to provide ease for customers who are in need of quick services. This is one way of showing how good your customer service is, especially now that people requires immediate response. By setting up an online booking system, anyone can sign up, schedule a repair or installation, and get a confirmation.
Big brands are doing the same today, limiting the action to call for scheduling appointments. The online booking system is famous in the hospitality sector for a reason, as not everyone wants to call an agent and book a room. The same thing with scheduling an air conditioning or heating installation or repair, people want to get it done as soon as they can, without the need to call a hotline.
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Orchestrate Personalized Interactions
This one’s already manifesting in a lot of industries for the effectivity. Consumers want to feel important, and by that, it means going all-out to let them know they deserve the best service. In the HVAC industry, it’s a bit tricky because business owners can do a little to personalize interactions. However, there are countless of ways to kick off a customer-first approach.
Don’t sleep on content and email marketing. The latter already exists for a long time now, and retail industry is creating new and diverse ways to hit it with the audience. Curating monthly specials, based on a customer’s movements on the website or social media is hot these days.
For HVAC companies, start by having a newsletter to send out to customers. This will provide information or updates on new services, discounts, and other essential details. Just don’t overdo sending emails as some people hate it when brands flood their inbox with unnecessary messages. The key is keeping it short, sweet, yet valuable for the readers.
In fact, the reason brands and companies are doing email marketing is for online visibility and to keep customers updated on the latest news.
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Unique Online Experience
Let creativity do its thing when it comes to posting content online. Just because you’re dealing with heating, ventilation, and air conditioning services, doesn’t mean the content needs to be boring. Find a good brand voice and utilize the platform to drive engagement.
If you’re going for a playful and approachable voice, the brand can be perceived as a breath of fresh air from the professional tone of other companies. While fun and relaxed content is the new ‘in’, don’t forget to stay in the courteous side to appeal to all types of consumers.
Sharing articles, pictures, videos, and other materials matter so the audience can learn something new from you. This is another tactic to use to retain the readers or followers in the social media. Create a content that will be relatable for people, those who are experiencing issues with their heater and air conditioner.
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Provide Rewards and Perks
This may be odd because it’s an added expense, but no, you can gain more from promotions. Ever wonder why more brands are doing all sorts of promotions these days? Because it’s an effective strategy to drive more attention and user engagement.
For instance, HVAC companies can run a promotion on certain services for a whole month, or maybe a referral code for bigger discount on the next booking. Things like these are effective in making people love the brand, recommend to friends, and stay loyal.
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Pay Attention to Analytics
Marketers utilize analytics to see if promotions and campaigns are successful or not. To drive engagement, you need to see what customers love and find interesting. From here, you can easily devise new strategies and content that will appeal to the followers.
By looking at the figure, you can easily tell if a certain content is a flop or not. If it is, forget about doing the same thing and experiment with other varieties you can do.
Takeaway
Driving customer engagement isn’t easy because you need to know a lot of things that tickle the fancy of certain groups of people. For HVAC companies, it’s always the young adults and older people you want to please because these are the target audience.
Work with a professional to devise effective strategies for growing the following base, driving high-quality engagement, and improving sales in the end.