7 Key Online and Offline Marketing Trends Affecting HVAC Dealers in 2015

In 2015, it’s clear that a number of new trends will influence HVAC dealers’ approach to marketing. Here are seven of the most significant ones. Keep them in mind when deciding how to spend your HVAC marketing budget.

Mobile Devices are On the Rise

Considering that mobile surpassed desktop traffic for the first time in 2014, it’s a given that optimizing websites for mobile devices has become necessary. This goes double for HVAC dealers, because the sales cycle so closely depends on time-of-need purchasing decisions made by residential customers. Mobile devices also are affecting traditional television advertising; for example, look at how the “second screen experience” allows for heightened engagement through social media. Ultimately, the rise of mobile translates to increased opportunities for reaching customers through a variety of cross-media tactics.

Online and Offline Content Tailored to the Buying Cycle

Even in a time of need, every buyer undergoes a journey before deciding to make a purchase. To maximize effectiveness, we create online and offline content that appeals to consumers at all stages of their buying cycle — as the saying goes, “top-of-mind equals tip-of-tongue.” We take that one step further by making “tip-of-tongue” translate into ringing phones and meaningful, qualified leads.

Cross-Device and Multi-Channel Marketing

Buyers now often move from one device to the next when making purchasing decisions; they also habitually move between media and marketing channels when deciding. Our advertising and marketing teams are well aware of the growing importance of tracking tap-through rates, scan-through rates, glance-through rates, and social listening to measure this behavior.

Customers are Increasingly Looking for Third-Party Reviews

Positive word of mouth and online reviews both are essential to winning new business for HVAC dealers. To this end, it’s necessary to proactively engage in reputation management. Mediagistic online reputation monitoring (ORM) services are designed to help you monitor and respond to customer reviews.

Safe, Sustainable SEO that Makes Your Phone Ring

Although you may see some short-term gains, reckless SEO and backlinking tactics can destroy your website’s ability to show up in search results. Even worse, they can get your site blacklisted by Google. Using these strategies also can wreck your reputation when it becomes known that you’ve used blackhat tactics to promote your business. Our Internet marketing team only does whitehat work where you don’t have to take reckless chances, and we emphasize the importance of best practices and closely monitor the toxicity of inbound links to your site.

Local is Hotter than Ever

Both local advertising and marketing initiatives are more important than ever. According to Ad Age, even global brands are finding that “over 90% of sales are of local brands and produce.” For a hyper-local industry like HVAC, this only serves to underscore the significance of local in your marketing strategies. As the largest local advertising and marketing agency in the nation, Mediagistic knows how to create meaningful results in your local market.

Increased Synergy between Traditional and Digital Media

Aside from traditional media, there are countless options advertisers have due to the evolution of the digital world within traditional mass media possibilities (i.e. Pandora, iHeart, Hulu, online news sites, etc). Studies continue to prove traditional mass media will ultimately reach the highest number of people at any given time, and in order to enhance (and capitalize on) your results, you must have an online presence.

The synergistic approach Mediagistic implements in our advertising campaigns is successful, thanks in no small part to the collaborative online and offline components that work together in harmony. Stay tuned to this blog to learn more about how our radio and broadcast television campaigns are coordinated with our Internet marketing strategies to deliver the highest ROI in the HVAC industry.

Eddie Childs is the Inbound Marketing Manager for Mediagistic. His writing has been published by a range of websites and publications including Copypress.com, Jambase.com, NFLSoup.com, FootballNation.com, and Boating World, KnowAtlanta, Men’s Book, Cobb in Focus, TCL, Blush, Charged Electric Vehicles, Business to Business, and Catalyst magazines. Follow him on Twitter and connect with him on Linkedin.