Marketing Budgets
How Much Should HVAC Companies Spend on Marketing?
Budget 6 to 10 percent of gross revenue. That band is not from a survey. I ran Balanced Comfort, a Fresno home services company, for 13 years. We built it past $17 million in annual revenue with more than 130 employees, and our annual ad spend ran in the low seven figures. Low seven figures against $17 million lands in the 6 to 10 percent band. That spend rate carried the company onto the Inc 5000 list four years straight, 2020 through 2023.
Where the 6 to 10 Percent Band Comes From
Most budget advice for HVAC companies comes from people who never signed the front of a paycheck in the trades. Industry guides commonly cite percent-of-revenue ranges for home services. Treat those as directional. Mine is not a citation. It is what I actually spent, year after year, while I held California contractor licenses, including C-20 HVAC, and ran the company that spent it.
A band beats a fixed dollar figure because marketing has to scale with capacity. The right spend for a company depends on how many trucks it can dispatch, how many calls its CSRs can answer, and how much of the market already knows its name. A percent of revenue moves with all three. A flat monthly number set once in January does not.
The other reason I trust the band: it survived contact with growth. We did not spend 6 to 10 percent in a good year and cut it in a slow one. The spend rate held while revenue climbed, which is the only test of a marketing budget that matters.
What Changes by Revenue Stage
The band holds. Where you sit inside it depends on where the company sits.
Nobody knows your name yet
Plan for the top of the band and expect it to feel heavy. Awareness is bought before it pays. The discipline that saves you is tracking, not thrift: every dollar tied to a call, every call tied to a booked job, from day one.
Referrals carry the trucks
You can run nearer the bottom of the band, but the mistake I see is cutting to zero because the phone already rings. Companies that go dark in search hand the next heat wave to whoever kept spending. Defend the base: reviews, rankings, and a profile that stays active.
Adding trucks or territory
A new territory buys its own awareness. Budget the push like a launch, not a line item, and accept that the new market will run above the band while the home market holds it down. Blending the two on one report hides what each is doing.
Where HVAC Marketing Budgets Go Wrong
The percent question gets the attention. The leak question decides the outcome. One plumbing company I audited paid Angi $7,783 in a single month. Tracked booked revenue from that spend: $475. The same audit found 131 new customers across 4,009 tracked calls. The owner was not reckless. The spend was never tied to booked jobs, so nobody saw the gap. That blind spot exists in HVAC companies at every revenue size, and it makes any budget percentage meaningless until it is closed.
For contrast, here is what tracked spend looks like. From client accounts I manage, pulled August 2026: an HVAC contractor in a Texas metro has paid $63.16 average per charged lead on Google Local Services Ads over the life of the account. Phone leads averaged $68.00, message leads $60.35. Every one of those leads is a line item I can defend, because the account is watched and the numbers are pulled from what Google actually charged.
So the honest answer to the budget question has two parts. Set the band at 6 to 10 percent of gross revenue. Then make sure the dollars inside it are accountable, whether they go to HVAC SEO, Local Services Ads, or anything else. I published the full charged-price breakdown on what HVAC and plumbing leads cost.
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HVAC Marketing Budget Questions
Is the 6 to 10 percent band based on gross or net revenue?
Gross. Budget from top-line revenue, then judge the spend by what it books. A percent of net punishes you for growing payroll and rewards you for shrinking. Top-line keeps the math honest and comparable year to year.
Should a new HVAC company spend more than 10 percent?
Sometimes, and briefly. When nobody knows your name, awareness costs more than it returns for a while. What I watch is not the percent. It is whether every dollar is tracked to a call and every call to a booked job. A small untracked budget wastes more than a large tracked one.
What do HVAC leads cost right now?
From client accounts I manage, pulled August 2026: an HVAC contractor in a Texas metro averaged $63.16 per charged lead on Google Local Services Ads over the life of the account. Those are charged prices, not estimates. Your market and lead mix will land differently.
What is the most common HVAC marketing budget mistake?
Untracked lead-seller spend. One plumbing company I audited paid Angi $7,783 in a month and booked $475 in revenue from it. Nothing about that account was unusual except that nobody had ever connected the invoice to booked revenue. Close that blind spot before you change the budget.