HVAC Advertising Budget Calculator

Start from what a lead costs. The platform-published benchmark for HVAC search ads is $127.74 per lead (LocalIQ, Apr 2024 to Mar 2025). Divide by your close rate to get your cost per customer: at 50% that is about $255, at 25% about $511. No published source meets our bar for HVAC customer acquisition cost directly, so this calculator derives it and shows the arithmetic. At roughly $336 per customer and a goal of 20 new customers a month, that is about $6,700 a month in ad spend.

Close rate is the multiplier between leads and customers. Invoca's 2025 home-services call data shows 52% of inbound calls answered, 38% of answered calls qualifying as leads, and 45% of qualified leads booking, so roughly one call in six becomes a job. ServiceTitan's by-trade data put HVAC call booking at 38% (June 2022). At 50%, 20 leads are 10 customers; at 25% they are 5. The lower your close rate, the more leads you have to buy to hit the same customer count.

Google Search Ads carry a published benchmark: $9.68 average cost per click and $127.74 per lead for HVAC (LocalIQ, Apr 2024 to Mar 2025). Google Local Services Ads bill per lead at a price Google sets by market and job type; Google does not publish per-vertical lead prices, so we show none. Lead marketplaces publish no benchmark that meets our bar. For corridor and neighborhood reach, WilDi Maps delivers a verified offer to an opted-in person's phone from $0.25 (background, tier-based), with tunnels and zones priced higher for hyper-local precision around neighborhoods with older AC stock.

If your monthly HVAC ad spend is $6,000, that is $72,000 a year. A $6,000 monthly deposit sits in the Enterprise tier at $0.25 per background delivery, so the same annual budget buys about 288,000 verified deliveries to real phones. Tunnels and zones deliver hyper-local, just-in-time messages on a corridor you own, priced higher than background but more precise. A delivery is not a lead; it is a verified offer to one opted-in person driving where you chose. Most HVAC operators run a mix: tunnels on commute corridors, zones for residential clusters with older AC stock, background for city-wide awareness.

The default of 38% is ServiceTitan's measured HVAC call booking rate across 3,000+ businesses (June 2022 data, so treat it as a benchmark, not a current reading). Invoca's 2025 report puts booking at 45% of qualified leads. Emergency repair calls close higher than maintenance-plan shoppers, and shared marketplace leads close lower because the same lead is sold to several contractors. Use your own number; the calculator's range is 25 to 50 percent.

Most healthy HVAC operators run both. LSA captures high-intent Google search (someone typing 'HVAC repair near me' right now). CPVD captures corridor and neighborhood reach (people driving through Mandarin or Avondale who don't yet know they have a failing AC). They serve different funnel positions: LSA is bottom-funnel intent capture, CPVD is corridor-level demand creation.

The Starter tier opens with a $50 deposit, and that deposit becomes your ad budget. Background deliveries on Starter run $0.50 per verified delivery, so the first deposit buys 100 GPS-verified deliveries to the phones of real local people out on the road. There is no auction and no platform fee stacked on top.

Background reaches everyone active in the WilDi app: nationwide by default, or limited to one area you choose (your city, your side of town) so budget is never spent outside it. A zone is a neighborhood-sized area you hold exclusively: while it is yours, no competitor can run there. A tunnel is a one-mile stretch of road you can place anywhere, and it follows the road's contours, ideal for the approach to your shop or a route your customers already drive.

Four public tiers: Starter ($50 minimum deposit, background only), Local ($250, up to 2 tunnels and 1 zone), Pro ($1,000, up to 8 tunnels and 5 zones), and Enterprise ($3,000, up to 25 tunnels and 15 zones). Per-delivery background rates step down by tier, from $0.50 on Starter to $0.25 on Enterprise. An Agency tier is available through sales.

The pilot market is Jacksonville, Florida, live now. New metros open as our opted-in local audience grows there. If you want your market next, talk to sales.