Look through the ads HVAC contractors ran around Indianapolis and the tune-up is everywhere: "$49 HVAC Tune-Up," "$59 Tune-Up Special," "$69 HVAC Tune-Up," "$89 Semi-Annual AC Tune-Up." Fourteen of the ads we read, from eleven different companies, stated a tune-up or evaluation price, from $49 to $89.
Around Indianapolis, advertisers have paid $29.98 to $86.31 to put an "ac tune up" ad at the top of the page. At the high end of that range, one click costs more than the $49 tune-up it's selling.
That can still be a smart buy. A tune-up puts a tech in front of an aging system, and some of those visits turn into repairs, maintenance plans or a new unit. But you can only know whether that click pays if you know what the tune-up leads to. Until you do, the bid belongs in your hands, not the auction's.
In Indianapolis, "AC Tune-Up" Bids Run Higher at the Top of the Page Than "AC Replacement." A Replacement Is Worth Over 60 Tune-Ups.
Every search in Keyword Planner carries two bid figures. Per Google, the low one sits near the 20th percentile of past bids that won a spot at the top of the page, the high one near the 80th. In the Indianapolis area, those ranges run:
- "Ac repair": $34.39 to $105.00.
- "Ac tune up": $29.98 to $86.31.
- "Furnace repair": $17.69 to $65.04.
- "Ac replacement": $5.97 to $60.93.
- "Furnace replacement": $7.00 to $34.59.
Nationally the pattern is the same: "ac tune up" at $17.22 to $80.00, "ac replacement" at $6.90 to $58.01.
Now set those beside what the jobs are worth. A tune-up sells for $49 to $89. A new central air conditioner averages about $5,978, by Angi's cost guide, as Chapter 3 laid out. That's more than 60 tune-ups at the top price, and the auction prices the tune-up click higher anyway.
The auction isn't wrong. It isn't measuring value at all. It's the sum of what every other HVAC company decided to bid. Some of them likely bid hard on tune-ups because the tune-up feeds the rest of the business: the repair found on the visit, the maintenance plan signed at the kitchen table (Chapter 15), the replacement quote two summers later.
Those can all be good reasons. They're also numbers you have to know, not assume. If one tune-up in five becomes a plan or a repair, the click is worth one amount. If one in fifty does, it's worth a fraction of that.
A Tune-Up Click and a Furnace Repair Click Are Not Worth the Same Money. Price Them Apart by Hand.
In the first stage of the account, Isolation, we bid with Manual CPC. You set a maximum cost per click, the most you'll pay when someone taps the ad. Google notes that the actual charge is often lower than the maximum, sometimes much lower.
Set those bids per ad group. Google Ads lets you give an ad group one default bid that every keyword in it shares, and lets you override it for a single keyword when that keyword earns differently. The job ad groups from Chapter 4 make this simple, because each one is one job with one value:
- Furnace repair gets a bid sized to what a booked furnace repair is worth to you.
- AC replacement gets a higher ceiling, because one booked estimate can become a system sale.
- Tune-ups get whatever the tune-up actually leads to in your business, which may be less than the auction is charging.
Chapter 3 worked out those values: what a booked job pays, how many leads book, how many estimates close. That math sets the ceiling for each ad group. The auction sets the price you'll actually see. When the auction's price sits under your ceiling, you buy. When it sits above, you don't, or you buy less of it.
Here's the shape of that math for tune-ups, with made-up rates you'd swap for your own. Say a $69 tune-up keeps $30 after the tech's time. One visit in ten turns up a repair worth about $400, the average AC repair from Chapter 3, and you keep half of that. A booked tune-up is then worth about $50. If one click in four books, the click is worth about $12.50, a fraction of what the top of the page has cost around Indianapolis. Sell a maintenance plan on half your tune-ups and the number changes completely. That's the point: the ceiling comes from your shop, not the auction.
One adjustment at launch: bid on the high side for the first weeks. A new account's keywords have no performance history, and Quality Score has nothing to read yet. Higher bids get the ads shown while that history builds. As the account earns a track record and the ads start landing where you want them, ease the bids back down.
Search Top Impression Share Shows How Often Your Furnace Repair Ad Made the Top. Aim for 75 to 90% on the Searches That Book.
Bidding by hand means reading a few columns every week. Add these to the keyword and ad group views in your account:
- Search top impression share. Every chance your furnace repair ad had to sit among the ads at the top, and the slice of those chances it actually took. This is the main one.
- Search absolute top impression share. The same idea for the single first ad on the page.
- Search lost top impression share (rank). The chances at the top that went to someone else because your Ad Rank came up short. That points to the bid or the ad's quality, not the budget.
- Quality Score, at the keyword level, read as a diagnostic the way Chapter 4 described.
On the ad groups that book real jobs, furnace repair, AC repair and replacement, we aim for 75 to 90% search top impression share. Repair calls go to whoever is in front of the homeowner when the furnace quits, and the top of the page is where they look first.
Not every ad group needs that. Run the tune-up example above: a click worth about $12.50 against a top-of-page price near $60 says tune-ups should sit lower, on purpose. Let that ad group sit further down, or show less often, and spend the difference where the jobs pay.
When lost top impression share (rank) is high on a group that matters, look at two things before raising the bid. Is the Quality Score reading weak on that group's keywords? Does the ad send people to the page about that job? A bid increase on a poor match pays more for the same problem.
Somebody Will Always Overpay for "AC Repair." When the Click Costs More Than the Job Earns, Let Them Have It.
The auction insights report shows who else is in your auctions. For Search campaigns it gives six columns for each competing advertiser, and you can run it by keyword, ad group or campaign:
- Impression share for you and each rival.
- Overlap rate: whenever your AC repair ad appeared, was theirs on that page as well? Google's example: 60% means yes six times in ten.
- Outranking share: you above them, plus the times you showed and they were absent.
- Position above rate: of the auctions you both entered, the share where they finished higher.
- Top of page rate: for each company, including yours, how much of its showing happened up in the ads above the free listings.
- Absolute top of the page rate: the same count, but only the single first ad counts.
Run it on each job ad group. The furnace repair auction and the tune-up auction often have different rivals. The national franchise may bid hard on tune-ups, a local shop may own "furnace repair near me," and the company with the big replacement budget may only show up on "new furnace."
Then decide auction by auction. If holding the top of "ac repair" means paying more per booked job than an AC repair earns you, someone else is welcome to it. Lower the bid on that group, accept a lower share, and move the money to an ad group where the top of the page costs less than the job pays. Leaving an auction you can't win at a profit is a decision, not a defeat.
Broad Match's Target CPA Should Be What a Booked Furnace Job Actually Cost on Exact Match, Not a Hopeful Guess.
Manual bidding runs the first stage. The second stage, Exploration (Chapter 6), switches to broad match with Target CPA, and the hand-set bids give way to an average cost per conversion you set.
Target CPA works on averages. Google says individual conversions land above and below the number while the total aims to hold it, and for a campaign with conversion history it suggests a starting target drawn from the past month's actual cost per conversion.
That's why Isolation's numbers matter so much. By the time Exploration starts, Isolation has told you what a booked furnace or AC repair actually costs in your market on exact match. That number is broad match's starting target. In our experience, a target set far below anything the account has achieved barely spends, and one set far above happily buys expensive leads.
The target is only as good as what you count. Pick ten ad calls a week and play the recordings start to finish. If a share of "conversions" are warranty questions, supply houses, wrong numbers or people who wanted a plumber, the cost per booked job is higher than the account says, and Target CPA will keep bidding for more of the same. Fix the counting (Chapter 1) before you trust the target.
Next: HVAC Customers Rarely Review the Coupon. Write Ads Around What They Do Review.
Your bids now follow what each job earns: a ceiling per ad group in Isolation, a top-of-page share you choose on purpose, auctions you leave when they stop paying, and a Target CPA for broad match that comes from real booked jobs. Chapter 6 set up the two stages, Chapter 5 the keywords, Chapter 4 the ad groups, Chapter 3 the job values, Chapter 2 the order to buy searches in, and Chapter 1 the tracking. Chapter 8 writes the ads.
The full rollout, from tracking to seasonal budgets, maintenance plans and new-system ads, is on the guide's home page.
When we run HVAC accounts through our Google Ads management, each job ad group gets its own bid ceiling from the company's own numbers before launch, and the tune-up group is priced on what tune-ups actually turn into. Running your own? Add search top impression share to your ad group view this week, and check whether the groups at the top are the ones that book the most jobs.
