How Much Do Service Direct HVAC Calls Cost?

As an HVAC business leader, you know how important it is to have a consistent stream of calls in order to maintain and grow your business. Unfortunately, the process of generating calls can be a challenging and time-consuming one.

Service Direct has been delivering high-quality phone leads to local, regional, and even national HVAC companies of all sizes for over 15 years. We aim to help businesses like yours reach their business and growth goals without breaking the bank.

It’s important to us that our HVAC customers understand what to expect when signing up with Service Direct. It helps to know the methods we use to source and price our calls. So let’s take a look at what Service Direct offers, the importance of your local average cost per call, what factors play into that statistic, and how we enable our clients to set and adjust their cost per lead.

Pay Per Call HVAC Calls

Pay per call, or “PPCall,” phone leads are the primary form of leads on the Service Direct platform. They are generated by targeted ad campaigns that prompt interested customers to call a designated phone number. Service Direct bids on these calls on behalf of our customers, and the call is directly routed to their business’s phone.

The PPCall leads we offer are exclusive phone leads, meaning you never have to compete with other HVAC businesses for calls you’ve purchased. Incoming calls come from your service area based on the zip codes you provide, and within your price range based on the cost per lead (CPL) you set (more on that in a bit!).

The great thing about phone leads is that they connect you with highly-engaged potential customers in the moment that they are actively seeking your services. This means higher conversion rates for your business.

Choosing The Right HVAC Cost Per Lead

At Service Direct, your HVAC cost per call is chosen by you. We enable all of our HVAC clients to set their CPL. Why? Because the value of a phone lead is already determined by you and your ability to turn that call into a paid job.

Here’s an example: 10 calls are delivered to Company A, which is only able to get 3 booked appointments from them. Those calls aren’t that valuable. But if they instead are purchased by Company B, who manages to get 7 booked jobs out of them, suddenly they’re more than twice as valuable.

By giving you the ability to set your own CPL, we’re inviting you to ask yourself, “How much value do I believe I will be able to get out of incoming calls?”

Of course, your competition will be a factor in your CPL as well. They’ll be doing their own calculation of how much value they can get out of calls, and setting their CPLs accordingly. That’s why, tempting as it may be, it’s not a good idea to set your CPL as low as it can go. You’d lose every call to a competitor who values them higher and sets their CPL.

Setting a competitive CPL is essential to success on our platform, and our experts will help you find the right one for your business. Plus, you also have the ability to change your CPL at any time.

Adjusting your CPL lets you control how many calls you’re getting from the Service Direct platform. The higher your CPL, the more you’re willing to pay, and the more calls you’ll get. Need more calls? Increase your CPL. Overbooked and need to slow things down? Lower your CPL. 

In this way, you determine how much you’re going to pay for HVAC phone leads with Service Direct.  However, when choosing your CPL, you need to be thinking in terms of the average CPL in your local market. 

Why Your Local Average Cost Per Lead is So Important

The average CPL of billable HVAC calls in the United States during the first three months of 2023 was about $112. But that doesn’t mean that’s what you should expect to pay.

For example, in Texas, the average CPL during the same time period was $150, meaning Texas-based HVAC companies looking to aggressively grow might expect to pay nearly $40 more per phone lead than the national average. However, on an even smaller scale, in the Austin metropolitan area, that number rises to $234, while in Dallas, the average was $143.

What does this mean? Simply put, location plays a major role in what CPL will be competitive in the HVAC calls market. An HVAC company bidding $150 per call in Dallas is going to get more phone leads than one setting the same CPL in Austin. 

Long story short, what you set your CPL to will depend greatly on where you operate.

Find Your Area's  Average CPL

The average cost per phone lead, along with the  average call volume for your service area,  gives you a clear picture of how well Service Direct might work for your HVAC business. 

If you’re interested in finding out more about the current average CPL is in your business’s service area, your best bet is to schedule a call with one of our account executives!