A good lead for an HVAC or plumbing business is a real person in your service area, with a job you actually do, who reaches you at the moment they need it. Anything else is volume. When you judge a marketing agency, judge it on the first definition. Here are three things to look at in its reports: lead quality, local search strength and return on investment.
Our earlier post covered how to choose an agency. This one covers what to look at once you have one, or when you're reading a proposal's promises.
What counts as a good lead?
A lead is good when all four are true:
- It's inside the area you serve.
- It's for work you do, such as a repair, a replacement or an install, not a job you don't take.
- The person is ready to book, not just browsing.
- You can trace it back to where it came from.
A form fill from three counties away isn't a lead. Neither is a call asking for a service you don't offer. Both inflate a report, and neither pays a wage.
How do you judge lead quality from a report?
Ask the agency to show you, for the last month:
- Total calls and form submissions.
- How many were real, in-area enquiries for work you do.
- How many became booked jobs.
- The source of each: search, map listing, paid ad or referral.
The last two columns need your input. Your office team knows which calls turned into jobs, and the agency can't know that without you. If nobody is feeding that back, the reports describe activity, not results.
What does strong local SEO look like?
HVAC and plumbing customers search close to home, often in a hurry. Three signals matter most:
- Your Google Business Profile. Correct service areas, categories, hours, photos and steady new reviews.
- Your service pages. One page per core service and area you cover, written for real customers, not stuffed with place names.
- Your reviews. A steady flow of genuine reviews and a response to every one, good or bad.
Ask what the agency changed in the last month and why. A specific answer, such as "we added a page for water heater repair in these two towns", beats a general one.
How do you hold an agency accountable for ROI?
Agree the numbers before the work starts. At minimum:
- Cost per booked job, not cost per click or cost per lead.
- Revenue per booked job, from your own records.
- Ad spend and agency fee shown separately, so you can see what each is doing.
Then ask for a plain monthly summary with those three figures. If the agency says tracking is "too complicated" for a business your size, push back. Call tracking and a booking form are standard tools.
Questions to ask at your next review
- How many of last month's leads were in our service area and for work we do?
- Which source produced the most booked jobs, not the most enquiries?
- What changed on the site or the Google profile last month?
- What is our cost per booked job, and how has it moved?
- What will you do differently next month because of this report?
The honest version of all this
No agency controls whether your phones get answered or your quotes get won. Marketing can bring the right enquiries to the door. Your team still has to turn them into jobs, and a good agency will tell you when the problem is on that side.
If you'd like a second pair of eyes on a report or proposal you've been given, book a free 30-minute call. No pitch deck, no obligation.