Lead-Gen Budget Shift for a Regional HVAC Company
Arctic Air is a regional HVAC company spending $45,000 per month on Google Ads across six campaigns. The blended target cost per acquisition is $120, but actual blended CPA is $168. The brand campaign takes 18% of spend at $38 CPA. Nonbrand service campaigns have a $210 CPA. The search terms report shows 34% of spend on queries containing "jobs," "training," "DIY," or "free." Call tracking records calls, and the CRM stores booked jobs, but offline conversions are imported for only 60% of leads because technicians do not always log source. The company has capacity for about 40 more installs per month in its busiest region and no capacity in a second region. Leadership wants more booked jobs next quarter without raising total spend.
1. Where should the $45,000 go next month? Show the logic, including what you would not cut immediately.
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Start with waste and capacity, not with a simple CPA ranking. About 34% of spend, roughly $15,300, is going to job-seeker, training, DIY, and free-intent queries. Add negatives and tighten match types, but do not assume all of that spend is recoverable; some queries may be ambiguous. Reallocate the credible savings toward services with install capacity in the busiest region.
Do not cut the brand campaign reflexively. Its $38 CPA is strong, but brand search often captures existing demand. Keep a baseline brand presence, and check whether brand spend is cannibalizing organic or driving incremental calls. A modest cap is safer than elimination.
For nonbrand, split by service and region. The $210 blended CPA hides winners and losers. Move budget from low-margin, low-capacity services to high-margin services with capacity. Exclude or tightly cap the region with no capacity, because more leads there create poor sales follow-up and wasted spend. Set campaign budgets by marginal CPA and capacity, not by last-click average. Measure booked jobs, not just leads, and review weekly because HVAC demand is seasonal.
2. How should the team fix offline conversion import and call tracking before changing bids aggressively?
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Treat measurement as the first fix. Right now only 60% of leads have a usable source, so bid algorithms are learning from an incomplete and probably biased signal. Give every campaign or ad group a unique call-tracking number, and require the CRM source field at intake. Capture the Google click identifier where possible, and import booked jobs or qualified appointments rather than every form fill.
Define a lead-quality hierarchy with sales: raw lead, qualified lead, appointment, booked job, and revenue. Assign values by service margin. Import offline conversions on a consistent schedule and account for lag; HVAC jobs may book days or weeks after the click. Do not optimize to unqualified leads just because they are easy to import.
Run a short parallel period where the old and new measurement are compared. Check match rates by campaign, call versus form, and region. Once coverage is above roughly 90% and the CRM values are stable, shift bidding toward qualified appointments or booked jobs. Until then, use conservative manual or portfolio bids and review search terms frequently.
3. How would you set bids and budgets when one region is at capacity and another has none?
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Use location and campaign structure to reflect capacity. In the constrained region, do not keep buying install leads at the same pace. Cap or pause install campaigns, and shift to maintenance, tune-up, or other services that the region can still serve. In the no-capacity region, exclude install campaigns or set a very low budget until capacity returns. In the region with 40 additional installs, increase budget only up to the point where sales can handle the volume and marginal CPA remains acceptable.
Set different target CPA or bid adjustments by region and service, because a blended target hides capacity. Use campaign-level budgets rather than one shared budget if regional control matters. Monitor lead-to-booked-job rate and sales response time; extra leads that go unanswered are not incremental.
Review capacity weekly with operations. If the busy region fills its 40 slots, reallocate to maintenance or pause spend rather than overdelivering. This is a marginal decision: the next dollar should go where it can produce a bookable job, not where historical average CPA looks best.