Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) is one of the most weather sensitive industries there is. As anyone working in this sector will know, demand for most HVAC products such as air conditioners and portable heaters is directly affected by temperature levels (and to a lesser extent other secondary elements such as humidity and wind speed).

Any business operating in this space –whether it’s manufacturers, retailers or contractors, is perfectly poised to take advantage of weather-driven demand by syncing their digital advertising campaigns with the weather.

By using a tool like WeatherAds to trigger ads or automate bid increases when temperatures rise above a certain threshold, HVAC marketers can yield far higher returns from their campaigns.

‍

Why a 'seasonal' campaign strategy is not enough

A HVAC company will likely have 2 annual sales peaks, one occurring over the summer months when temperatures rise above ‘comfortable’ levels, and one during the winter months when temperatures drop causing demand for heaters to soar.

Here is a graph showing Google search volume for ‘air conditioner’ vs ‘heater’ over the course of 2016, across the USA.

Predictably, you can see the 2 peaks – the warm summer months for ‘air conditioners’ and the cold winter months for ‘heaters’.

However, within a given season, there will be massive changes in temperatures both from one day to the next, and from one region to the next.

By running weather targeting on search, display, shopping or social campaigns, HVAC companies can trigger ads and automate bidding based on real-time weather conditions, rather than settling for the broad brush approach of manually adjusting their campaigns based on the seasons.

In other words, instead of simply running a catch-all campaign for an A/C product during the spring and summer months, a HVAC marketer can use a tool like WeatherAds to automatically trigger ads or upweigh bids in those regions that are experiencing the warmest temperatures at any given moment in time, down to zip code level granularity. Since temperatures across the country can fluctuate on an hour-by-hour basis, with this approach you are guaranteed to always be targeting your most likely potential customers with your ads.

By weather targeting their campaigns, HVAC marketers can get more clicks, higher CTR and increased conversions - all the while ensuring top position for their brand during periods of heightened demand.

‍

Just how weather sensitive is HVAC?

And just in case you needed any more proof that HVAC sales are inherently weather driven, we’ve done some analysis to determine the correlation between temperature levels and consumer demand for air conditioners.

The graph below shows Google search query volume for ‘air conditioners’ only in Providence, Rhode Island between the 24th and 31st of May 2016. We picked Providence as a location because it has one of the highest number of searches for air conditioners within the United States. We’ve focused specifically on this date range as there was one of the largest fluctuations of searches for air conditioners across this small time period.

In the graph below we’ve overlaid this demand curve against the average daily temperature for Providence, Rhode Island, for the same time period. You can see that there is a close correlation between rising temperatures and increased demand for air conditioners.

The ‘latency’ Effect

Interestingly, the data shows that it may take consumers a day or so to react to the weather in terms of their purchase behavior. This graph shows that when the temperature went from 16 to 22 C, search volume increased, but fairly modestly. The next day the temperature only rose by 1 degree, but because of the ‘compounding effect’ of 2 consecutive days of warm weather, demand for air conditioners went through the roof.

This means that HVAC marketers may want to ensure that their ads are activated and/ or bids remain increased for at least a day or two after the temperature reaches a certain threshold. In WeatherAds, you can do can set this up by choosing ‘-2 days to now’ in the timeframe settings.

Conclusion - don't miss out on weather-driven sales opportunities

Weather based marketing tools like WeatherAds allow HVAC organizations to easily and effectively capitalize on daily weather related opportunities that they would otherwise have missed out on.

Adding weather targeting to your campaigns can significantly improve click-through rates and conversions whilst at the same time actually reducing your advertising spend. Stay one step ahead of your competition by implementing a weather based marketing campaign for your HVAC business - get in touch with us to request a demo of WeatherAds.

‍