How To Market Your HVAC Business To Millennials
By Mahrukh Karimi on Thursday, January 11, 2018Millennials are entering the HVAC market. Is your business ready for them?
Look out! Millennials around the United States are leaving their parents’ basements and cutting down on avocado toast to purchase their first homes. Aged between 20 and 34, this “delayed” generation is finally starting to settle down. According to Zillow, “Half of all buyers are under age 36, meaning the Millennial generation is driving more of the housing market than we previously understood.” This means a new demographic for HVAC businesses to deal with. While new prospective customers are exciting, HVAC companies may need to learn some new tricks to effectively market themselves to this demographic—the fastest growing group of homeowners.
The Millennial Experience
The millennial generation, known more for spending money on experiences and traveling than houses, are now starting families and moving to the ‘burbs. However, that doesn’t mean they’ve totally altered their behavior. They still go online to research and seek advice from reviewers before making a purchasing decision.
A millennial’s experience and relationship with your business can also come from following you on social media. Keeping up to date on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can establish a mode of communication between your business and consumers while creating your company’s “voice.” Your company gains a personality through its social media presence, dictated by its tone, culture, and values.
A consistent voice is necessary in creating your company’s personality. If you are funny on one platform, try to be funny on all. Don’t be curt on Facebook and then sassy on Twitter. Instead of using brand loyalty to dictate purchases, millennials tend to shift between products and companies. Giving your business a personality can help overcome this “switching consumer” mentality of millennials. It helps customer retention, especially in the millennial generation, by creating a direct and friendly personal relationship between the customer and the company.
The idea of voice cohesion and brand identity can also be applied to more visible ares, things like your technician’s uniform and your company’s vehicles, slogans, and logos. The idea is to always be recognizable as you.
You know what else millennials like? Their phones! Millennials check their smartphones an average of 43 times a day. Their flow of information is consolidated to those devices. Take advantage of this! You can use field service software to send text notifications, alerting your customers when your technicians are on the way.
Are You Fine Online?
When millennials have HVAC needs, the first place they are going to go is online. Your website, social media, and reviews are excellent resources for someone who wants to learn more about your HVAC business.
Website
Because millennials do most of their shopping online, you can be confident that this means shopping online for their heating and cooling needs as well. Websites have replaced storefronts, and this grants internet users the ability to compare prices, products, and companies in the blink of an eye.
When you have a store, you want as many people as possible to get into that store. The same principle applies to your website. You want a steady stream of shoppers online. A good way to ensure this? Grab a top place in the search results when someone searches “AC repair in [your city].” To do this, incorporate SEO-friendly content into your website. A website blog allows for regularly updated SEO content and a better chance of users getting redirected to your website after a websearch. Research shows that companies that published blog posts at least 16 times a month got over four times as many leads as companies that blogged less than five times a month. That means potentially four times as much revenue!
Social Media
Besides the selfie, use of social media is arguably the most defining characteristic of the millennial generation. Social media has surpassed television as the leader in advertising and marketing. 71% of millennials use social media daily, compared with only 60% of millennials who watch television daily.
Using social media to market your HVAC business to millennials can allow for a much closer relationship with your customers, leading to customer retention and new leads. Communicating directly with your consumers makes your company relatable and builds trust. 41% of people say they have discontinued engagement with a company due to poor personalization and lack of trust.
If your business is not available on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you run the risk of going unnoticed by millennial users. Embracing social media can give these new homeowners a reason to pick your company over another, and then continue doing business with you.
Reviews
We all understand the value of word of mouth. When we trust someone, we tend to trust their recommendations as well. With websites like Yelp, Facebook, and Angie’s List, word of mouth scales a lot larger. Compared with ten years ago, 50% more people use reviews and others’ experiences to decide on a purchase.
Millennials are very conscious about where they spend their money. Before making purchases, they like to compare prices and reviews for the product or service they are thinking about buying. This need for purchase validation is displayed in the high amount of millennials using brand evaluation to make buying decisions. Before making a purchase, 93% of millennials like to read reviews online.
#Trending
Hashtags and trends are an excellent way to boost your revenue and differentiate yourself from other HVAC businesses. Millennials are conscious consumers. With the vast supply of similar products and business, millennials like to know that not only are they getting a good deal, but that their purchase decision is also contributing to something good.
Some trends in millennial consumerism include going green and shopping local. Thus, it can help to highlight your energy efficient units. If you are a family business, emphasize that. Show that doing business with you is an investment in the community and an investment in the environment. While getting sustainable cat litter might be going a little too far, finding an environmentally-friendly AC unit might actually make a difference for both their wallets and the environment.
Final Thoughts
Focusing on customer experience, bringing your business to the social age, and being aware of consumer trends are excellent ways for your HVAC business to appeal to the growing number of millennial homeowners.
Millennials may have entered the real estate market a little later than their parents and grandparents, but they are finally starting to move to the suburbs. If you market your HVAC business to millennials, it can help you move forward through this shift in customer demographics. Make sure your business embraces this change!
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