Did you know that ⅓ of the most viewed Instagram Stories are from businesses? Customers want to see what businesses are posting about on “Stories,” however, as you probably know, those are only viewable for 24 hours.

But what if your audience wants to save those Stories and come back to them later (whether for a link or to reference something)? This is why Instagram added the “Highlights” feature several years ago.

With this tool, brands can save Stories so that customers can look at them whenever they want, indefinitely.

In this post, we’ll walk you through how to make an Instagram Story Highlight, and then dive into expert tips on how to use the feature to engage your audience.

1. Tap on the plus sign from your profile.

The first step in creating an Instagram Highlight is to tap on the plus sign in the top right corner of the screen when you’re on your profile.

2. Select Story Highlight

Then, you’ll want to select “Story Highlight.”

3. Choose the Story you want to add.

At this point, it’s time to choose what Stories you want to save to your highlight. You can choose one or several. Then, hit “Next.”

4. Pick a cover photo and add a name for your highlight.

Lastly, you’ll choose a cover photo and then add a name for your highlight. Then, click “Add.” To add more Stories over time, you can tap and hold the highlight and then select “Edit Highlight.”

As time goes on and you want to reorder or archive your Instagram Story highlights, you can select “Edit Highlight” and then choose the Story you want to delete. Then, you can click on “Edit Highlight,” go to your Instagram Story archives and select the post again. This will now add that post again, making it at the front of your highlights thread.

Once you’ve gone through these steps, your Instagram Story highlight will be visible on your profile. But, you might be wondering what picture you should use for your highlight cover/icon. Let’s dive in below.

Instagram Story Highlights Cover

The last step of adding a highlight is selecting a name and image/icon. Visually, the best thing to do is create icons that are matching. For example, the HubSpot Academy Instagram account uses similar icons for its highlights.

As you can see, the icons follow a certain format, are visually appealing, and match the theme of the rest of the feed.

Before you create your highlights in the app, it’s important to choose the name and design the icons that you want.

As you’re designing the icons, you’ll use square dimensions. It’s actually very similar in size to the profile picture size. Make sure your icons have an aspect ratio of 1:1 and use dimensions like 2000 x 2000 pixels.

Now that you know how to make an Instagram Story highlight, you might be wondering what the best practices are. Let’s review some of the best ways you can use this feature to engage with your audience.

1. Promote your products.

With Instagram highlights, you can promote your best-selling products. Perhaps you design an icon to look like your product, and then name it your product name. In that highlight, you can show reviews for specific products, photos, features, benefits, and more.

Jenni Kim, a marketing manager at HubSpot, says, “Brainstorm your highlights into the topics most relevant to what your audience is looking for to give an overview of what your social brand offers! The highlights act as a compilation or mini archive for your past stories, so it’s a perfect way to showcase your past content in a way that’s useful to your audience as they learn more about your brand.”

This is a great way to engage your audience on Instagram and increase the chances that your followers will purchase from you.

2. Add blog posts.

The best way to engage with your audience through highlights is to post engaging content that your followers want to come back to.

For instance, you can add blog post links and save the most recent and relevant content on the highlight. This will help give your audience an easy place to access your top blog posts, even if they’re reading the posts after you’ve already promoted them on social media.

3. Show interviews.

Another great way to engage with your audience through highlights is to post interviews with your employees, leadership, or customers. Or, if you post interview content on your blogs, you can film those interviews and save them to your interviews highlight. This will showcase your series and help you educate your audience.

Interview content is typically very engaging because it’s interesting while being informative. It gives a behind-the-scenes look at how others do what they do.

4. Reveal behind-the-scenes footage.

Speaking of behind the scenes, one of the best types of content to post on highlights is BTS footage. Whether you’re an individual brand or a company, showing the behind-the-scenes footage is a fun way for customers to see how you do what you do. You can showcase behind-the-scenes footage of product production or of a photoshoot ad campaign.

This type of footage is engaging and helps your audience connect with your brand. By saving this footage on your highlights, you’ll extend the engagement and hopefully develop interested and long-term viewers who keep coming back for more.

5. Include events.

When it comes to promoting events, saving information on your Instagram highlights is a great way to make sure customers and followers have all the information they need at their fingertips.

This helps engage the people who are attending your event (because they’ll want to come back to this highlight for information) and promote the event to those who haven’t heard of it (if people are looking at your profile, they’ll see that you’re having an event).

6. Save links.

Of course one of the top ways to get followers to purchase products from you on social media is to add links to your social media pages. If you’re an influencer or company, you can save these most asked-for links to a highlight. This makes it easy for users to find a product from you and purchase it.

7. Showcase your culture.

Instagram highlights can be used to showcase fun, exciting video footage that reveals what your company culture is like. Perhaps you have someone on your culture team take videos of morale-boosting events.

Or maybe you start a takeover series like HubSpot has on our HubSpot Life Instagram account. With this highlight, we engage our audience every day with a different employee takeover. This employee will basically post a “day in the life” on Stories that day and you can save those to your highlights for whenever people are researching what your company culture is like.

8. Answer FAQs.

When users have questions, they go to social media. A great way to engage those customers is to have a FAQ highlight where you discuss any/all the top questions that users ask.

9. Incorporate reviews and testimonials.

We all know that people purchase products that have great reviews and testimonials. In fact, it’s one of the top elements that impact purchasing decisions. That’s why it’s a good idea to engage those users who are researching your product by looking at social media with a “Reviews and Testimonials” highlight.

10. Give tips/tricks.

Educating your audience is one of the best ways to provide value on social media. Save your tips and tricks to a highlight to continue educating and engaging with your audience on Instagram.

11. Display sales and discounts.

How do you get the word out about current sales and discounts? One way to do this is through Instagram story highlights. You can save all this information on a highlight so that customers know they can always check this highlight before making a purchase. Again, this keeps users coming back to your profile and engaging with your content.

12. Show case studies.

Depending on your product, people might want to see case studies or use cases for your product. When potential customers go online and look at your social media, that highlight will get them to click and see how other people are using your product or service.

Instagram Story Highlights are a great way to keep important information easily accessible for your audience on your social media. With this feature, you can use your Stories (one of the most popular Instagram features) as a part of your long-term social media strategy.

What the Best HVAC SEO Campaigns All Have in Common

It’s no secret, SEO (short for search engine optimization) is a highly effective marketing strategy for HVAC companies.

But you probably already knew that. You’re reading this blog, after all.

What you don’t know are the specific tactics that every successful HVAC SEO campaign has in common—the four pillars of SEO. They are:

1. Website Code and Structure
2. On-Site Content
3. Local SEO
4. Off-Site Authority

Each of these pillars plays a unique role in your website’s presence on Google, and ultimately, whether or not your company is found at the top of search results or beat out by the competition. Each pillar works alongside the others to optimize your website’s SEO value for more than 200 of Google’s ranking factors in its algorithm.

In this blog, you’ll learn:

• What the 4 pillars of HVAC SEO are
• Why each pillar is important
• Strategies and tactics to improve the value of each pillar (and rank higher on Google because of it)

Let’s dive in.

Pillar #1 – Website Code and Structure

Website code and structure are the foundation of every successful SEO campaign. HVAC websites that rank at the top of Google are coded and built so search engines can easily find, crawl, and rank your site. This means your website must be:

• Mobile-friendly – In today’s digital age, your website MUST be mobile-friendly. Is it easily navigated without needing to pinch to zoom or scroll sideways? Mobile-friendliness has been a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm since April 21, 2015, and more than half of worldwide web traffic is from mobile devices.
• Fast to load – If your website is slower than a turtle stuck in honey, users will leave it and move on to your competitors. Google has stated that 53% of mobile website visitors will abandon a webpage if it doesn’t load within three seconds. Additionally, websites that load within five seconds earn a 25% higher ad viewability, 70% longer average user sessions, and a 35% lower bounce rate.
• Easy to use – Can users find what they’re looking for, or do they get frustrated because they’re not sure if you can help them? Pull up your website on your own phone and put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer to answer this question.

3 Tips to Optimize Your HVAC Website’s Code and Structure

1. Design with a Mobile-First Mindset On a Responsive Framework

Websites optimized for mobile search come in different shapes and sizes. Most importantly, mobile-optimized websites provide a consistent user experience no matter what device a visitor is viewing it on—a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer.

A responsive framework means your HVAC website automatically resizes to match the experience of the user.

Homeowners visiting your site on an iPhone? No problem, your website will respond to the device and render its mobile version.

Homeowner visiting your site on an iPad or tablet? The same thing, your site will render a tablet-ready version.

Laptop or desktop computer? You get the idea…

2. Knock Core Web Vitals Out of the Park

Core Web Vitals are Google’s new way of measuring page speed and user experience on your website. It’s page speed on steroids—and you can read all about Core Web Vitals here.

There are three aspects of Core Web Vitals your HVAC website needs to knock out of the park.

1. Loading (Largest Contentful Paint/LCP) – Measures (in seconds) how fast the largest visual element on your page takes to load. For example, a banner image, video, contact form, etc.)
2. Interactivity (First Input Delay/FID) – Measures (in milliseconds) how quickly users can interact with your HVAC website. For example, when can they start scrolling, clicking, etc.
3. Visual Stability (Cumulative Layout Shift/CLS) – Measures the amount of visual change to your web page after a user starts interacting with it. There is no specific unit of measurement, only a score determined by Google.

3. Make Your Website Easy to Use

Here’s a simple test to determine if your website is easy to use or not. Put yourselves in a customer’s shoes and go visit your website.

Done? Great.

Now, as you browse your website, ask yourself these four questions:

1. Does my company provide the service someone needing HVAC service needs? – Make your primary services clearly visible. For most HVAC companies, this includes the obvious like heating and air conditioning and may include services like indoor air quality, duct cleaning, and geothermal.
2. Does my website highlight my service areas? – Provide a map of your service area on your website’s homepage. Also, provide a thorough list in the footer of your site.
3. How can customers contact my company? – Include web forms on every page, your phone number in the top-right of your website’s navigation, and invest in a website chat service to make it easy for customers to contact you.
4. Why should customers choose my company over the competition? – Highlight your company’s differentiators clearly. These may include things your competition doesn’t offer (e.g. 24/7 emergency service), customer reviews, and images of your team.

Pillar #2: On-Site Content

Service Pages Increase Local, Qualified Website Traffic

Did you know that Google ranks web pages, not websites? As part of maximizing your online real estate, you need to have pages for all of your lines of business and more specific pages related to those services. For example, service pages targeting highly searched keywords like:

• Air conditioning repair
• Air conditioning installation/replacement
• Air conditioning tune-ups
• Furnace repair
• Heat pump installation

Service pages aren’t the only type of content website visitors like to consume. And the same applies to search engines.

To maximize your online real estate, consider adding the following types of content to your website:

• Blogs
• Images and videos
• Reviews

Do Blogs Provide Value to My HVAC SEO Campaign?

Blogs are a proven HVAC SEO strategy to increase your website’s online visibility. While service pages help your company rank for local, qualified searches like furnace repair near me, blogs can generate thousands of website visits by targeting relevant, yet potentially non-local traffic.

For example, a blog titled Why Choose a Whole-House Humidifier? fits perfectly into an HVAC marketing plan, targeting consumers who are on the fence about adding some moisture into their dry home.

Not only that, blogs are a proven way to generate high-quality backlinks to your website, which in turn help you rank better in search results.

Pillar #3: Local SEO

Local SEO services for HVAC companies help your company rank better for localized searches on the web. It also increases your company’s visibility in Google’s local pack (AKA maps listings), as seen in the screenshot on the right.

Local SEO:

• Drives more traffic to your website from the local pack
• Helps mobile users more easily find and access your company’s website
• Ensure your business is found on Google Maps and other navigational apps
• Increases leads and sales from customers with local search intent

 

3 Local SEO Tips to Boost Search Rankings & Clicks

1. Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

After claiming and verifying your Google My Business (GMB) listing, you’ll want to completely fill in the available fields that Google requires on your Google My Business (GMB) listing. These include adding your company’s:

• NAP info (name, address, phone number)
• About section
• Photos
• Primary business category
• Business hours
• Service areas
• Appointment link (or link to a contact page)
• Health and safety requirements/updates
• Offers
• Amenities

The information you provide to Google via Google My Business feeds the information displayed in the local pack, so it’s critical to show your GMB profile some love and regularly review (and optimize) its content.

*Never add false information to your GMB listing or try to game Google’s system through keyword stuffing. It may result in a Google My Business suspension!

2. Build & Verify Local Directory Listings

Like Google My Business, local directories and the completeness (or lack thereof) also impact your rankings on Google. Other places on the web that HVAC customers go to look for businesses like yours include:

• Facebook
• Nextdoor
• Better Business Bureau (BBB)
• HomeAdvisor
• Angi (formerly Angie’s List)
• Yelp
• Bing Places

And also like Google My Business, you’ll want to claim, verify, and optimize these listings to enhance your local SEO value and rank higher on search results.

3. Get More Reviews

Did you know that 93% of consumers say online reviews have an impact on their purchase decision?

Not only that, another 58% say they look at online reviews at least weekly, while another 68% are willing to pay up to 15% more for the same service if assured they’ll have a better service.

Review ratings are also the biggest driver of clicks in local search results, and reviews directly affect local SEO rankings.

YES, search engines, including Google, factor in your online reviews (including both quality and quantity) when calculating your search rankings. A search engine’s goal is to help its users (your customers) find the right heating and air conditioning company as quickly as possible.

Reviews help separate the good HVAC companies from the bad, and as shown above, can have a direct impact on whether or not local customers click through to your website or the competition.

We recommend starting on Google My Business. Get as many reviews as you can there, first, since your GMB listing powers both local pack and impacts the performance of your HVAC SEO campaigns.

Pillar #4: Off-Site Authority

Lastly, the best HVAC search engine optimization campaigns don’t just focus on on-site optimizations, they also strategically include off-site SEO, or as we like to call it, improving your off-site authority.

Off-site SEO refers to actions taken outside of your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs). It builds your website’s authority and provides signals to Google that your company is credible and trustworthy.

Off-site SEO can also carry more than 50% of the ranking factor weight when determining your ranking positions in Google’s organic rankings:

Source: Moz

How to Improve Your Off-Site Authority in Your HVAC SEO Campaign

1. Build High-Quality, Local Backlinks

Link building is a foundational off-site tactic of HVAC SEO services. Link building is the process of earning links from third-party websites to send users back to yours. HVAC websites with a robust profile of high-quality backlinks rank better on local search results than other HVAC companies with fewer or spammy backlinks.

There are three types of backlinks:

1. Natural backlinks – Given editorially without any outreach by the business or the HVAC digital marketing company needed. For example, when a manufacturer links to your blog discussing the cost savings of a new air conditioner.
2. Manual backlinks – Unlike natural backlinks, manual backlinks are earned through manual efforts—you or your SEO partner directly reaching out to third-party websites and requesting a backlink to relevant content on your own site.
3. Self-created backlinks – Links built on third-party websites that you have a direct influence over. For example, adding a link to your website on your business’ Yelp profile.

2. Don’t Neglect Social Media

Contrary to popular belief, social media affects SEO.

The relationship between social media and SEO is like an alley-oop in basketball. Social media lobs the ball while SEO dunks it.

Although social media signals don’t have a direct impact on search rankings, they affect your off-site SEO in four unique ways:

1. Increased authority and brand recognition
2. Increased online visibility and traffic to your website
3. Broader content distribution and longer content lifespan
4. Improved local SEO

Not only that, but Google My Business also pulls in your company’s reviews from Facebook and other directory sites.

Wrapping It Up: The 4 Pillars of Successful HVAC SEO Campaigns

The best HVAC SEO campaigns all have one thing in common. They each prioritize and optimize the four pillars of SEO to create a healthy marketing strategy that increases leads, creates more booked appointments, and ultimately, results in growing revenue.

At Blue Corona, we believe in growing businesses. We work with hundreds of HVAC contractors across the United States, working with them to measurably improve their marketing performance.

Grow Your Business with HVAC SEO Services

Looking to increase leads, reduce your marketing costs, and differentiate your brand online? Contact us today to learn more about how our HVAC SEO services can help you achieve your goals.

This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought leadership series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters.

A few months ago, I came to a startling realization: My job is meetings.

Maybe you can relate. From morning to night, I spend my time jumping from Zoom call to Zoom call. I race to grab a snack in the two minutes I’m afforded in-between calls, and I’m mentally exhausted by the end of the day. It’s a struggle to decompress before spending time with friends and family.

And, equally challenging, the amount of meetings I have takes away from my ability to get my work done.

I’m Chris Saly — an Engineering Lead at HubSpot.

As an engineer, my day job was code. Sure, we needed meetings to discuss things and stay updated as a team, but the main mechanism and value of my job was the quality and reliability of the code I produced.

Now, the primary value of my job is talking to others. Whether it’s as a mentor, being involved in tactical decisions, or helping set a strategic vision, most of these goals are communicated through meetings.

However, there are some very real consequences to my role as an EL. Among other things, my meeting-heavy life was taking its toll on my mental health, relationships, and workplace productivity.

I knew something had to change. Here, I’ll show you how I incorporated a framework into my calendar planning to reduce meetings, and take back control of my time.

My Job is Meetings

As an engineering lead, I manage the 12 engineers in my group and provide a strategic vision for the pillar in collaboration with my project management, business system analysts, and design peers.

We build internal tools and systems that support the HubSpot Sales, Success, Support, Marketing, and Operations teams to do their jobs day-to-day.

As a result, in additional to the typical duties of an EL at HubSpot, there is also a healthy dose of stakeholder management thrown in, as well.

The nature of my role means that meetings cover a wide range of topics. I might go from one meeting talking about the three year vision for HubSpot’s Sales team, to a systems design discussion on something we’re building right now, to a mentoring conversation with a Tech Lead and then into a critsit retrospective.

What I’ve realized is that my job is now meetings.

What prompted this?

I noticed a a number of days over the last several months where despite finishing work at 5 or 6, closing the laptop and entirely disconnecting from work, I was still amped up and my brain was in ‘work mode’ at 9 PM.

I was struggling to decompress. And considering nearly half of professionals report a high degree of exhaustion after numerous daily video calls, I’m willing to bet most of you understand this frustration.

My calendar on Oct 28th last year is a fair example of what a typical day would look like before Christmas:

• Start my day with a 1-1 with a Tech Lead to discuss mentorship and team health.
• Followed by a conversation across multiple product groups on the technical feasibility of a specific suggestion for a 2021 compass item.
• Then a kickoff meeting for our pillar that is partially selling the vision and partially a social chat.
• After a quick break we’re onto an in-depth technical overview of a system we need to start using as engineers.
• Capping off the day with a meeting with ELs+Director in Flywheel that, depending on the day, might cover people management, technical visioning, or our groups strategy.

So … What’s The Problem?

While I was feeling overwhelmed, I didn’t really understand why, so I took a couple of steps to figure out where things were going wrong.

First, I made a table of all of my meetings, categorized by their purpose, and calculated the amount of time I spent on them on a weekly basis (see below for more details on this)

I also did some soul-searching to see how I was feeling about my meetings. Whether there were days I dreaded, or days I really enjoyed, and tried to get in touch with why I felt that way.

This gave me a couple of realizations. First, I realized the ratio of time spent on supporting teams that report to me, working with peers, and staying abreast of things happening in the company felt right to me.

However, the sheer volume of meetings had crept up on me. Over the course of the previous six months, my group had doubled in size and meetings had passed a threshold without me noticing.

I also realized my meeting load on a weekly basis varied depending on when all my recurring meetings happened to fall.

And, perhaps most challenging of all, I realized there were no themes or focus to my meeting days. One meeting might be deep in the weeds, and the next would be a 30,000 foot view. Changing contexts throughout the day like that is hard, and takes unnecessary mental energy.

Plus, as I’m sure most can relate, the pandemic made my life outside of work Zoom-heavy, as well, with remote birthdays and happy hours. All of which is to say: I was tired of all the screen time.

When I thought about how this all affected me, I came up with the following list:

• I sometimes end the day not being able to turn of my brain and spend time with family & friends.
• It’s a mentally taxing thing to change contexts all day long time and it has an outsized effect on how much energy I have for myself at the end of the day.
• I often feel like I’m running in place trying to take notes, digest information, grab a snack, and use the bathroom as I go from one meeting to the next.
• I struggle to make time for things like AMAs, All Hands, Science Fair, Tech Talk & Hub Talks. After Christmas I had a 12 week tech talk backlog because I just didn’t have the time or capacity to watch them.

If this list resonates with you, don’t despair and keep reading. Fortunately, I came up with a solution to my meetings-heavy job.

A New Framework for Meetings

If my job is meetings, I needed a framework for those meetings to live in — which included boundaries and rules to keep my sanity, as the old ad-hoc approach clearly wasn’t cutting it any more.

First, here are the boundaries I set in regards to my mental health:

• No more than 90 minutes of meetings in one go: There’s only so long I can pay attention and go without a bathroom break.
• Scheduled 15/30 minute breaks before and after any 60 minute block: I book these in as ‘meeting gap’ meetings on my calendar to stop people booking over them.
• No more than 2.5 hours of meetings in the periods before or after lunch: If I go beyond this I can’t decompress in the evenings.
• Hard stop of meetings at 5 PM: I need at least 15 mins to wrap up my thoughts for the day, send a few slacks and take notes for tomorrow. Trying to send a message at 6pm when hangry isn’t a good idea.
• Friday has no meetings, and certainly no meetings after 3 PM on Friday: I use Friday as a catchup and focus day so keeping it free of meetings is key to that. I also need time to wind down from the week and if I’m leaving stuff undone it really affects my weekend

Obviously, these aren’t set in stone, and I’m willing to make exceptions to these if there is a genuine need e.g. If there’s a critsit or a big business impact.

But for regular day-to-day meetings, I’ve found there are very few meetings that can’t wait a couple of days. I’ve also realized meetings rarely need to be more than 90 minutes.

If I need exceptions to these boundaries more than once or twice a month, my spidey sense starts tingling.

Once I set those mental health boundaries, I took it a step further by creating a table to organize my meetings and discover patterns.

First, I put all my meetings into a spreadsheet, tagged each with some relevant tags, and used that as my basis for both analyzing and changing my meeting schedule. It allowed me to play with meeting cadences, and see how it would affect the overall picture.

It also gave me a some data I could analyze to answer the following questions:

• How much time was I spending with teams in my pillar versus my peers and the pillar structure versus the larger Revenue Product Group?
• How much time on broader company alignment like tech talk, AMA, science fair, company talks, etc?
• Was I over-indexing on supporting any particular group and did the overall balance feel right?
• Were there any low priority meetings that were too frequent?
• Was the meeting volume per week roughly the same? And is that what I wanted?

Let’s dive into some of the features of this table now.

1. Color Coding

I’ve been color coding my calendar for over a year now and it’s been really useful, but it’s been ad hoc and I often forget or change what the colors mean without thinking about it. This time I wrote it down to keep myself honest, and so I can refer back to it if I need to.

Color coding my calendar makes it easy to see at a glance what my day and week looks like. If there are too many yellows or reds (meaning medium or high priority) on my calendar I know I need to reschedule or skip some meetings. If I have a day that looks like a rainbow, that probably means I’ll be changing contexts all the time and should try to move things. If I have a solid block of color with no grey in it, I have no ‘me time’ and will be fried by the end of the day. Any of these things are enough to get my spidey senses tingly.

Here’s how to change colors in Google calendar.

2. Meeting Frequency

My meetings had a jumble of recurrences that had grown organically and could be on any schedule, which led to a pretty messy and inconsistent calendar. To help make things clearer and more regular I’ve categorized them into buckets with default recurrences:

• Weekly: High value, high impact. Things that require regular and high volume communication e.g. Direct reports/mentorship, an active project that is close to going live.
• Twice a Month: Things that require ongoing close alignment e.g. same level peers and high stakes projects.
• Monthly: Important topics that don’t change all that rapidly e.g. skip-level 1-1s, project updates.
• Every two months: Just keeping in touch e.g social and connection keeping, interesting projects but doesn’t need active involvement.
• Quarterly: Alignment and planning e.g. product group meetings, OKRs, etc.

Using this rubric has a few benefits:

• It made me think about the purpose of meetings and decide what the appropriate cadence is
• It gave me a common benchmark to compare meetings so I have comparably valuable meetings on similar cadences
• With most meetings now happening once or twice a month, I can often pair similar meetings on the same day which means less context switching.

3. ‘Week in Month’ Meetings

Before I started this my recurring meetings were generally on an ‘every X week’ basis — as in all of my meetings recurred every 2, 3, 4 weeks.

The change I’ve made here is to move all meetings to a ‘week in month’ basis. This means that instead of meeting with someone every four weeks, I’ll meet with them every 3rd Thursday, or instead of every two weeks, it’s every 2nd and 4th Tuesday.

This approach has a number of benefits:

• It combines with ‘meeting frequency’ above to allow me to theme days and weeks so I’m not changing contexts all the time
• It gives a certain cadence to the month e.g. it’s the middle of the month so I know I’m talking to team X this week
• There are 12 months in the year but 13 blocks of 4 weeks, so it inherently slightly decreases the number of meetings
• It frees up the 29th, 30th & 31st as mostly meeting-free days
• Aspects of our business and lives often run on a monthly cadence and tying meetings to that same cadence can be a really useful tool. (Examples of this might include Irish public Holidays, which typically fall on the first Friday of the month and people often take the Thursday or Monday to make it a long weekend; performance reviews and ACR often happen at the beginning of the month; and sales have end-of-month targets, which leads to more pressure on the systems in the last few days of the month.)

All of this color coordination and categorization is well and good — but I’m betting you’re thinking, Well … did it work?

Let’s dive into results now.

So … Is It Working?

I’ve been making these changes since the beginning of the year and I’ve had great results so far.

My mental health has improved and I have more time and energy for myself each day after work. I’ve drastically decreased the amount of days that I struggle to decompress when the work day is done.

I’ve caught up on all the tech talks and I’m following up on action items from meetings more reliably and quickly. I also have more time to get non-meeting work done, and generally feel much more productive.

This was a fairly typical way for my calendar to look before:

And this is a typical week now:

Ultimately, what worked for me might not work for you.

But I encourage anyone who feels overwhelmed by their schedule to take the time to proactively assess and diagnose for redundancies, wasted time, or time that could be better spent re-charging. Simply taking the time to analyze my calendar enabled me to create a more efficient schedule that worked for me.

So maybe that’s really the lesson here: Figure out how your job can work for you, not the other way around. Each person is unique with specific preferences, and if you don’t fight for your calendar to look the way you need it to … who will?  

Chances are, you’ve probably spent an afternoon falling down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos.

I certainly have, and I think I’d be pretty embarrassed to see the total amount of time I’ve spent on the platform.

While it’s a great source of entertainment, YouTube has also proved itself to be a valuable tool for marketers. In fact, 70% of viewers bought from a brand after seeing content on YouTube. And, with a global user base of more than 2 billion people, it’s also safe to assume that your target audience is on the platform.

However, just as it is for all social networks, building a presence on YouTube requires understanding which segments of your audience are already there and what they’re watching. Having that information makes it easier to create content that speaks to their interests, maximize ROI, and achieve general marketing success. In this post, we’ll go over key YouTube statistics you need to know for 2021 to help you succeed in your marketing efforts.

Arizona Medical Malpractice Awards

Medical malpractice awards are a significant concern in Arizona. In 2017, there were just four $10 million judgments and eleven $1 million to $10 million verdicts. These awards were made by juries, except for two, which were made following bench trials. The biggest award was $15 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit in 2017. Medical malpractice does not occur just in hospitals or surgical centers; it may occur anywhere, including your doctor’s office or even your own home!

 

Medical Malpractice Awards Civil Verdict Study

An annual Arizona civil verdict study* discovered that since 2009, the number of Arizona civil cases tried to verdict has been declining. Medical malpractice awards are not always straightforward!!

Since 2016, the number of trials has dropped each year. The American Bar Association’s Task Force on the Vanishing Jury Trial cited numerous causes contributing to the decline in jury trials, including the following:

The rising popularity and success of alternative conflict resolution.
The breadth, length, and expense of discovery are all increasing.
Delay in resolving jury-verified cases and an increase in court dockets.
Jury verdicts’ unpredictability and ambiguity, or knowledge of them.
There is an increase in the number of dispositive motions filed and approved.
Inadequate trial experience on the part of attorneys and judges.

What Other Factors Do I Need To Think About When Considering Filing For Medical Malpractice Awards.

When analyzing and forecasting medical malpractice awards in Arizona, other criteria are the population’s size and distribution, racial composition, socioeconomic status, and ethnic diversity.

In 2018, the pattern indicated above remained steady. The number of prestigious medical malpractice awards increased significantly in 2018 compared to 2017. Arizona juries returned only one verdict over $10 million for the second year in a row. They returned 14 judgments ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Five of the highest verdicts were handed out in Maricopa County. Four are classified as federal, while one is located in Mohave County. Maricopa County received the state’s biggest medical malpractice award, totaling $4 million. Additionally, this analysis discovered that counties with fewer inhabitants and those located in more remote geographical parts of Arizona have tended to be more cautious with judgments over the previous several years, producing more defense verdicts or plaintiff verdicts that are quite low.

In 2018, the pattern indicated above remained steady. The number of prestigious medical malpractice awards increased significantly in 2018 compared to 2017. Arizona juries returned only one verdict over $10 million for the second year in a row. They returned 14 judgments ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Five of the highest verdicts were handed out in Maricopa County. Four are classified as federal, while one is located in Mohave County. Maricopa County received the state’s biggest medical malpractice award, totaling $4 million. Additionally, this analysis discovered that counties with fewer inhabitants and those located in more remote geographical parts of Arizona have tended to be more cautious with judgments over the previous several years, producing more defense verdicts or plaintiff verdicts that are quite low.

Additionally, while analyzing and projecting civil jury decisions in Arizona, the following criteria must be considered:

According to others, the shift occurred due to jurors exhibiting less respect to physicians’ choices, insurance companies requiring more cases to go to trial, and increasing mistakes as a result of medicine’s institutionalization. Others feel physicians are unwilling to consent to settlements, especially when they believe their medical judgments were justified. Occasionally, a physician will request settlement, but the insurance company will reject. Others have noted that restricted by the expense and danger associated with such lawsuits, plaintiffs’ lawyers are pursuing them more carefully. Another reason for the increased judgments is that money no longer has the same influence on juries as it used to.”

There Is A Pervasive Myth Regarding Medical Malpractice Awards

As shown before, a prevalent misperception in Arizona and several other states is that medical malpractice lawsuits are frequent, prolific, and result in fast and significant medical malpractice awards. This is not the case, and one should proceed with caution when confronted with these ideas. Although Arizona has a limited number of medical malpractice insurers, each is smart, well-funded, and often litigates cases all the way to and through trial. They have substantial resources, including a huge network of certified specialists on whom they may rely regardless of contrary evidence. They are always prepared to spend large sums defending and fighting on behalf of their insured medical providers, even when the chances are stacked against them. Due to the fact that Arizona is not a direct-action state, juries are never told of the insurance status of a doctor or health care provider. On the other side, jurors may fear that a favorable decision will bankrupt the physician or other providers. According to statistics, between 80% and 90% of medical negligence lawsuits that get to trial are lost.

As these current data and facts indicate, the likelihood of successfully pursuing medical malpractice claims is exceedingly low. While it is good to see that the situation has improved slightly in recent years, medical malpractice carriers are clearly in business to maximize profits for their individual stockholders. That is precisely why insurers will make every effort to defend their insured. Additionally, because many of the best instances of medical negligence are settled without the need for a trial, the figures above do not include the results of these cases.

The Pandemic of Covid 19 Appears To Have Affect Medical Malpractice Awards

Nobody should be shocked that 2020 will be unlike any other year in recent history. For this article, it was not necessary to compile trends in the legal system, the highest verdicts in the State, or the most successful defense counsel. In 2020, the bulk of jury judgments happened in January and March, shortly before COVID threatened to shut down the courts. The bulk of trials that did occur were “bench trials,” or proceedings before judges alone, without the participation of a jury. Fortunately, it looks as though things are beginning to normalize, with court activities, including jury trials, returning, albeit with properly planned pandemic accommodations.

While the epidemic substantially delayed the Court system, the Arizona Supreme Court and Arizona District Court enacted some administrative actions to keep the system functioning during the jury trial suspension. Additionally, the Courts explored and developed methods to expedite the administration of justice until normalcy was restored. Alternative Dispute Resolution techniques, notably Mediation, have become essential for resolving disputes more efficiently and promptly. This greatly decreased an otherwise insurmountable backlog, further distressing the system and obstructing justice administration.

As a result of the preceding, Arizona’s big verdicts were substantially lower in 2020 than in prior years. It is impossible to anticipate the Pandemic’s long-term influence on Arizona juries and court awards as events develop and hopefully stabilize. On March 1, the Arizona District Court began jury trials in Phoenix and Tucson, followed a month later by the Maricopa County Superior Court. Only four jury verdicts/awards exceeded $1,000,000.00 in 2020, the largest of which was $4,500,000.00 in a case involving an electrician who sustained serious back injuries in a fall and whose surgery was unreasonably delayed due to the insurance company’s unreasonably delayed spinal decompression surgery.

Each year, approximately 250,000 individuals in the United States die due to different types of medical negligence. As a result, medical mistakes rank third in the United States, after cancer and heart disease. Additionally, experts feel this is a conservative estimate due to the absence of carelessness on death certificates.

MALPRACTICES IN MEDICINE

Malpractice takes on a multitude of forms. Certain kinds of medical malpractice are more difficult to identify, especially when the patient becomes aware of the injury months, if not years afterward. Medical doctors, chiropractors, registered nurses, anesthesiologists, CRNA technicians, and surgeons, among others, may perform irresponsible actions that have significant repercussions for patients. If this occurs to you or a loved one, you may be entitled to pursue compensation for medical negligence.

The Following Are The Ten Most Common Types Of Medical Malpractice:

1) Negligence In Diagnosing A Potentially Life-Threatening Condition

Misdiagnosis or the inability to diagnose a potentially life-threatening illness is the most prevalent kind of malpractice. Consider the following scenario: a physician or technician fails to detect a broken vertebra following a vehicle accident. As a result, the patient may experience chronic pain for the remainder of their life or possibly suffer spinal cord injury. Furthermore, misdiagnosis of a major condition might result in life-threatening sickness or death.

2) Surgical Errors

Surgical mistakes can result in a variety of different forms of medical misconduct. These mistakes might range from operating on the wrong patient or body area to not providing appropriate postoperative care. Furthermore, unclean conditions can result in sickness and perhaps fatal illnesses.

3) Inadequate Medical Treatment

When a physician administers improper therapy for a life-threatening sickness or injury, the patient may die. Additionally, this is true for physicians who fail to treat a patient’s illness.

4) Birth-Related Injuries

A birth injury can occur due to a doctor or technician making a mistake during pregnancy, labor, or delivery. Cerebral palsy is the most often occurring kind of birth damage. It happens as a result of a baby being depleted of oxygen during the birthing process. Additionally, poor monitoring or failure to perform an emergency C-section may result in delivery damage.

5) Cancer Misdiagnosis

When a clinician detects cancer wrongly, the following consequences might be fatal. Early detection and treatment of cancer improve a patient’s probability of survival. As a result, if a patient is not detected during the condition’s early stages, the disease will likely proceed to an intractable level.

6) Medication Errors

Numerous malpractice cases include prescription and administration mistakes of medications. One such instance is when a physician gives the incorrect medicine or dose. Additionally, a pharmacist may deliver the incorrect medicine accidentally. Additionally, if a physician fails to check for drug allergies or combinations with previously prescribed drugs, a patient may have a potentially fatal response.

7) Bedsores

When a patient is kept in the same position for a lengthy period of time, bedsores, also known as pressure ulcers, form. In hospitals and nursing homes, bedsores are a typical occurrence due to neglect or inadequate treatment. If left untreated, bedsores can get infected, resulting in more significant health complications.

8) Anesthesia Errors

An anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist making a mistake may result in lifelong harm, brain damage, or death. Common mistakes include neglecting to evaluate the patient’s medical history or inadequately monitoring vital signs during operation.

9) Errors During Dental Medical Procedures

As with medical physicians, dentists and oral surgeons are susceptible to making dangerous mistakes. A patient might suffer significant damage if a dentist makes an incorrect oral cancer diagnosis or makes anesthetic delivery mistakes.

10) Inadequate Prevention And Treatment Of Infections

Infections occur more frequently than we anticipate in hospitalized patients. Furthermore, any illness can be fatal in the elderly or those with weaker immune systems. Furthermore, many modern diseases, nicknamed “superbugs,” are resistant to traditional treatments. Certain diseases are caused by carelessness, for example, unclean conditions or instruments. Additionally, patients may become unwell when staff workers fail to follow infection control procedures like hand washing and mask-wearing.

A serious personal injury may completely alter the direction of your life. At the Tucker & Miller law office in Phoenix, we are familiar with the tactics used by insurance carriers and their defense team in every medical malpractice case. How are we aware of this? Because we previously worked for malpractice insurance companies, we anticipate what they will do in a malpractice case. We are completely committed to obtaining the maximum medical malpractice compensation permitted by law.

If you or a loved one has been a victim of medical negligence, contact our office to begin your case.

Brought To You By Tucker Miller Law

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Have you ever double-tapped an image on Instagram, reacted to a video on Facebook, or clicked a search result in Google, only to realize afterward that it was actually an ad?

Maybe you never realized it was an ad at all — you just thought it was a cute picture of a dog.

More than ever, ads can be contextual, relevant, targeted, and helpful in ways they never could before. In short, ads today are content.

But the online advertising landscape is changing.

New platforms, ad types, and targeting capabilities are popping up all the time.

Let’s dig into everything you need to know about online advertising across ad platforms for social media, paid search, display, and native advertising.

If you’re only interested in learning about a certain type of online advertising, you can use the table of contents below to navigate to each section.

How to Advertise Online

93% of all online interactions start with a search engine, and with those odds, you can catch the attention of the audience you want through online advertising.

There’s plenty of ways to advertise your business strategically. Think about who you’re trying to reach when you start. Ask yourself “What target demographic am I advertising to?” and “How can I place my product or service offering in front of my target?”.

The answer is to see where your target demographic spends the most time online. Research their most frequented social media channels and most searched keywords. You can take this information and translate it to organic and paid marketing.

Not all online advertising has to cost money, people can find your business organically through social media marketing. Making a business page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even TikTok can capture people’s interest through engaging posts and content.

Now if you want to use pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, most social media offers business pages the ability to pay a fee to promote posts/ads within the interface. Or if you are looking to advertise on a search engine for targeted keywords, Google Ads or sixads can guide you through the process of payment and execution.

There are three key ways that digital advertising can help you improve the performance of your organic marketing efforts.

With digital ads, organic performance can benefit from:

1. An increase in brand awareness by displaying your content to individuals within and outside of your networks.
2. A better understanding of your audiences by leveraging the targeting and analytics of the ads platforms.
3. The creation of higher-performing content by understanding what ad content helps you achieve your business goals and what doesn’t.

The goal of any ads strategy should be to get a positive return on your investment, which comes down to whether you’re getting more revenue out of the ad campaign than the cost you’re putting in.

How can you determine what your ad spend should be to get the most return on your investment? To start answering that question, we’ll need to understand the bidding system used by the ad networks.

A bid is the maximum amount of money you’re willing to pay for the desired action on your ad. If it sounds like an auction, that’s because it is an auction. Ad networks have a limited amount of ad space, and to determine whether or not your ads are shown to your target audience, they run an auction to see how much each advertiser is willing to pay for ad space.

Just like in an auction, the highest bidder wins. Let’s say you bid $10 for a click on your ad, and the next highest bidder only pays $5 for a click.

Each ad network will only make you pay the lowest amount possible to win the bid. In this example, you might be willing to pay $10, but in reality, you’ll only have to pay $5.01 to win the bid. Winning this “auction,” in addition to the overall quality of your ads, will determine how your ads are displayed on the different ad networks.

Here’s another example of how the ad auction works from WordStream.

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At this point, you might be thinking, “Okay, I get how the auction system works. But how do I figure out how much I should actually spend to see a return on my investment?”

My advice is to work backward from your revenue to determine what your maximum bid should be.

Use this equation:

Lifetime Value (LTV) x Average Lead-to-Customer Rate x Average Conversion Rate

Your LTV is how much a customer is worth to you throughout their relationship with your business. The average lead-to-customer rate is the rate at which your leads become paying customers. And your conversion rate is the rate at which new contacts convert on your content offers by filling out a form.

Combined, these metrics show you how much you should spend on your paid ads to break even.

Let’s say that you want to use digital ads to promote your new content offer. You’re going to need to know what your maximum ad spend should be to see a positive return on your investment. Assume that you know the following about your business:

• Lifetime value: $500
• Average lead-to-customer rate: 10%
• Average conversion rate: 20%

Plug these numbers into the equation above to determine what your maximum ad spend should be: $500 x 0.10 x 0.20 = $10. This means that you can spend a maximum of $10 per click on your ad to break even. Your goal should be to spend less than $10 to see a positive return on your investment.

Types of Online Advertising

Now that we know more about how to advertise online, let’s dive into the various types of online advertising.

Social Media Advertising

Every month, there are nearly 2.5 billion active users on Facebook, 1 billion on Instagram, and 330 million on Twitter worldwide.

Whether it’s to chat with friends, stay connected to people across the globe, or for business and networking purposes, consumers are on social media for a multitude of reasons — and marketers know it. Because of the sheer number of active users on these platforms, advertising spend invested in social media channels is at an all-time high. Social media advertising across the world is projected to exceed $8.5 billion this year.

Advertising on social media comes with many advantages. You can:

• Reach very specific target audiences with the help of targeting features and different audiences across all of the social media platforms.
• Leverage a variety of ad formats to advertise in a way that aligns with your business goals.
• Invest in the specific advertising efforts that drive leads and sales for your business.

Let’s take a look at eight popular social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. We’ll cover the audiences and ad types available on each one.

1. Facebook

Facebook is the most widely used social media network. Almost 2.5 billion people around the world use Facebook. That’s more than 30% of the world’s population.

With so many people using Facebook, you’re almost guaranteed to be able to reach an audience that’s relevant to any type of business. That’s where one of the most powerful features of advertising on Facebook comes in: audience targeting. The targeting capabilities on Facebook are unmatched by any other social media network.

There are three types of audiences that you can target on Facebook:

1. Core audiences: An audience based on criteria like age, interests, and geography.
2. Custom audiences: Get back in touch with people who have previously engaged with your business.
3. Lookalike audiences: Reach new people whose interests are similar to those of your best customers.

Facebook’s advanced targeting can be used to target your ads to the most relevant audience — and even tap into new audiences you’d otherwise never reach with organic content alone.

Advertising on Facebook includes a range of ad types, including:

• Photo ads
• Video ads
• Story ads
• Lead ads

Photo ads are great for sharing collections of image content. Video ads are great for product explainer videos and branding. Story ads allow you to use a combination of photo and short-form video content. If you want to learn more about the different ad types, here’s a great course from HubSpot Academy all about Facebook Advertising.

Personally, my favorite way to advertise on Facebook is with lead ads because they give you the best of both worlds: sharing visual content and generating leads all at the same time. Facebook Lead Ads allow you to capture lead information without directing people out of the Facebook platform.

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No matter your business’ size or industry, you can use lead ads to find potential customers who are likely interested in your products or services. With lead ads, you provide a helpful piece of content that encourages viewers to sign up for a newsletter, receive a price estimate, or request additional business information. In return, when the viewer fills out the form, the business receives a new lead.

Another way to advertise on Facebook is through Facebook Messenger.

Facebook Messenger is a separate messaging app that comes with its own advertising opportunities. Facebook Messenger is the go-to messaging app in countries including the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Other messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat are the more popular choice in countries throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

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Across the world, 20 billion messages are exchanged between people and businesses every month on Facebook Messenger. Ads play a big part in initiating conversations on Facebook Messenger.

There are a few different ways you can use Facebook Messenger as part of your advertising strategy.

• Facebook Messenger call-to-action in ads: Start conversations with ads on Facebook that include a call-to-action to send a message.
• Facebook Messenger Story Ads: Run story ads on Messenger Stories.
• Facebook Messenger Ads: Use messenger ads to deliver content directly into users’ Facebook Messenger chats.

All of these ad types come together to encourage your audience to kick off conversations with your business. They can be used to get in contact with a sales team, request more information on a product, or even share other content like blog posts or ebooks.

My favorite way to advertise on Facebook Messenger is retargeting. Retargeting ads in Facebook Messenger are a great way to start targeted conversations and send personalized offers and content.

Sponsored messages allow you to advertise to people who have already interacted with your business in Messenger. This is a great way to re-engage your audience in a personalized way.

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2. Instagram

You can also advertise on Instagram through the Facebook Ads Manager. Instagram has over 1 billion monthly users globally. That’s a little less than half of the number of users on Facebook. The majority of users are between the ages of 18 and 34.

There are three ways that you can advertise on Instagram:

1. Promote posts and stories directly from your Instagram professional account.
2. Create ads from your Facebook Page and promote them on both Facebook and Instagram.
3. Create ad campaigns in the Facebook Ads Manager to access full targeting capabilities.

I recommend taking the third option and creating custom campaigns for your audience on Instagram.

Instagram has similar ad types to Facebook, including:

• Photo ads
• Video ads
• Story ads
• Ads in Explore
• Shopping Post ads

By far, the most interesting ad types right now are ads in the Explore Tab and Shopping Post ads. People using Instagram Explore are exploring their interests and discovering new content creators. Ads in Instagram Explore are a great opportunity to put your brand in front of a new audience.

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Shopping Post ads allow you to include a tag that shows the product’s name and price within your image. Clicking on the tag takes your prospects directly to a product page where they can purchase the item — all without leaving the Instagram app.

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3. LinkedIn

The LinkedIn platform has over 660 million monthly active members worldwide. Users on the platform are largely made up of working professionals which makes LinkedIn a great place for B2B (business-to-business) advertising. LinkedIn is the go-to platform for working professionals, which provides B2B advertisers a large audience pool to reach.

Plus, the advantage of advertising on LinkedIn is its unique targeting capabilities. On LinkedIn, you’ll have access to unique targeting criteria that isn’t available on other platforms.

You can target users on LinkedIn by unique demographics, including job title, job function, and industry. Maybe you only want to advertise to potential customers at the director level who work in customer service within the recruiting industry. LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities make that possible.

Plus, with the option to include lead gen forms in your LinkedIn ads, LinkedIn can be a lead generation machine. This will allow you to not only reach a very specific audience but drive leads without directing them outside of the LinkedIn platform.

The most interesting ad type of LinkedIn is Message Ads. Message Ads allow you to send direct messages to your prospects to spark immediate action.

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How to use LinkedIn Message Ads:

• Deliver a targeted message with a single CTA.
• Drive stronger engagement and response than traditional emails.
• Measure the impact of your messages.

But a word of warning: Don’t send too many Message Ads to the same people or it will come off like spam. And, make sure the messages sound authentic – if you were writing a LinkedIn message to a friend, what would you write in it?

If your Message Ads are too stiff, they’ll come off as spammy, too. Remember: This channel is a one-to-one conversation. Direct messages are sacred spaces – if you’re going to advertise there, you need to be extra careful about taking the time to make your Message Ads feel personal and relevant to your end-users. Make sure you’re delivering value to them in a way that feels authentic.

4. Twitter

Digital advertising is less common on Twitter because organic reach is still a significant driver of a brand’s performance on Twitter. This is very unique to Twitter – but even so, ads can still deliver strong results depending on what your goals are. Twitter has over 330 million monthly users globally. The majority of users are between 35–65 years old.

Advertisers have discovered a few niches that have high engagement on Twitter: B2B and e-commerce. Many B2B companies are using Twitter as a digital marketing tool, and Twitter users are known to spend a lot of money online. This makes advertising specifically to these audiences a great strategy.

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Twitter breaks down its ads into five goals:

• Awareness: Promote your tweets and maximize your reach.
• Tweet engagement: Promote your tweets and get more retweets, likes, and replies.
• Follows: Promote your account and grow your Twitter following.
• Website clicks: Promote your website and get more traffic.
• App downloads: Promote your app and get more downloads.

All of these can work together to help you grow your audience on the platform and convert users into customers.

5. Pinterest

Pinterest is a unique social media platform with 300 million users who are highly engaged and predominantly female. Some people say that Pinterest is the only platform where users actually want to see ads from brands they love because Pinterest is all about visuals.

How to advertise on Pinterest in four steps:

1. Pick a pin: Promote your best pins so they appear in the most relevant places.
2. Decide who sees it: Set up targeting so the right people see your ads.
3. Pay for results: Choose to pay for engagement or visits to your site.
4. Track what’s working: Once your campaign starts, see how it’s doing and make changes.

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Pinterest is great for businesses relying on photography to sell their products and who have a female target buyer persona.

6. YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine, second only to Google, with over 2 billion monthly active users. Ads on YouTube appear before and during other YouTube videos or as a stand-alone promoted video that’s displayed after performing a search.

Since you can target demographic information and interests, you can serve your videos to specific relevant audiences already watching videos from similar brands or on related topics.

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7. Snapchat

Snapchat’s 218 million users are predominantly made up of people between the ages of 18–24.

Snapchat offers a few ad types, including story ads, sponsored tiles in Snapchat Discover, and augmented reality (AR) lenses.

Snapchat’s ad types feel pretty similar to the advertising options on Instagram. What really makes Snapchat unique is the augmented reality lenses. AR lenses are sponsored by a business to create interactive moments that users can use and share with their friends. It might be hard to believe, but in this example from Dominos that pizza isn’t really there — that’s the AR lens at work.

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8. Tiktok

One of the newer — and most popular — players in the social media advertising world is TikTok. TikTok is all about creating short, creative, and oftentimes funny videos. TikTok has exploded in the past few years and has reached 500 million monthly users.

Advertising options are still limited; they are mainly geared towards driving awareness. TikTok doesn’t hyperlink posts to websites and only recently started allowing advertising, so businesses advertising on TikTok focus on boosting brand awareness rather than leads or traffic.

Promoting TikTok videos allow brands to build awareness with a young target audience. Most of the posts you’ll see on TikTok are aimed at getting laughs. From a brand perspective, you’ll want to create videos that are funny and align with other content on the platform. Think of things like dance challenges and memes. This type of content is the most effective.

Paid Search Advertising

People searching online are looking for something specific and will click on the first result they believe is going to be the most helpful to them.

You might be thinking: “I already appear in organic results on search engines. Why should I pay to advertise too?”

Well, there are three key reasons:

1. On average, digitally prepared businesses anticipate four times better revenue compared to the less-prepared ones
2. Advertising on search engines protects you from the competition who may be advertising on your branded terms.
3. Search ads appear first in the search engine results pages (SERPs) above the organic results.

Paid search advertising allows advertisers to capture the attention of their audience in a more targeted way than with organic search alone.

Search ads allow you to anticipate the wants, needs, and desires of your potential customers and serve ads to them that are highly contextual. Over time, the analytics of your search ads can help you analyze and improve those ads to reach even more people.

But how does Google know how to deliver the right ad to the right person? That’s where keywords come into play. A keyword is one word or phrase that someone uses to describe what they need in search. Advertising on search platforms takes the targeting capabilities available on social media platforms, like demographics and location, and layers it with the addition of keywords.

When a Google user types a query into the search field, Google returns a range of results that match the searcher’s intent. Keywords align with what a searcher wants and will satisfy their query. You select keywords based on which queries you want to display your ad alongside.

Keyword research is just as important for paid ads as it is for organic search. That’s because Google matches your ad with search queries based on the keywords you selected. Each ad group you create within your campaign will target a small set of keywords and Google will display your ad based on those selections.

Let’s say Mary is moving to a different house and is looking for a home mover. So she goes into Google and types “who are the best movers.” By searching “best home movers,” she’s going to see results for advertisers that targeted keywords like “moving companies” and “top-rated movers.”

Search engines also consider your intent when choosing the types of ads to display.

In the example above, search ads were the most helpful resource. But what if you’re looking for a location-based business, like a coffee shop? In Google maps, you might see “Promoted Pins” like these, shown in purple on the map and in the search results on the left. Promoted Pins are a great way for businesses to attract customers to their business based on location.

What if you’re looking to make a purchase? Well, Google might show you a different kind of post to match your intent, such as Shopping Post Ads.

In this example below, Google shows you shopping post ads for the keyword “buy snowboard.” Since my query includes the word “buy,” Google knows that I’m interested in making a purchase, so I am shown ads for products I might be interested in.

So how do you select your keywords?

Keywords typically fall under two categories: brand and non-brand.

A brand keyword is a word or phrase that includes a brand’s name or variations of a brand’s name. For example, some of HubSpot’s brand keywords include HubSpot, HubSpot Free CRM, and HubSpot Marketing Hub. These are all variations of the HubSpot brand and the tools that we offer.

Non-brand keywords are all other relevant keywords that don’t include a brand’s name or variations of a brand’s name. Some of HubSpot’s non-brand keywords include inbound marketing, sales software, and customer relationship management.

While these keywords are not part of HubSpot’s brand name, they are relevant terms that allow HubSpot to reach audiences that might be interested in eventually making a purchase.

Brand and non-brand keywords play a role in your digital advertising strategy. Brand keywords help you protect your brand from your competitor’s ads.

If you don’t run ad campaigns for brand keywords, you’ll leave your business vulnerable to losing website traffic to the competition who is bidding on your brand keywords. Non-brand keywords still have a role to play, too. Non-brand keywords allow you to reach new audiences unfamiliar with your brand.

When it comes to when your ad is displayed, you don’t just want to pick a certain group of keywords and have the ad shown only when those keywords are entered into the search engine.

This is where match type comes in. Since there’s an infinite number of ways that people can actually search for one term, Google gives you three match types to choose from: exact match, phrase match, and broad match. You can even use a broad match modifier and exclude negative keywords to optimize where your ads are delivered.

Let’s take a look at each match type:

• Exact match: A keyword set to exact match will only display your ad if the search term includes that exact keyword or a very close variation. Exact match keywords are surrounded in [brackets].
• Phrase match: A keyword set to phrase match will display your ad if the search term contains the same order of the words, but it can also contain additional words. Phrase match keywords are surrounded by “quotes”.
• Broad match: A keyword set to broad match displays your ad when the search term contains any or some combination or variations of the words in your keyword, in any order. Broad match keywords don’t include any symbols.
• Broad match modifier: The broad match modifier allows you to select keywords that must be included in the search query for your ad to be displayed. Keywords with a broad match modifier use a +plus sign.
• Negative keywords: Excludes your ads from being shown on searches with that term. Negative keywords include a -minus sign.

Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo

There are a few advertising platforms out there for search, including Google, Bing, and Yahoo. But Google is by far the most used search engine out there. With 3.5 billion search queries a day, over 71% of the total searches made daily around the world are done on Google. Google brings in six times more searches every day than Bing and Yahoo, combined.

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But this doesn’t mean you should entirely rule out advertising on these other platforms. In some cases, you can achieve impressive results with a smaller ad spend on Bing and Yahoo than you could on Google since there is less competition from advertisers.

My recommendation is to dig into your organic traffic to identify if Bing or Yahoo make up a significant amount of traffic for any given keywords or topics. This might indicate that advertising for those keywords on Bing or Yahoo could be profitable.

Regardless of where you advertise, the good news is that advertising on all of these platforms more or less work and look the same. So knowing how to advertise on one will make advertising on the others easier.

Native Advertising

Publishers like BuzzFeed and The Dodo produce content that snowballs in popularity on social media almost every day. And they make money by helping other brands do it, too. Brands will pay these publishers to craft posts and videos that follow the publishers’ formula for virality. They also pay publishers to distribute this sponsored content to their massive audience through social media and their website.

This is native advertising.

Check out this example from Geico. It partnered with BuzzFeed to create this video advertisement for morning workouts. It’s a topic that is loosely related to insurance, which Geico sells, and it tapped into BuzzFeed’s expertise to create this video that feels right at home with the rest of the content on the site.

When you pay for a publisher’s native advertising services, you’ll be able to leverage their editorial expertise and audience reach to help your brand tell captivating stories to a bigger and better viewership. And each publisher is going to support different ad formats and creative types.

During the creative process, you’ll collaborate with publishers to craft sponsored content that covers one of their main topics and looks like a regular piece of content on the publisher’s website.

This way, even though your post is technically promotional, it won’t disrupt their audience’s browsing experience. They’ll enjoy reading your post and won’t feel like you or the publisher are advertising to them. This exposes your work to a huge, engaged viewership and attracts new followers to your brand.

Native advertising creates a symbiotic relationship between publishers and brands. Publishers who do sponsored content right reap the benefits of another revenue stream and gain more audience trust if they promote a native ad from a trustworthy brand.

For brands, collaborating with prominent publishers can unleash unprecedented amounts of creativity to help them win over the publishers’ audience and boost engagement — as the click-through rate on native ads far exceeds traditional. For example, T Brand Studio, the New York Times native ad business, crafted sponsored posts that captured as much engagement as some of nytimes.com’s highest-performing articles.

To find the optimal native advertising opportunities for your brand, try using StackAdapt or Nativo.

Display Advertising

Display ads are a controversial topic in the digital marketing community. For almost 25 years, advertisers have abused them by tricking internet users into clicking misleading ads — some malicious display ads have even infected people’s computers with viruses. It’s easy to see why people have developed banner blindness and can’t stop downloading ad blockers: display ads have the reputation of being intrusive, distracting, and irrelevant.

On the other side of the spectrum, though, display advertising technology has advanced to the point where ad networks can leverage data and machine learning to offer advertisers more effective targeting strategies and consumers more relevant ads.

Ad networks like Google Display Network and Facebook’s Audience Network are the leaders in the banner ad renaissance. They can display your ads to the right target audience at the right place and time. And if you want more control of your advertising, they’ll let you decide where to place your ads. Below, we’ll cover each ad networks’ features and targeting capabilities:

1. Google Display Network

When you use Google’s Display Network, you can design visually appealing ads and place them on over two million websites and apps, YouTube, and Gmail.

You can also build new audiences by targeting people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service and remarket website visitors just by importing a list of their contact information.

If you don’t want to build out your ideal audience or deal with bidding, you can let Google Ads do it for you. Its automated targeting and bidding features can identify your highest-converting audience for the best return on investment.

Display ads can be most effective when retargeting an audience that’s already familiar with your brand.

2. Facebook’s Audience Network

With Facebook’s Audience Network, brands can expand their Facebook ad campaigns and use the same targeting data they use on the platform to advertise on a huge collection of websites and apps.

Brands can place native ads, banner ads, full-screen ads, in-stream video ads, and rewarded video ads (for example, “Watch this video ad to get more tokens!”) on the network’s websites and apps that their Facebook audience frequently visits.

This type of advertising can be particularly effective for mobile games, like in the example below from 5agame who was able to attribute 80% of their revenue through their rewarded video.

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Now that you know about all of the digital ad types that are available, the next step is to learn how to leverage the right ads for your business to achieve your goals.

If you want to continue leveling up your ads training, check out HubSpot Academy’s free course on the Digital Advertising Training Course.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

What Is Earwax Under a Microscope and Why Should I Care?

Earwax Removal Manually: Earwax removal can also be performed manually. An otolaryngologist generally employs suction, specialised tiny equipment, and a microscope to magnify the ear canal. Manual removal is recommended if your ear canal is too small, your eardrum has a perforation or tube, previous procedures have failed, or you have diabetes or a compromised immune system.

Microsuction Ear Wax Removal

Earwax does not form in the deep part of the ear canal near the eardrum but rather in the outer third. When a patient’s earwax rubs on the eardrum, it is generally a result of examination with cotton swabs, hairpins, or twisted napkin corners. These items aid in the advancement of earwax further into the ear canal.

Since 1996, the FDA has taken several effective regulatory actions, including product seizures and injunctions, to address rising public concerns about ear candles’ production, marketing, and usage. These actions were implemented partly due to breaches of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that constituted a serious health danger.

The Pros And Cons Of Micro Suction Ear Wax Removal

Noise is also a role in tinnitus. Consider how it feels to leave a nightclub or a loud performance with your ears ringing. Micro-extraction noise can have a similar impact. Once again, it is merely temporary and will disappear in a few days. Microaspiration may aggravate pre-existing tinnitus. Again, microaspiration should be done sparingly, but if your tinnitus is causing you significant distress, probably, this is not the best solution for you.

Microsuction Ear Wax Removal

When Dr. Wong of Cedars Sinai Hospital in the United States is asked if cotton swabs may be used to clean the ears, he responds, “No way!” USE IT OUTSIDE YOUR EARS ONLY! According to Dr Wong of Cedars Sinai Hospital in the United States, cotton swabs should not clean the ears. USE CAREFULLY IN YOUR EARS! The earwax is pushed deeper and deeper when you use a cotton swab as a stopper in your ear canal. One issue is that it cannot be removed once earwax has been pushed deeper into the ear. When a cotton swab is used as a stopper in the ear canal, the earwax is pushed further and deeper into the canal. One difficulty is that once earwax has been pushed deeper into the ear, it is impossible to remove.”

Ear Wax Removal Using Microsuction

I feel that earwax softening drops should be taken four to five days before a visit, regardless of the treatment. Sticky earwax is simpler to remove, which makes it easier on you. Rather than utilizing drops, consider using a spray-on oil that covers the wax and ear canal without requiring you to lie still for twenty minutes.

Micro-suction gently removes earwax from the ear canal using a specialized medical vacuum pump. The procedure is performed using a specialized microscope or loupes magnifying glasses designed with microscopes. This enables the expert to monitor their actions in real-time. No beverages are consumed during the procedure. This method is the gold standard for earwax removal, as well as the safest.

Earwax Types

The earwax is sucked out using a microscope to inspect our work and medical suction equipment for micro-suction. A tiny piece of steel is attached to the suction tube’s end, which we may use to gently suction the earwax out of the ear canal.

Under a microscope, what is earwax, and why should I care?

Manual earwax removal is also possible. An otolaryngologist generally employs suction, specialised tiny equipment, and a microscope to magnify the ear canal. Manual removal is recommended if your ear canal is too small, your eardrum has a perforation or tube, previous procedures have failed, or you have diabetes or a compromised immune system.

Earwax

Under ideal conditions, it should never be necessary to clean the ear canals. However, this is not always the case. When earwax causes symptoms or complicates a doctor’s examination of your ear, it’s time to clean it out. Cerumen impaction can manifest itself in one or more of the following ways:

It may be tempting to poke out earwax with a cotton swab, hairpin, pencil, or finger to remove it, but avoid it. While a portion of the earwax will be removed, the remainder may be pushed deeper into the ear canal. Additionally, there is a risk of causing eardrum injury. “You may look at your cotton swab and think, ‘Look at what I pulled out of my ear,’” Vaughan explains, adding that he has witnessed several instances of similar “intrusive” practices in his clinic. “However, that is earwax from the ear canal’s sidewalls after the majority of the earwax has been pushed deeper into the canal.”

Consult a physician before contemplating over-the-counter medications if you believe you may have an eardrum hole (perforation or puncture). Consult a physician if you believe you may have a hole in your eardrum before using any over-the-counter medicines (perforation or puncture). When the eardrum is punctured, the eardrum is perforated. Injecting eardrops or other objects into the ear canal might result in infection or discomfort. Naturally, flushing water via such a hole might be hazardous to health.

Despite your best efforts to keep your ears clean, hearing loss can occur. Both the eardrum and the ear canal skin are delicate and complex biological structures. Put an end to the practice of inserting cotton swabs or other strange things into your ears.

Burns, candle wax clogging, and perforation of the membrane separating the ear canal from the middle ear are among the most common injuries caused by users inserting the 10- to 15-inch-long cone-shaped hollow candles into the ear canal and lighting the exposed end.

Ear Mites

As previously noted, the method is rather noisy, but this is due to the suction in the ear canal, not the machine itself. If you are exposed to noise for an extended period of time, your hearing may temporarily alter. This is extremely unusual, based on the few studies that have been conducted, but it does not imply it cannot occur. If it does, it is just a matter of time until it vanishes.

Our ENT expert, Dr Gan Eng Cern, can diagnose and treat your ENT illness individually. Expect superior ENT care in a relaxing environment, including minor surgery, endoscopy, allergy testing, and microscopy.

Blockages and earwax accumulations

Since 1996, the FDA has taken several practical regulatory measures, including product seizures and injunctions, in response to growing concerns regarding the production, marketing, and usage of ear candles. These restrictions were implemented partly due to breaches of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that constituted a significant health risk.

Earwax is removed using micro-suction.

It is better to consult a pediatrician if you believe your kid has accumulated earwax or has blocked ears. Your child’s doctor can identify and remove extra earwax during routine ear examinations. Additionally, if your child gets frustrated and inserts his finger or other items in his ear, you should have his ears examined for earwax by his doctor.

The ear canal is formed like an hourglass and gradually narrows downward. Certain glands produce earwax in the outer part of the ear canal’s skin. This earwax is designed to trap dust and dirt particles and keep them out of the eardrum. Earwax typically accumulates, dries out, and then falls out of the ear, carrying debris and dust. It is possible, though, for it to gently move outward, where it will be washed away.

Certain glands produce earwax in the outer part of the ear canal’s skin. This earwax is designed to trap dust and dirt particles and keep them out of the eardrum. Earwax typically accumulates, dries out, and then falls out of the ear, carrying debris and dust. It is possible, though, for it to gently move outward, where it will be washed away.

Irrigation, more commonly referred to as ear syringing, is a common way of cleansing the ears that can be performed by a doctor or at home using a commercial irrigation kit. Water and saline are common syringe solutions that should be warmed to body temperature before administration to avoid confusion. The most efficient method of ear irrigation is to apply saline or wax-dissolving drops in the ear canal 15 to 30 minutes before treatment. If you have diabetes, a ruptured eardrum tube may be hazardous. With a compromised immune system, ear irrigation is contraindicated.
Earwax removal can also be performed manually. Suction cups, specialised small equipment, and a microscope are frequently used to magnify the ear canal by an otolaryngologist. Manual removal is recommended if your ear canal is too small, your eardrum has a perforation or tube, previous procedures have failed, or you have diabetes or a compromised immune system.

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Post Summary

• Modern homeowners turn to Google to find an HVAC company near them
• Your website needs to be found on the first page of Google to increase qualified leads, booked jobs, and revenue
• We share the HVAC marketing strategies we’ve used to grow heating and cooling businesses across the United States

How to Build a Comprehensive HVAC Marketing Plan, Grow Qualified Leads, and Increase Booked Jobs & Revenue

Homeowner needs are changing—fast—and the heating and cooling companies that adapt their marketing strategy to meet their demands will be the ones that generate more phone calls, more leads, and more booked jobs.

In today’s digital age, your HVAC marketing plan needs to target homeowners throughout their customer journey, from the moment they start searching Google to turning them into lifetime customers, even after the job is complete.

Because you need to focus on running your business (and not executing these strategies yourself), the Blue Corona team did the hard work for you. In this guide, we’ll cover digital marketing strategies to include in a comprehensive HVAC marketing plan, including:

• Strategies to increase qualified leads and sales
• Marketing channels to differentiate your brand online
• Tips to reduce your marketing costs

HVAC Marketing Case Studies

1. 300% increase in HVAC web leads
2. $90K in HVAC revenue with a 32:1 ROI during the slowest month of the year
3. 794% ROI on HVAC PPC
4. Doubled HVAC revenue with a 1,117% ROI
5. $16.36 cost per HVAC lead and an ROI of 9:1 with Google Local Services ads

Keep reading to see the HVAC marketing strategies that will get you results like the ones above, and contact us if you want an HVAC marketing partner to do it all for you.

The Modern HVAC Consumer’s Search Habits

Gone are the days you could solely rely on word of mouth to fill your call board with jobs, and so are the days where customers remain loyal to a company just for loyalty’s sake. Modern homeowners use Google to find an HVAC company near them.

Consider this:

• 97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else
• 55% of home service consumers run a search before scheduling an appointment
• 78% of Google searches visit the second page of search results

Summary: If your HVAC marketing plan doesn’t successfully position your company’s website on the first page of Google results, you’re losing calls, leads, and sales to your competitors—guaranteed.

1. Build & Better HVAC Website, the Foundation of Your Marketing Strategy

Not all HVAC websites are created equal, and as a result, not all of them will rank on the first page of Google or turn website visitors into leads.

However, there are several HVAC website design tips you can implement to increase rankings and convert more visitors into calls and booked jobs.

Pop quiz: Where should your company’s phone number be located on your homepage to get the most leads? Click here for the answer and more.

3 Website Design Tips for HVAC Companies

1. Build a Mobile-Friendly Website

If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re well behind the times. Mobile-friendliness has been a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm since April 21, 2015, and up to 75% of all local searches are done from a mobile device.

More than half of your customers are accessing your website through their smartphone or tablet, which means your website needs to be designed with a “mobile-first” mindset.

Your customers shouldn’t have to hunt for information and they shouldn’t have to zoom in to see your text. Additionally, they should be able to easily contact you and use your mobile website seamlessly—almost effortlessly.

Your website may be responsive, but that doesn’t make it MADE for mobile. Your goal is for someone to walk away thinking, “Well, THAT was easy. I’m definitely using them again.”

So, since you created a responsive HVAC website a long time ago, the next step is to consider how well your mobile website works for users.

2. Make It Easy for Visitors to Contact You

Once a visitor lands on your website, your site should be designed to make it as easy as possible for them to contact you. We recommend:

1. Phone number located in your website’s navigation area with a strong call-to-action
2. Contact form prominently placed above-the-fold (on desktop)
3. Website chat, for consumers looking to speak with a customer service rep ASAP

3. Incorporate Trust Builders Into Your HVAC Website

Trust builders are features of your website that build credibility with prospective buyers, showcasing your team’s services, value props, and company differentiators. These include:

• Real photos of your team – Consumers like familiar faces, and adding real photos of your team, service trucks, and office help build credibility.
• Customer reviews – Reviews can make or break your online reputation. Showcase customer reviews, video testimonials, and other great things customers have said about your company prominently on your website.
• Service areas – List the cities and towns you work in, or showcase a map on your website to let website visitors know you’ll work in their neighborhood.
• Value propositions – Upfront pricing? 24/7 emergency service? Lifetime warranties? Whatever makes your HVAC company stand out from the competition, make it known.
• Payment methods and financing options – Do you accept all major credit cards? Offer financing programs? Let your website visitors know ahead of time so there are no surprises once their appointment is complete.

Learn more about Blue Corona’s website design services.

Website Development

In today’s digital age, it’s not enough to just have a website. Today, customers want a seamless experience when visiting your site. A seamless experience often relies on your website’s code and structure—the “HTML geek speak” hidden behind its beautiful design.

• Fast – Yes, website speed impacts your bottom line, especially speed on mobile devices. On average, HVAC website visitors don’t wait longer than 3 seconds for your site to load.
• Secure – Website security has been an issue for a while. Security is a search engine ranking factor, and not only that, but it’s also a trust factor. This means your site is HTTPS, not just HTTP.
• Streamlined for Google – Google’s Page Experience update and inclusion of Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor mean your website not only needs to load quickly for users but not have a lot of sudden visual layout movements when users browse your site.

Dive deeper into this topic by catching up on the following blogs:

• 11 Web Design Mistakes to Avoid
• 21 HVAC Web Design Tips

 

 

2. Claim a Top Spot in Google Results with Local Services Ads

If you’re looking for HVAC marketing ideas, look no further than Google Local Services ads. They are available nationwide for heating and air conditioning businesses and are the first thing that pops up when someone searches for HVAC services.

Take a look at the image below of a modern Google search result page for the keyword HVAC contractor washington dc:

First come Google’s new Local Services ads platform, then PPC ads, then the local pack, and way down at the bottom are the organic search results.

What this means for you is that it’s getting harder and harder to show up in organic search results for geographically related searches.

In order to counter it, you need to be investing in Google Local Services ads for HVAC contractors and PPC ads (they show up at the very top for the search results page).

Here’s how it works:

1. You apply for a Google Guarantee badge through the Local Services platform
2. You provide Local Services with copies of your business licenses, insurance coverage, and list of employees to be background check and vetted by Google
3. Once approved, your ads are eligible to show at the top of Google’s search results when someone searches for HVAC services in your activated area
4. The searcher then calls you, and you are only charged per qualified lead

Learn more about Local Services ads for HVAC companies. 

3. Get HVAC Leads Quickly with Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads

There is a waiting period to get your Google Guarantee badge, so if you want to get leads quickly, pay per click ads—specifically paid search ads—must be included in your HVAC marketing strategy.

Learn more about Blue Corona’s PPC services for HVAC companies.

What Is PPC? Whare Are Paid Search Ads?

When using paid search ads, you pay to list advertisements throughout the internet search engines and platforms. Paid search marketing is oftentimes referred to as PPC (which stands for pay per click). PPC is the most common form of paid search marketing for HVAC companies there is.

The term “PPC” is self-explanatory. Every time your ad is clicked on, you pay the network that is showing your ad. Basically, you are buying visits to your website instead of having them visit you through organic rankings generated by SEO.

Is PPC Worth It for HVAC Companies?

Yes. For our clients using PPC as an HVAC marketing strategy, we’ve seen anywhere from a 794% ROI up to a 1,214% ROI.

Like we saw above, you need to do everything you can to get on that prime first page. Many people think PPC doesn’t work for small businesses, but that simply isn’t the case. The real question isn’t whether PPC works, it’s whether it makes sense for your HVAC company. In order to determine whether PPC advertising (or any other marketing strategy) is worth it, you have to know your numbers.

First and foremost, you should know how much you’re willing to pay for each HVAC lead you receive.

Do People Actually Click on Paid Ads?

If companies weren’t seeing positive ROI, they wouldn’t be running ads. And pretty much every major brand runs PPC ads with Google. Paid ads are effective for getting clicks to HVAC websites, but we understand that marketing strategies and budgets are not one-size-fits-all.

Click here for a more in-depth discussion about paid advertising.

4. Search Engine Optimization, the HVAC Marketing Gift that Keeps on Giving

Tired of paying Google to appear at the top of search results? Enter SEO into your HVAC marketing plan.

The Basics of SEO as an HVAC Marketing Strategy

When homeowners need HVAC services, 97% of them go online to find a contractor, and 93% of them start their online experience with a search engine. And when it comes to search engines, if you’re not on the first page of results you may as well not even be there at all.

While there are more than 200 actual search ranking signals, here’s what you should focus on if you want your company to show up on the first page of Google:

• Webpage content quality
• Webpage content length
• Website security(HTTPS vs. HTTP)
• Website mobile-friendliness
• Schema markup
• Page speed
• Social signals
• Quality backlinks
• Optimized images
• Domain age
• User experience

Each page of content on your site gives you an opportunity to rank for a specific set of relevant keywords, so the more content you have, the more likely you are to rank. If you’re looking to improve your HVAC SEO and rank higher in search results, try these 10 ways to improve rankings for contractors.

5. Improve Your Local SEO as Part of Your HVAC Marketing Plan

With the shrinking of the organic results and the rise of the local pack, local SEO is more important than ever for HVAC companies. Why? Because you want homeowners near you to find your business when they need your services.

If you want to get to the top of Google’s local listings or any other map listings, you need to do the following:

• Optimize your Google My Business page – The information you make public on Google My Business powers your local listing. Optimizing your Google My Business page (add photos, selecting your primary and secondary business categories, adding NAP information, etc.) will generate higher local search rankings.
• Fine-tune your website structure – By making sure your site has an XML map, title tags, meta descriptions, and other site structure essentials, you make it easier for your site to be crawled. In turn, this will result in improved rankings and an easier time of getting into the local pack.
• Associate your website with local directories – When these sites update online business listings, you want to make sure your own site’s information is correct and you’re in good standing with users. Local searchers love using directories to find services near them, so be sure to use them to your advantage.
• Make sure you’re in proximity to the searcher – Local means local. The closer you are to the search, the higher chance you have of appearing in the local pack.
• Have consistent business information across social media profiles – Yes, your social media profiles help local SEO, as long as they’re regularly updated and have the correct information. This includes having a consistent name, address, and phone number (NAP)

There are a ton of ways to improve your local SEO so you’re more visible to users in your service area, but let’s start with three of the easiest ways that you can boost your HVAC company’s local SEO right now.

6. Master HVAC Content Marketing with a Lead-Generating Blog

You need to build out your website’s content to try and capture more of those search rankings. Keep in mind that Google ranks web pages, not whole websites—so as part of maximizing your online real estate, you need to have pages for all your lines of business and more specific pages related to those services (i.e., emergency HVAC repair, duct cleaning, furnace inspections, air conditioning installation, etc.).

But eventually, you’ll run out of services to write pages about. So what do you do?

Blogs are perfect for bringing in qualified traffic for specific services. For example, a blog called “Do I Need a New Air Conditioner” fits perfectly into an HVAC marketing plan, targeting people on the fence about getting a replacement unit.

We explain more in-depth here.

7. Fill Out Your HVAC Marketing Plan with Social Media Marketing

Social Media Tips for HVAC Contractors

HVAC social media marketing is undeniably a great way to engage with your current customers, promote your services, and increase your visibility to potential customers.

But if you’re new to social media marketing, it can be tough to know where to start. So be sure to check out this detailed list of tips for marketing your HVAC business on social media.

Facebook

Does your HVAC company need a Facebook page?

Before you answer, consider the fact that your target market is already on Facebook. Why wouldn’t your business leverage Facebook as an HVAC marketing strategy? Read this post to learn how HVAC Facebook advertising can help get you qualified leads, create loyal customers, and increase your company’s search visibility.

Here’s the thing, though—if you want your Facebook strategy to a lead generator as part of your HVAC marketing strategy, you need to put money behind it with Facebook ads.

If you already use PPC ads, you might be thinking “Why do I need to do Facebook ads, too?”

The short answer is that the audiences for these two types of ads are different, and to maximize your online real estate, you should use both tools (if you can afford it).

There are several types of Facebook ads you can run depending on whether you’re looking for more website clicks, “likes” on your Facebook page, or engagement on a particular post.

Click here to learn more about Facebook ads for HVAC contractors.

Instagram

Want to spread brand awareness and create loyal fans of your HVAC business?  Great idea! Instagram is a surprisingly effective way to build your brand. In this post, we’ll show you nine effective, proven strategies for leveraging the platform.

8. Establish a Presence on Nextdoor

Stay Top of Mind In Your Highest Grossing Service Areas with Nextdoor Ads & Local Deals

If you haven’t heard of Nextdoor or aren’t active on the platform, you’re missing out. Nextdoor is a social media app for defined neighborhoods in the U.S., and it’s where homeowners get a pulse on what’s going on in their neighborhood.

It can also help grow your business—90% of American neighborhoods are using to get recommendations and find local service providers.

It’s also one of the best places to get referrals, build trust in your company, and increase brand awareness. The best part? Now local companies are able to advertise on Nextdoor.

Use Nextdoor Local Deals to Generate Leads within 10 Miles of Your Business

The most comprehensive HVAC marketing strategies combine Nextdoor advertising with Nextdoor Local Deals.

What Is Nextdoor Local Deals?

Nextdoor Local Deals are special offers, discounts, and promotions local businesses can post on the Nextdoor app for residents of specific neighborhoods within a 10-mile radius of your company’s location.

They’re the perfect opportunity to drum up more business and increase your brand exposure in your most desired neighborhoods. Consider promoting your current promotions

How Much Does Nextdoor Local Deals Cost?

Like any form of internet advertising, Nextdoor Local Deals cost money.

However, they are much more affordable than PPC ads and Local Services ads.

Nextdoor Local Deals can cost as little as $3.00, but the average cost of an offer is right around $75.

Visit our blog on Nextdoor Local Deals to learn how to create a promotion for your company.

9. Opt-In to Email Marketing for HVAC Companies

Looking for a great way to keep in touch with your customers and inform them about special promotions? HVAC email marketing is a great way to generate leads and sales from your existing customer base:

• 90% of email gets delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox, whereas only 2% of your Facebook fans see your posts in their News Feed.
• 61% of consumers enjoy receiving promotional emails weekly, and 28% would like emails to come even more frequently
• You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet

There’s also this: one of our HVAC clients made $17,000 in new sales from ONE email newsletter send in the slowest month of the year! You can see the case study here »

Get eight email marketing tips that you can apply to your HVAC company here.

How to Stand Out In an Email Inbox

Even when you know the basics of HVAC email marketing and you’ve sent out a few messages to your contact list, it can be tough to get people to open your emails. Click here for a few simple tips that will help your next email newsletter stand out from the crowd.

10. Generate More Online Reviews In Your HVAC Marketing Strategy

How to Get Google Reviews for Your HVAC Company

Reviews are important—period. About 95% of consumers read online business reviews, and 85% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. You can’t just get a few good reviews and call it quits, however—85% of consumers don’t trust reviews more than three months old.

Not only could low review ratings (or a total lack of reviews) steer potential customers away from your website, but higher review ratings may also help you get in the “local pack” on Google results pages. Read this post for guidelines on how to get more Google reviews for your HVAC company.

Dive deeper into this topic by catching up on the following blogs:

• Got a Fake Google Review? Don’t Panic
• 10 Ways to Get More Google Reviews

11. Make the Most of Video: YouTube

You, better than anyone, know just how many homeowners don’t know how to change their HVAC filter. What do modern consumers do when they need to do something but don’t know how?

They head to YouTube—86% of U.S. viewers say they regularly turn to YouTube to learn something new. YouTube is also the world’s second-largest search engine. Not only is video becoming the majority of the population’s preferred way to consume information, but it also increases conversion rates up to 80% when you put videos on your web pages. The key is in creating the right kind of videos and distributing them on platforms your target audience uses (social media, your website, email, etc.).

Before you hit record, here are a few things to consider in your video marketing strategy:

• Limit videos to two minutes or less to increase the likelihood of viewership
• Place videos on popular service pages
• Incorporate videos on blogs
• Upload videos to both your website and your YouTube channel
• Don’t forget about video on social media

12. Double-Down on Video with Over-the-Top (OTT) Advertising

What Is OTT Advertising?

What is OTT advertising, you ask? OTT is an acronym for over-the-top. It’s the delivery of TV and movie content to anyone who has access to the internet by going “over the top” of broadcast television.

In simple terms, OTT is long-form video and TV content watched anytime, anywhere, on any device, on any streaming service or TV network app.

What Are the Benefits of OTT Advertising for HVAC Companies?

HVAC companies have a very specific customer. The most profitable:

• Live in specific service areas
• Earn over a specific household income
• Live in homes (usually) older than 10 years of age

Each HVAC company has a slightly different ICP (ideal customer profile), however, the list above is a good start.

Via OTT advertising for HVAC companies, you can select from thousands of audience parameters, building a network of highly-qualified prospects who need HVAC services, including:

• Zip codes
• Age of home (and building type, if necessary)
• Average household income

Lift Your Brand with OTT Advertising

OTT advertising not only is proven to generate thousands (if not millions) of qualified impressions from homeowners in your service area, it also creates Brand Lift.

Brand Lift is a measurement of how visible your company and website is across all of your digital marketing campaigns, not just OTT. This means OTT results in more homeowners searching for your company online instead of your competitors’—who wouldn’t want that?

OTT Advertising Results: HVAC Company in Pennsylvania

Comparing a six-month period of running OTT ads to the prior six months (without OTT advertising included in their HVAC marketing plan), this Pennsylvania HVAC company generated:

• 156% increase in direct website traffic
• 54% qualified lead increase
• 93% increase in Brand Lift

13. Use Customer Service as an HVAC Marketing Strategy

Great Customer Services Is a Great HVAC Marketing Strategy

Too many companies treat customer service as an afterthought, and they’re making a terrible mistake. The #1 most effective long-term growth strategy any HVAC company can employ isn’t content marketing or SEO, it’s top-notch customer service. Learn how to make the most of it here. 

How to Show Your Customers Love

The first step to evaluating your customer service strategy is to find out how well it’s working in the first place.

And if your customer service representatives (CSRs) aren’t doing a great job, all you need to do is add a little extra training into your HVAC marketing strategy.

Handling Price Shoppers as an HVAC Company

Have you ever been in the office and overheard your CSRs’ calls, only to realize that many of the conversations revolve around the price of an air conditioner installation or furnace repair?

If you’ve felt disheartened as these price shoppers waste your CSRs’ time and don’t convert into paying customers, we’re here to encourage you to take heart—price shoppers don’t have to be frustrating time wasters. If your CSRs have the skills to properly handle them, you can turn these leads into customers. 

Dive deeper into this topic by catching up on the following blogs:

• Benefits of Call Tracking and Analytics
• 4 Approaches to Recovering Lost Leads
• How to Show Your Customers Love
• 5 Rules for Handling Price Shoppers

14. Live Chat: Communicate with Customers How they Want

In case you missed it earlier, 41% of consumers expect live chat on your desktop website, while 50% expect live chat on your mobile website.

If website chat services (like Blue Corona Chat) are missing from your HVAC marketing plan today, it’s time to rethink your strategy. Customers receive near-instant responses to their questions within 3 seconds of messaging you.

Website chat services leverage artificial intelligence to chat with your website visitors without diverting your CSRs from the phones. Or, give your CSRs the choice to takeover automated chats and engage with customers one-to-one.

Not only that, website chat services have proven to increase website conversion rates by 2%, on average. What this means is that adding website chat to your site can increase your volume of inbound customer leads by 2% over what they are today, without lifting a finger.

Need Help Executing Your HVAC Marketing Plan?

Now you know what you need to do to better market your HVAC business this year, but a plan is nothing without implementation.

Learn the basics of digital marketing strategy execution here.

We know that that you wrack your brain trying to come up with HVAC business ideas, and marketing can be complicated and frustrating at times—especially when you’re trying to focus on the day-to-day duties of running a business. If the above sounds daunting, I have a suggestion. Make sure you’re not making one of these awful HVAC digital marketing mistakes.

If you are, you know you need help. If you’re still feeling a little lost with regard to HVAC internet marketing, or you just don’t have time to handle everything yourself, we’re here to help.

Contact us online for more info about our HVAC marketing services.