Starting an HVAC business: the 60-day branding checklist

A new HVAC company has eight brand decisions to settle in the first sixty days: a name that fits a van door, a Google listing started early, a logo that works in one color, vans that match each other, the all-brands line, a maintenance plan on the site, a listing and a site that win the 9pm call, and one set of files for the embroiderer, the sign shop and the printer. Here they are in the order they get done around Omaha, because the first thing that goes on the van tends to stay on it. Start the Google listing the same week as the name, because verification takes as long as Google wants it to.

Most HVAC names are a surname plus Heating and Cooling, or a town plus Air. Both work. What you're checking is whether it does the job on the side of a van and in a Google search.

• Say it over the phone. If you have to spell it, the customer will get the website wrong too.
• Does a stranger know you do furnaces? Comfort Solutions could be a mattress store. Heating and Cooling, HVAC, Air, or Mechanical says it.
• Is the .com free? Search the exact domain before you file anything. A .net or a hyphen costs you calls every year.
• Does it fit a van door? Count the letters. Past about twenty characters the lettering starts getting shrunk to a size you can't read from the next lane.
• Does it match the LLC? The name on the van, the listing and the invoice should be the same name, word for word.

If the name fails two of those, change it now. It costs nothing today and a full set of van lettering later.

The primary category on the Google Business Profile decides which searches you can show up in. Set up the listing as a service-area business, hide the home address, and list the towns you'll drive to. Then, in the category picker, type your trade and choose from what Google offers: the HVAC contractor option as primary, and the heating, air conditioning, and furnace options as secondaries if they're there. Choose from Google's list rather than typing what you think the category should be called, because Google's list changes and the names have to match theirs. Under services, list furnace repair, AC installation and the maintenance plan as separate items. The full setup is in the Google Business Profile guide, which is why it sits second on this list: verification runs on Google's schedule and nothing goes public until it's done.

The logo goes on the van in cut vinyl and on the polos in thread, and both cost more and look worse if it only works as a blue-to-orange fade with a glow behind it. Ask for the one-color version first. The longer version of why, with prices and the files you should get, is in the logo guide.

The full-color version comes second. Keep the name heavy enough to cut at door size, and treat the flame or the snowflake as a bonus. Plenty of HVAC logos use both, which is fine, but the name is what people remember. Branding on this site starts with the one-color version for exactly this reason.

EPA rules under Section 608 of the Clean Air Act require technicians who maintain, service, repair, or dispose of equipment that could release refrigerants to be certified, so that certification is one you'll already hold before the first service call. Whether that number has to be on the van and the site, and what contractor registration the state or the city wants, is a question for the Nebraska Department of Labor and the city you're working in. Ask before the lettering is cut, because adding a number later is a second trip to the sign shop. Leave a spot for it in the layout either way.

The first van gets lettered with care. The second one, six months later, goes to a different sign shop with a screenshot of the first, and comes back with a slightly different blue and the phone number moved to the rear quarter. Now you have two companies driving around Bellevue. A homeowner who saw van one at the neighbor's house won't recognize van two in their own driveway.

Keep the vector logo and a layout file that says where everything goes on the van: the logo on the front doors, the phone number on the rear doors, the website on the back, and a spot for a license or registration number, in case the state or the city wants one there. When you add a wrap instead of lettering, the layout stays the same; we design the wrap to match the rest of the brand and a local wrap shop quotes the print and install per vehicle. The lettering, the wrap layout and the yard signs are all under graphic design.

Nearly every HVAC company services every brand and says so, so the line is expected rather than a selling point. Where it goes matters more than how it's worded. On the van it's a small line under the phone number, in the same font as everything else, and it never gets a row of manufacturer logos. You don't have rights to those logos, and a row of them makes the van look like a parts counter.

• On the van: one line, small, under the phone number. "All brands serviced" or "We service all makes and models."
• On the site: a short sentence on the services section, then the brand names as plain text if you want them found in a search. Carrier, Trane, Lennox, Goodman, Rheem, whatever you actually see in basements around here.
• If you're a dealer for one brand, that's different. Their logo can go on the van, at their size rules, and the all-brands line still goes underneath so you don't lose the other calls.

A tune-up plan is the closest thing HVAC has to subscription income, and most new companies leave it off the site because they haven't written the plan yet. Write a simple one and put it on the site from day one: what a visit includes, how many a year, and the price. Two visits a year, one in spring and one in fall, a filter and a coil check each time, and they go to the front of the line when it's a hundred out. That's a plan. A homeowner comparing two companies in Gretna picks the one that looks like it will still be around next fall, and a plan with a price on it does that.

Give it its own section on the one-page site with its own heading, so a search for a tune-up plan has a page to land on, and put the sign-up as a form or a phone number rather than a PDF, so someone can actually buy it from the page.

The most valuable call a new HVAC company gets is the one from a house at ninety degrees with a dead compressor on a Sunday night. That customer isn't reading your about page. They search, look at the top three on the map, and call whoever looks open and looks like they'll pick up. Two things decide whether that's you.

1. 01

   The listing says open

   Set real hours on the Google listing. If you answer the phone at 9pm for emergencies, the hours should say so, because "open now" is a filter people tap. If you only do emergencies for existing customers, say that in the description instead of setting hours you don't keep.

2. 02

   The site leads with the phone

   The phone number is the first thing on the page on a mobile screen, it's tappable, and the words "emergency" and "same day" are near it if they're true. Someone with no AC isn't going to scroll for the number. If the number is in the footer, the call goes to the next company down.

The same two things apply in January when a furnace quits at ten below.

Three vendors will touch the brand in the first two months: the embroiderer, the sign shop, and whoever prints the cards and the invoices. If each of them gets a different file, you get three versions of the company. Send all of them the same kit.

• The vector logo, SVG or AI, in full color and in one color
• The color codes written down: hex and CMYK for print, the closest vinyl match for the van, and the thread color once the embroiderer matches it to those
• The font name, so the phone number on the van matches the phone number on the card
• One page that shows where the logo sits on a polo, a door, and a card

That's the starter brand kit. Without it the shirts, the van and the cards come back looking like three different companies. You should own every file in it. If a designer won't hand over the vector, you're renting the logo.

The name exactly as it's on the LLC, a photo of the van, the towns you work, whatever logo you have, and the maintenance plan if you've written one. From that we build the logo and the one-color version, the one-page site with the phone number at the top and the plan as its own section, and the Google listing set up as a service-area business with the categories picked. That's Ignition on the price sheet. If you only need the logo and the kit for the van and the shirts, that's Spark. The whole thing runs by email, so it fits between service calls.

IGNITION IS $375 ON THE SHEET: LOGO, ONE-PAGE SITE, GOOGLE LISTING. SPARK IS $150 FOR THE LOGO AND THE STARTER KIT.