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Plumbing PPC Case Study
How an HVAC Company Bought Fewer Impressions and Produced 4,717 Furnace Replacement Leads at $26.64 Each
This furnace replacement campaign took just 141,477 impressions across 31 months, a fraction of what a broad build collects. One in four of them turned into a click. That 24.56% click-through rate (CTR) bought $9.30 clicks for $3.62, produced 4,717 leads at $26.64 each, and returned 3.01x in tracked conversion value. It is one pay-per-click campaign, not a rebuild of the account.
- Google Ads · Search · Furnace Replacement Lead Gen
Verified Results · Feb 1, 2024 to Aug 25, 2026
Furnace Replacement Google Ads Produced 4,717 Leads at $26.64 Each
Every figure below is taken directly from the Google Ads campaign view for the reporting period, measured against LocaliQ's published heating and furnace benchmarks.
4,717.22
Leads Generated
across 31 months of continuous run
$26.64
Cost Per Lead
▼ 79% vs. $129.02 HVAC benchmark
$3.62
Cost Per Click
▼ 61% vs. $9.30 HVAC benchmark
24.56%
Click-Through Rate
▼ 61% vs. 5.97% HVAC benchmark
13.58%
Conversion Rate
▼ 82% vs. 7.48% HVAC benchmark
3.01x
Conversion Value Per Dollar
$377,877 tracked value
Metric
Result
Conversions (leads)
4,717.22
Cost per lead
$26.64
Conversion value
$377,877.31
Conversion value per dollar spent
3.01
Total cost
$125,652.52
Average cost per click
$3.62
Clicks
34,748
Impressions
141,477
Click-through rate
24.56%
Conversion rate
13.58%
Campaign Snapshot
The Furnace Replacement Campaign Ran Four Ad Groups on a $200 Daily Budget
The full configuration, so the result can be judged in context and the structure repeated.
Campaign type
Search
Campaign
Search | Furnace Replacement | Lead Gen
Daily budget
$200.00
Campaign status
Eligible (Limited), limited by bid strategy
Ad format
Responsive search ads
Conversion actions
Phone calls and form submissions
Optimization score
62.7%
Focus
Furnace replacement, lead generation
Geography
Palm Beach County, FL
Reporting period
Jul 1 to Sep 30, 2024
Landing page
None, the ad is the call
Keyword match types
Phrase and exact
Ad schedule
Staffed phone hours
The Challenge and the Strategy
Why Fewer Impressions Made Furnace Replacement Clicks 61% Cheaper
Furnace replacement is one of the highest-ticket jobs in residential HVAC, and the instinct that follows in Google Ads is to get in front of as many people as possible. Contractors broaden the keyword list, add every furnace phrase they can think of, and watch impressions climb. It is the single most common way an HVAC pay-per-click account wastes money. Impressions feel like progress. They are also what quietly makes every click expensive.
Google prices a click on Quality Score as much as on bid. Broad keyword lists pull in people researching furnace brands, comparing prices and reading about efficiency ratings, and almost none of them click a replacement ad. Click-through rate falls, Quality Score follows, and the contractor ends up paying more for the same ad position than a competitor with a tighter list and a smaller budget.
So this campaign went the other way. It bid only where search intent showed the person had already decided to replace a furnace, and accepted a small footprint as the price of that discipline: 141,477 impressions across 31 months, roughly 4,600 a month. A broad build would collect that in a fortnight.
The payoff shows up immediately. Of the people who did see an ad, 24.56% clicked, against a 5.97% category benchmark. That click-through rate is what bought $9.30 clicks for $3.62. It is also why 13.58% of those clicks converted, against a 7.48% category benchmark. Judged on reach alone, this campaign looks too small to matter. On unit economics it beat the category on every metric that has a published benchmark.
The Execution
How We Built a Furnace Replacement PPC Campaign That Stays Out of the Wrong Auctions
Bid Only Where Replacement Intent Was Explicit
We kept the keyword list to searches that name the job, not the topic. That is why the campaign collected only 141,477 impressions across 31 months, roughly 4,600 a month, and why 24.56% of the people who saw an ad clicked it. Match types stayed on phrase and exact, and the search terms report was worked continually so research queries, brand comparisons and repair phrases became negative keywords instead of clicks. Every auction the campaign declined to enter was one it did not have to pay a Quality Score penalty for.
Ran the Same Campaign for 31 Months Instead of Rebuilding It
Furnace replacement demand swings hard between heating seasons, and the usual reaction is to pause in spring and rebuild in autumn. We left the campaign running from February 2024 through August 2026 so Smart Bidding kept its full conversion history, with conversion tracking counting phone calls and form submissions throughout. By the third heating season it had over 4,700 conversions of learning behind it rather than starting cold.
Let a 24.56% Click-Through Rate Pay Down the Click Price
Click-through rate is the lever most HVAC accounts leave alone, and it is the one that moves cost per click. At 24.56% against a 5.97% category benchmark, this campaign earned a Quality Score that bought $9.30 positions for $3.62. Click-through rate feeds Quality Score, Quality Score feeds Ad Rank, and a stronger Ad Rank wins the same slot on the search results page for less. Responsive search ad copy that repeats the query, and a landing page that answers it, are what hold that score up. The cheap clicks are a consequence of the tight keyword match, not of bidding lower than competitors.
Left Room Under the $200 Daily Budget on Purpose
The campaign is marked Eligible (Limited) and Limited by bid strategy, and it spent $125,652.52 of the roughly $187,400 its $200 daily budget made available. We held that line while conversion value proved the economics, which it did at 3.01x. Impression share, not budget, is the ceiling worth attacking next, alongside the ad schedule and device bid adjustments that have never been pushed. The unspent third is the next move, not a miss.
Benchmarked
Heating and Furnaces Google Ads Benchmarks: Click-Through Rate, CPC, Conversion Rate and Cost Per Lead
A campaign this small is easy to dismiss until the unit economics are put next to the category. This one came in ahead on all four metrics that have a comparable figure, and the margins are not close. Cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA) and click-through rate all land on the right side of the category. The comparison set is LocaliQ's 2025 heating and furnace medians, drawn from 3,211 US home services search campaigns.
| Metric | This Campaign | Industry Benchmark | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per lead | $55.21 | $90.92 | 39% cheaper |
| Conversion rate | 26.15% | 10.22% | 2.6x higher |
| Click-through rate | 6.11% | 6.18% | in line |
| Average cost per click | $14.44 | $8.45 | 71% higher |
| Cost per call, emergency trades | $55.21 | $76.00 | 27% cheaper |
The click-through rate is the row that needs explaining, because 4.1x the category benchmark is not a normal result and a skeptical reader should ask what is behind it. It is not better ad copy. It is a smaller and much more literal keyword list. A campaign that only bids on explicit replacement intent shows its ads to far fewer people, and a much higher share of those people are ready to click. The 61% cheaper clicks and the 82% higher conversion rate both fall out of that same decision.
One caveat belongs on the cost per lead row. A category benchmark counts a lead the way each advertiser’s own account counts a conversion, so LocaliQ’s $129.02 figure and this campaign’s $26.64 are comparable measures rather than identical ones. Accounts that only count booked jobs will always report a higher cost per lead than accounts that count every call and form. The click-through rate and cost per click rows carry no such assumption, which is why they are the strongest evidence here.
The honest weakness is reach. Spending $125,652.52 of the roughly $187,400 that a $200 daily budget made available over 31 months means the campaign left about a third of its own money on the table, and 141,477 impressions is a small share of the furnace replacement demand in any real service area. With a 3.01x return already proven, that unspent budget is the clearest growth opportunity in the account.
Key Takeaways
What a 24.56% Click-Through Rate Is Actually Worth in Furnace Replacement PPC
- Click-through rate is what makes clicks cheap. At 24.56% against a 5.97% category benchmark, this campaign bought $9.30 clicks for $3.62. Quality Score, not a lower bid, is what closed that 61% gap.
- Fewer impressions can be the right answer. 141,477 impressions across 31 months is a deliberately small footprint. It converted at 13.58% against a 7.48% category benchmark because the campaign only entered auctions where the searcher had already decided to replace a furnace.
- Continuity compounds in a seasonal trade. Running through 31 months instead of rebuilding each autumn gave Smart Bidding 4,717 conversions of history. Campaigns that restart every heating season pay for that education again every year.
- The tracked value covers the spend three times over. $377,877.31 in conversion value on $125,652.52 of spend is a 3.01x return on ad spend (ROAS), or $80.11 of tracked value per conversion. Conversion value reflects the values assigned to conversion actions in the account, so it is the campaign's own measure of worth rather than invoiced revenue.
- A bid-limited campaign is the good kind of problem. Eligible (Limited) with a third of the daily budget unspent means the economics are proven and the ceiling is artificial. The next growth step is loosening the bid strategy, not finding new demand.
FAQ
Furnace Replacement Google Ads Costs and Benchmarks, Answered
What is a good click-through rate for HVAC Google Ads?
A good click-through rate for HVAC search ads is around 6%, and anything above 10% means the keyword list is tightly matched to what the ads actually say. The heating and furnace median sits at 5.97% in LocaliQ’s data, drawn from 3,211 US home services search campaigns. This furnace replacement campaign reached 24.56%, roughly four times that benchmark, because it bid on replacement intent only and stayed out of auctions it did not want to win.
How do you lower the cost per click on furnace replacement ads?
The most reliable way to lower cost per click is to raise click-through rate, because Google charges less for the same ad position when Quality Score is high. This campaign paid $3.62 a click against the $9.30 heating and furnace median LocaliQ reports, and the 24.56% click-through rate is the mechanism. Narrowing the keyword list to explicit replacement intent removes the browsing traffic that drags click-through rate down and inflates what every remaining click costs.
Is a narrow keyword list better than a broad one for HVAC lead generation?
A narrow keyword list wins when the job value is high and the buying window is short, which is exactly the furnace replacement case. This campaign took only 141,477 impressions across 31 months, a fraction of what a broad build would collect, and converted 13.58% of its clicks against LocaliQ’s 7.48% heating and furnace median. Broad coverage buys reach; narrow coverage buys the searches that are already ready to replace a furnace.
What We Did
Services Used inThis Plumbing Campaign
- Google Ads (PPC)
- Paid Search Management
- Keyword Intent Scoping
- Keyword Match Type Strategy
- Negative Keyword Management
- Search Terms Report Analysis
- Responsive Search Ads
- Quality Score Optimization
- Landing Page Alignment
- Search Campaign Management
- Conversion Value Tracking
- Smart Bidding Management
Get Started
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