Results
HVAC: Conversion Rate Up 172% From an Account Audit
No new channel, no bigger budget, no rebuilt website — an audit of the existing Google Ads account and the changes that came out of it. The conversion rate went from 2.5% to 6.8%, and cost per lead from $150 to $65, on the same $10,000 a month.
Audits are unglamorous and they're where most of the recoverable performance in an established account sits, because accounts accumulate. Settings get changed for a reason that expired, campaigns get launched and never turned off, and defaults nobody chose stay switched on for years.
Both numbers come from the same cause. A conversion rate is leads divided by clicks and a cost per lead is spend divided by leads — fix the traffic and the conversion definition, and the same budget buys more than twice the leads. That's why these two figures move together rather than being two separate wins.
The situation
| At the start | |
|---|---|
| Service area | Beckley, West Virginia and the surrounding region |
| Monthly ad spend | $10,000 |
| Conversion rate | 2.5% |
| Cost per lead | $150 |
This one isn't a Nashville client. It's included because the account problem and the fix are identical wherever the business is — but it would be dishonest to file it under local work, so we don't.
What an audit actually examines
| Area | What's being checked |
|---|---|
| Conversion actions | Is the account counting real leads, or page views and misdials? |
| Search terms | What is the money actually buying, as opposed to which keywords were chosen |
| Geographic targeting | Service area accuracy, and presence versus presence-or-interest |
| Networks | Search partners and display expansion blended into search reporting |
| Campaign structure | Budget distribution against what actually produces work |
| Ad schedule | Whether ads run when someone can answer |
| Landing destinations | Whether traffic lands on a relevant page or the homepage |
| Call tracking | Whether phone conversions reach the platform at all |
The conversion action row is usually the one that moves the number most, and it's the least obvious. If an account counts something that isn't a lead as a conversion, automated bidding optimises toward buying more of it — so the fix changes what the platform purchases from that day on, not just what the report says.
What happened
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conversion rate | 2.5% | 6.8% | +172% |
| Cost per lead | $150 | $65 | −57% |
| Monthly spend | $10,000 | $10,000 | Unchanged |
Seasonality matters more here than in any other case study on this site. HVAC demand swings hard, and a conversion rate measured across a summer against a baseline from a shoulder month will overstate the improvement substantially.
Is your situation similar?
This fits an account that's been running a while without being properly examined — inherited, set up years ago, or built on defaults. If nobody has read your search terms report in the last quarter, there is very likely a version of this available to you.
It's the wrong reference if you're starting from zero, or if the constraint is that nobody answers the phone — no audit fixes that, and it's cheaper to solve.
Most of an audit is work you can do yourself. The checklist is published, free, no email. If that's your whole problem, do it and keep the money.
More on Google Ads and marketing for HVAC companies · what we charge
Written by Jared DeValk, founder of Nashville Digital. Published with the client's permission. Last reviewed September 2026.