In other words, whatever you ‘say’ about your company in your marketing, must match how your company looks, sounds, and behaves in the eyes of the customer.

The first step is deciding who you are. For Jerry Kelly, we are 100% residential repair and replacement. As such, we are in-home retailers. We have a retail mentality and that means we sell inside the home.

If you look at any good retailers ‘ clothing stores, brewpubs, restaurants, and so on ‘ branding and marketing is everything.
By comparison, contractors in the new construction market provide a component (the HVAC equipment) to something someone else sells (the house). That is not retail. That is wholesale.

Write Everything Down – Seriously

Our marketing guidelines are written down and dictates how our truck wraps must look, what our color schemes are, how and where we use our logo, and so on. That is key to the psychology of helping people remember who you are. What I’ve found is that in HVAC it’s really hard to drive demand. Especially when the weather can impact how people feel.

What can anyone say to a consumer to compel them to have an HVAC person interrupt their life?

The answer is, ‘Not much.’ So, you must find ways to become Top-of-Mind when consumers need you. It also means finding ways to drive phone calls during the offseason ?- like offering discounted maintenance. You need to provide enticements that help get your people inside the house.

In other words, marketing is about finding ways to get inside the house and make additional sales. Branding is where the consumer remembers you and keeps your company top-of-mind.

Selling Unique Services Versus Selling Equipment

Think about this: If you compare almost any piece of manufactured equipment to any other (no matter who manufactures them) by stripping off their sheet metal wrappers and laying out their components on the floor side-by-side, you almost wouldn’t know which piece of equipment those components came from. Why? Almost all equipment have components from the same component manufacturers – Copeland compressors, White Rogers circuit boards, Honeywell circuit boards, and so on.

Sure, there may be some differences in how those components are assembled within the equipment, but the true difference comes from the contracting firm installing it. Each contractor is a unique entity that brings its brand, skillset, and ability to resolve customer pain-points through how they design, install, and service the entire HVAC system (not just the equipment).

At Jerry Kelly, we want our uniqueness to be consistently applied and ‘branded’ so not only our customers but our employees as well, understand who we are and how we work. That means having written processes and procedures to make sure the equipment is consistently installed and is operating correctly.

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