What HVAC Marketing Costs in Ontario in 2026
The four lines on an HVAC company's marketing bill, what each one costs today with sourced figures, and the counts that tell you whether the money is working.
Part of HVAC marketing plan
The short answer
An Ontario HVAC company's marketing bill has four lines, which are ad spend, management, the website and the tools that track calls. Recent US benchmarks put a Google search lead for furnace or AC work at about $128 to $129 USD, and an Ontario marketing coordinator earns a median of $37.02 an hour. Judge the total by how many calls came in, from which source, and how many became sold jobs, because those counts connect the bill to your revenue.
Ask three agencies what HVAC marketing costs and you will get three numbers that cannot be compared, because each one is pricing a different bundle.
The way through is to split the bill into its parts, put a real figure beside each one, and then judge the whole thing by the jobs it sold. Here is how that looks for a furnace and AC company in Ontario in 2026.
The four lines on the bill
Almost every HVAC marketing arrangement, whether you run it yourself or hire it out, comes down to four things.
Ad spend. The money that goes to Google (or Meta) for clicks and leads. It goes on your card, or it should.
Management. Whoever builds the campaigns, writes the pages, gets the reviews flowing and reports on it. That might be an agency, a freelancer, someone on payroll or you at 10 p.m.
The website. A one-time build, sometimes with a monthly plan for hosting and changes.
The tools. Call tracking, your field-service software, review requests, a text-back on missed calls. Many of these you already pay for.
When a quote lumps all four together, ask for them separately. You cannot tell whether a price is fair until you can see what is ad spend and what is the agency's fee.
What ad spend buys you right now
The best recent public benchmark for HVAC search ads is LocaliQ's, drawn from 3,211 US search campaigns between April 2024 and March 2025 and last updated July 15, 2026. The figures are medians, in US dollars:
- Air conditioning installation and repair: about $9.68 a click and $127.74 a lead.
- Heating and furnaces: about $9.30 a click and $129.02 a lead.
- Home services overall: about $90.92 a lead.
Two things to take from that. HVAC leads cost more than the average home service, because a replacement is worth thousands and plenty of companies are bidding for it. And the data is American, in US dollars. Costs in an Ontario town can land higher or lower, and the only way to know is to run it and track it in your own account.
Local Services Ads, the boxes with the Google Verified badge that sit above the regular ads, work differently. Google charges for leads rather than clicks, meaning a call or message from a customer about a service you offer, and it is available to HVAC companies in Canada. Google does not publish a standard price per lead for HVAC, so treat any single figure you read online as one agency's sample.
If you want the full comparison of the three ways to show up for "furnace repair near me", we wrote it up in Google Ads, Local Services Ads or Local Search.
What management costs
This is where the quotes spread out the most, because the structures differ:
- A percentage of ad spend. Common with ad-only agencies. It rewards spending more, which is worth noticing.
- A flat monthly fee. The most common shape for a full-service agency. Check what the fee covers beyond the ads.
- Pay per lead. Simple, but ask who owns the phone number and the ad account. If the leads stop the day you stop paying, you have been renting a pipeline.
For a fair comparison, price the alternative of doing it in-house. Canada's Job Bank puts the Ontario median wage for a marketing coordinator at $37.02 an hour (updated November 19, 2025). At 37.5 hours a week that is about $72,000 a year before CPP, EI, vacation and the software they will ask for. One person rarely covers ads, the website, reviews and follow-up equally well.
For reference, here is ours. As listed on our packages page on November 5, 2026, Next Truck is $2,499 to set up, then $1,199 a month, +HST. Growth, the step up that adds the ongoing work bringing new calls in, starts at $2,999/mo. A maintenance plan launches from day 90 of Next Truck: $0 to set up, 15% of first-year membership revenue on members signed through the plan we launch, nothing after year one. We don't run ad accounts month to month.
What the website costs
A site that gets HVAC jobs needs a page for each service you want to sell (furnace replacement, AC installation, heat pumps, maintenance plans), tap-to-call on every phone screen, fast load times and a way to book or request a quote after hours. Whatever the price, those are the things to check for. A site that looks sharp and has one "Services" page will not carry ads or rank in the map pack for much.
If you are weighing the build on its own, our guide to what a small business website should cost in Ontario lays out the ranges and what each tier gets you.
The numbers that tell you it is working
Each month, count three things: how many calls came in, from which source, and how many became sold jobs. Those counts connect the marketing bill to the money in your account. Clicks, impressions and even leads can all look healthy while the installs stay flat. A provider who cannot tell you which sources sent the calls that sold is reporting on activity alone.
If you want a money figure too, add up the four lines for a month and divide by the installs and replacements sold that month from marketing sources. That is what each sold job cost you in marketing.
Whether that figure is good depends on your margin. Our guide on how much a trades business should spend on marketing walks through setting the budget from what a job is worth to you, which is a better starting point than a percentage of revenue.
What you should not be paying for
- Accounts in the agency's name. Your Google Ads account, your Google Business Profile, your domain and your call-tracking numbers should all belong to you.
- Long lock-in contracts before anything is proven. Month to month, with notice, is a reasonable ask.
- Reports full of clicks. You run an HVAC company. Ask for calls, booked estimates and installs sold.
If you want to see what the work already in your software can book before spending anything, our free Estimate Sweep runs for 14 days, then we take 20 minutes at day 14 to go through what got booked. For how we work with HVAC companies, see marketing for HVAC companies.
Common questions
How much does HVAC marketing cost per month in Ontario?
It depends on whether ads are included and who runs them. The management side ranges from your own time, to an agency's flat fee, to an in-house hire at a median of $37.02 an hour in Ontario (Job Bank, November 2025). Ad spend sits on top. Compare quotes line by line, never as one total.
What does a Google Ads lead cost for an HVAC company?
LocaliQ's benchmark of 3,211 US campaigns from April 2024 to March 2025 put the median at $127.74 USD for air conditioning work and $129.02 USD for heating and furnaces. Ontario costs can differ, so track your own cost per lead, and how many leads became sold jobs, from the first month.
Are Local Services Ads cheaper than Google Ads for HVAC?
They are priced differently, per lead rather than per click, and Google does not publish a standard HVAC price. Test both by how many of their leads became sold jobs.
Should the ad spend go through the agency's account?
No. The ad account should be in your name, with spend charged to your card, so the history and the data stay with you if you ever change providers.
What should an HVAC marketing report show?
Spend, then calls, booked estimates and installs sold, broken out by the source each one came from. Clicks and impressions can sit at the back, but they should not lead the report.