Why ServiceTitan And Housecall Pro Make Google Advertising More Expensive

Why ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro Might Not Be the Best for Your PPC Advertising Profits

Attention HVAC Business Owners, Managers, and Stakeholders,

In today’s post, we’ll explore why two of the most popular software solutions in the home services industry, ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro might not be the ideal choice for your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising strategies and maximizing profits. These software tools are widely used in the HVAC industry to streamline job management, customer relationships, and operational workflows which work extremely well. But when it comes to managing your Google Ads campaign think twice before you fully commit.

Right out of the gate I know you’re probably thinking, “But these tools are designed to make my business more efficient and save me time and money” And yes, they absolutely excel at customer relationship management (CRM), job scheduling, and automating workflows. The issue, however, lies in their effectiveness when it comes to managing your online advertising, particularly Google Ads.

The challenge is that while you might see initial success with these platforms, you’ll likely begin to notice around 9 months in that things aren’t progressing as expected. By this point, you’ve already invested considerable time and money into setup and training your team, integrating additional tools, and getting everything in place. Once you reach this realization, switching platforms can feel like a major disruption. You might find yourself stuck in a cycle of frustration.

Before you take the plunge, let’s dive into the hidden costs, particularly as they pertain to Google Ads, and examine how these platforms can impact your advertising results. I’ll also outline more effective alternatives and strategies to help you secure higher-quality HVAC leads and boost your overall return on investment (ROI).

The Biggest Challenge: Generating Profitable HVAC Leads

The Biggest Challenge: Generating Profitable HVAC Leads

Here at HVAC Leads we know it can be a challenge generating high-quality leads that convert into profitable jobs. But what if you could access an unlimited stream of HVAC leads—where you could charge rates high enough to attract top-tier technicians, recruit from your competitors, and offer competitive wages to secure the best talent?

Imagine consistently landing high-margin jobs and maximizing your ROI from your PPC ad spend. This would allow you to scale your business, bringing in customers who are willing to pay for premium service. Here’s the key: PPC advertising on Google can help you achieve this—but only if it’s set up and optimized the right way.

In reality, however, many HVAC contractors struggle to generate the kind of high-quality leads that lead to profitable jobs at a reasonable cost-per-acquisition (CPA). You want to ensure that your ads are reaching customers who will bring in solid profit margins for each job. This is exactly why, before committing to platforms like ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro, it’s critical to consider how they’ll impact your paid search campaigns.

Once you start using these platforms, it’s essential to ensure they don’t interfere with your ability to effectively optimize PPC campaigns. When you’re running ads on Google, you’re not the only HVAC business vying for those clicks. There are countless competitors all targeting the same customers. And success isn’t just about how much you spend, but how well you optimize your ads, landing pages, and backend systems.

If you want to be among the top 2% of HVAC contractors who can afford to stay at the top of search results—and bring in $5 million or more in annual revenue—everything depends on how you manage your ads and continuously refine your strategy.

1. The Local Number Issue: Why It’s a Big Deal

1. The Local Number Issue: Why It’s Crucial

One of the most common mistakes in advertising is failing to use local phone numbers. When a potential customer clicks on your Google ad, they’re immediately asking themselves three key questions:

1. Do you offer the service I need?
2. Do you serve my area?
3. Can I trust you?

You have just 3 to 6 seconds to answer these questions in their minds. One of the most effective ways to quickly build trust and demonstrate that you serve their area is by displaying a local phone number. Think about it—if you were searching for an HVAC company and saw an ad with a generic 1-800 number, would you call? Maybe, but probably not.

Local phone numbers are crucial. They not only help boost your conversion rates but also contribute to lowering your cost-per-click (CPC). However, here’s the issue: both ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro have limitations when it comes to using local numbers in their call-tracking systems.

ServiceTitan uses dynamic number swapping to track calls, which may sound like a great solution. But here’s the catch: if you serve multiple area codes, you won’t be able to use local numbers for all of them. Instead, you’ll be stuck with generic tracking numbers, which could negatively impact your conversion rates by up to 50%.

On the other hand, Housecall Pro doesn’t support dynamic number swapping at all. This means you won’t be able to track calls at the keyword level or use local numbers effectively for your campaigns.

For high-volume PPC campaigns, this can become a significant problem. Without local numbers, you could be wasting a large portion of your ad budget. Imagine spending $1 million a year on ads without local numbers in your campaigns—you could be losing at least 20% of your jobs from the start.

At HVAC Leads, we solve this issue by setting up dedicated tracking number pools for each area code your HVAC company serves. Unlike the limitations of platforms like ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro, we use tools like CallRail to bypass the local number problem, ensuring we can track conversions effectively with local numbers.

Here is a breakdown of CallRail integrations and why it matters:

Detailed Attribution: Allocate your ad spend with precision with source, campaign, ad group, and keyword level insights into which campaigns are driving the most valuable leads.
Complete Offline Conversion Tracking: Close the loop on your offline conversions within Google Ads, including crucial data like call time, geography, and Caller ID information.
Enhance Performance Marketing: Don’t let your campaigns underperform because your automated bidding strategy and Performance Max Ads are optimizing based on clicks only. With CallRail data, you can ensure your campaigns are optimized for calls, texts, and forms too.
Optimize for High-Value Customers: Set conversion values for your calls manually or through a CRM integration, ensuring you capture the true worth of every lead.
Calculate Cost per Lead (CPL) with Ease: Say goodbye to manual calculations. Customers using CallRail’s Form Tracking can seamlessly pull ad spend data from Google Ads, allowing them to calculate CPL accurately.

2. Sales Opportunity Tracking: The Missing Link

2. Sales Opportunity Tracking: The Missing Link

To truly optimize your PPC ads and generate high-quality HVAC leads, it’s essential to track sales opportunities. When a lead calls in, simply noting, “Yep, that was a call” isn’t enough. You need to know whether it’s a promising lead or not—and more importantly, if it turns into a profitable job. This level of tracking is crucial for maximizing your ROI.

Both ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro offer call tracking features, but they fall short when it comes to integrating those calls with your advertising platforms. Here’s where the issue lies:

ServiceTitan lets you track calls and log them within the platform, but the data doesn’t sync with Google Ads in real-time. As a result, you end up manually updating lead statuses, which introduces delays in tracking and can impact the timeliness of your ad optimization.

Housecall Pro doesn’t even support real-time tracking. You’re required to manually update the status of leads and jobs, leading to delays and data inaccuracies that can negatively affect the performance of your ads.

The solution? Use a CRM like Salesforce or Zoho, which can integrate directly with Google Ads. With real-time job status updates, Google can track when a job is successfully closed and target similar customers based on that data. This creates a self-sustaining feedback loop that continually improves your results over time.

Without this level of tracking, you’re leaving significant potential untapped. In fact, with job-level tracking in place, you could triple your profitability—getting 3x more profit from your PPC campaigns. The key isn’t just tracking calls, but tracking actual jobs.

3. Keyword-Level Tracking: Unlocking the Power of Data

Basic call tracking just isn’t enough. If you want to optimize your ads and improve your return on ad spend (ROAS), you need keyword-level tracking. This is essential for understanding exactly which keywords drive profitable leads.

Dynamic keyword-level call tracking allows you to track which specific keywords triggered a call and, more importantly, which ads they clicked. This information is invaluable for optimizing your campaigns.

• ServiceTitan has dynamic call tracking, but again, you can’t use local numbers with it. So you can track calls, but you’ll miss the critical keyword-level data that’s necessary for optimization.
• Housecall Pro doesn’t even offer dynamic number swapping, so you won’t be able to track keywords or ads that are performing best.

What you need is a service like CallRail, which gives you the ability to track keyword-level performance and optimize in real-time. This is how we help HVAC companies fine-tune their campaigns and maximize ROI.

Why Choose a More Flexible CRM System: Salesforce and Beyond

At the end of the day, the goal is to make your advertising work for you, not against you. That’s why we recommend using a CRM like Salesforce or Zoho. These platforms are not only more flexible than ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro, but they also provide better integrations with Google Ads and other advertising platforms.

Unlike the proprietary software systems, Salesforce doesn’t suffer from the same limitations when it comes to data integration. It can handle real-time job tracking, API integration with Google Ads, and it scales with your business as you grow.

The bottom line? If you want to unlock the true potential of your PPC ads and generate high-quality, profitable HVAC leads, you need a CRM and advertising strategy that works seamlessly together. You can’t afford to waste time and money on tools that limit your advertising and tracking capabilities.

Conclusion: Choose the Right Tools for Your Advertising Success

ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro are great tools for job management and customer service. But if you’re serious about growing your HVAC business through Google Ads, you’ll need to make sure that your advertising tools are as powerful and flexible as your service tools.

By integrating dynamic call tracking (via CallRail) and choosing a more flexible CRM (like Salesforce or Zoho), you can take your Google Ads campaigns to the next level and generate more profitable leads with a much higher ROI.

If you have any questions or want to dive deeper into optimizing your PPC strategy, Contact Us.