How to get air conditioning leads in Australia

If you install or repair air conditioning, you already know the pattern. Nothing for weeks, then a heatwave hits and you cannot answer the phone fast enough. The businesses that grow are the ones that were findable before the heat arrived. Everything below is about being that business. Some of it needs a website, some of it needs nothing but an afternoon and a spreadsheet. Americans call the trade HVAC; everything here applies whether you call yourself an air con installer, a refrigeration mechanic or a mechanical services contractor.

1. Start with the calendar

Demand for air conditioning is not spread across the year. It arrives in bursts, and the bursts are predictable. The Bureau of Meteorology turns on its heatwave service in October each year and keeps it running well into autumn, and since 2022 it issues heatwave warnings up to four days ahead through the BOM Weather app. That four day window is your busiest marketing moment of the year, and you cannot build anything in four days.

So the calendar looks like this:

• August to September: fix the Google profile, publish suburb pages, set up ads, book the pre-summer service reminders. Everything is built but quiet.
• October to November: turn ads on at a low budget. Post "book your pre-summer service" on your profile. The first warm week brings the early movers, who are the easiest installs of the year because nobody is desperate yet.
• December to February: raise ad budgets on heatwave warning days, answer every call, and let the website handle the people you cannot get to.
• April to May: the reverse cycle heating season. Shorter, smaller, but the same people and the same searches with "heating" swapped in.

2. Google Business Profile

When someone types "air conditioning repair near me" on a phone, the map pack sits above everything else. Being in it is free. Google's own help page says customers are 2.7 times more likely to consider a business reputable when they find a complete profile, 70% more likely to visit and 50% more likely to consider buying. Complete means all of it:

• Primary category "Air conditioning contractor", with "Air conditioning repair service" and "Heating contractor" as extras where they apply.
• Service areas listed by suburb, not just the city. A business in Blacktown should name Blacktown, Penrith, Parramatta and the suburbs in between.
• Services with prices or "from" prices. People compare in the map pack before they ever tap through.
• Photos of your actual installs, your van, your team. Not stock images of a thermostat.
• Hours that include an after-hours line if you have one. A heatwave caller at 7pm picks whoever is open.
• A post every couple of weeks. "Pre-summer service, $X, this week in Hills District" is enough.

3. Reviews, and the routine that gets them

BrightLocal's 2026 consumer survey found that 97% of people read reviews before choosing a local business, and Google is still the platform most of them use. For a trade where the customer lets you into their roof space, reviews are the deciding factor more often than price.

The businesses with hundreds of reviews did not get them by being nicer. They have a routine. The tech sends a review link by text before leaving the driveway, while the cool air is blowing and the customer is happy. The office follows up once if nothing arrives. Every review gets a two line reply, including the bad ones. Set that routine up once and it compounds for years.

4. Your website: suburb pages and the call path

For a repair, the map pack and a phone number can be enough. For an installation worth $2,000 to $15,000, people compare. They open three or four websites and look for the same things: which brands you install, whether you are licensed, what it roughly costs, whether you cover their suburb, and photos of real jobs. A site that answers those in thirty seconds wins the comparison. A site that opens with "Welcome to our website" loses it.

Two things matter more than the rest.

Suburb and service pages. Google ranks pages, not businesses. "Split system installation Castle Hill" needs a page about split system installation in Castle Hill, with the suburbs around it named, a couple of local jobs described, and the price range stated. Repeat for ducted, for repairs, for commercial, for each area you want work in. Ten to twenty of these pages, written properly, is the single biggest source of free leads an installer can build.

The call path. On a phone, the number must be a button, visible without scrolling, on every page. The quote form must ask for four things, not twelve: name, phone, suburb, what they need. After hours, the form should promise a call back time and the phone number should still be there, because the person reading at 11pm during a heatwave will call the first business that answers in the morning. The form should land in a place someone actually checks, and it should fire a notification, not sit in an inbox.

Put your ARCtick licence number on the site. By law, refrigerant has to be handled by an ARC licensed technician, and the ARC tells consumers to check the licence before work starts. Showing the number, and linking to the licence check, answers a question most customers do not know how to ask.

5. hipages, ServiceSeeking and Airtasker

The lead platforms work, and they are expensive in ways that are easy to miss. hipages charges tradies a monthly subscription and then prices each lead in credits. In 2026 the ACCC published a release on hipages' subscription terms, noting subscriptions of $25 to $999 a month on initial terms of six to twelve months, and that the ongoing nature of the fees had not been adequately disclosed. Read the contract before you sign.

The deeper problem is that the lead is not yours. It is sent to several businesses at once, and the one who calls first usually wins. If you are on the tools, you are not the one calling first. ServiceSeeking and Airtasker run on quotes against other tradies, which pushes price down.

The sensible use: treat platforms as a top-up for quiet weeks, answer within minutes or not at all, and track cost per booked job rather than cost per lead. If the number is worse than your Google Ads number, stop.

6. Brand dealer listings

Every major brand runs a dealer locator, and homeowners use them. Someone who has decided on a Daikin searches Daikin's site, types a postcode and calls whoever appears. That is a warm lead, from a brand you were going to install anyway.

• Daikin appoints Specialist Dealers, which it describes as hand-picked and trained to its standards, in a network of over 450 independently owned businesses. Getting appointed takes volume and training, and it is worth the effort.
• Mitsubishi Electric sells through Diamond Dealers and retail stockists and points customers to a dealer locator. Its FAQ also reminds buyers that only a licensed contractor can install, which is a selling point for you.
• Fujitsu General lists dealers and retailers on its where to buy pages, the same way.

Ask your wholesaler rep what each program needs. Then put the brand badges on your website and your Google profile, because the customer who found you through the locator will check both.

7. Builders, electricians, agents and strata

The most profitable leads in this trade never touch Google. A builder with twelve houses a year, an electrician who gets asked "do you know an air con guy", a property manager with 300 rentals, a strata manager with a dozen buildings: each is a lead source that sends work repeatedly and never asks for three quotes.

Winning them is slow and simple. Pick ten in your area. Visit or call, and make one offer that solves their problem, not yours: a fixed call-out fee for rentals, a 48 hour response promise for strata, a trade price and a clean site for builders. Then be easy to deal with for a year. Property managers in particular churn through tradies who do not send invoices promptly or do not turn up. Being reliable is the whole pitch.

8. Maintenance plans: the lead source you already own

Every system you install will need a service, a repair and eventually a replacement. An annual service plan, booked at install and reminded by text each spring, turns one job into ten years of work, and puts you first in line when the unit dies. It also fills the quiet months, because you control when the reminders go out. If you keep customer records in a spreadsheet, that is enough to start. If you have a few hundred customers, a simple job management tool pays for itself in the first season.

9. Google Ads: what a lead costs and how not to waste it

Ads are the fastest way to get calls during a heatwave and the fastest way to burn money in September. The basics that matter for air conditioning:

• Search campaigns only, to start. Keywords like "air conditioning installation [suburb]", "split system installer [suburb]", "air con repair [suburb]". Skip display and video until search is profitable.
• Negative keywords from day one: "jobs", "course", "parts", "DIY", "portable", "car", brand names you do not install.
• Call assets and call-only ads on mobile. Most heatwave leads want to talk, not fill forms.
• Send clicks to the matching suburb or service page, never the home page.
• Schedule budget to the weather. Raise it on warning days, drop it on cool weeks.

What a lead costs: there is no good Australian benchmark we would put our name to. The most quoted numbers come from LocaliQ's home services benchmarks, which are North American medians from 2020 to 2021: about $55 per lead and $8.94 per click for air conditioning services on search. Australian click prices in capital cities are often higher in summer. Treat the figure as a shape, run for two months with call tracking, and calculate your own.

Google's pay-per-lead format, Local Services Ads, is rolled out market by market and has changed its badges and terms several times. Check Google's current eligibility page for your area rather than relying on a blog post, this one included.

10. AI answers

A growing share of people now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Overview "who is a good air con installer in Parramatta" instead of scrolling results. Those tools answer from the same sources as everything above: your Google profile, your reviews, your suburb pages, and consistent business details across the web. If the basics in this guide are done, you are already in the running. If your business name, phone and address differ between your site, your profile and the directories, fix that first; AI tools treat inconsistency as doubt.

11. What to track

Most installers track jobs and revenue and nothing in between, which makes every marketing decision a guess. Five numbers, once a month, in a spreadsheet:

1. Calls and forms by source: profile, website, ads, platform, referral. Call tracking numbers or just asking "how did you find us" both work.
2. Lead to booked job rate, by source.
3. Cost per booked job, by source. This is the number that decides where next month's money goes.
4. Average job value by source. Platform jobs are often smaller than referral jobs.
5. Reviews gained this month.

After one summer of this, you will know exactly which of the channels above deserve more and which should be cut. Most businesses find that their own profile and website produce the cheapest jobs, referrals the most profitable, and platforms the most expensive. But measure it, because your area may differ.

The checklist

• Google Business Profile complete: categories, suburbs, services with prices, real photos, after-hours line.
• Review routine: text link before leaving, one follow-up, reply to every review.
• Website: suburb and service pages for every area you want, phone as a button on every page, four field quote form, ARCtick number visible.
• Dealer programs: applied to the brands you install, badges on site and profile.
• Referral list: ten builders, electricians, agents and strata managers contacted with one clear offer.
• Maintenance plan: offered at every install, spring reminders scheduled.
• Ads: search only, suburb keywords, negatives, call assets, weather-based budgets, landing on the matching page.
• Tracking: five numbers, monthly.

None of this needs Quenlar. If your website already does the job in section four, skip us and do the rest. If it does not, that is the part we build: suburb pages that rank, a quote path that works on a phone, and a free audit first so you know whether a fix or a rebuild is the cheaper route.