Using Google Ads to build local SEO for a new HVAC business in Perth
A newly launched HVAC business had a problem pure ad spend couldn't fix: almost no reviews. New businesses hit this trap constantly. You need reviews to rank, but you need visibility to get reviewed.
Invisible without reviews
A newly launched HVAC business in Perth had a problem that pure ad spend couldn't fix: almost no reviews. With just 2 reviews on their Google Business Profile, they were invisible on organic local search, no matter how good the work they did was.
New businesses face this trap constantly. You need reviews to rank, but you need visibility to get reviewed.
The maths of a brand new profile is unforgiving. Established competitors in the same service area carried dozens, sometimes hundreds, of reviews, and Google's local ranking leans heavily on that kind of social proof. A business sitting on 2 reviews does not just rank lower, it barely registers in the local pack at all, which is exactly where most people looking for heating and cooling help actually click.
Paid search on its own would not have solved this. The moment the budget stopped, the leads would stop with it, and the profile would be no more credible than the day the campaign began. What the business really needed was a way to spend money that left something behind, a growing store of reviews and ranking signals that kept working long after the invoice was paid.
Local Search Ads don't just buy clicks, they buy real customers who show up on the map listing. If those customers have a good experience, some of them leave a review. So instead of treating ads and organic local search as separate channels, we ran ads not just for the leads themselves, but for the reviews those leads would generate.
Buy customers, earn reviews, compound
Three moves that pointed every dollar of ad spend at completed jobs, because only a completed job produces a review. It's a practical route to getting more Google reviews.
Local Search Ads, not landing pages
Optimize for conversations, not clicks
Let the review growth compound
Getting the profile ready to earn
Before a single review could land, the Google Business Profile itself had to be worth reviewing. We started by tightening the fundamentals: the primary and secondary categories set to match how people actually search for heating and cooling work, the service list filled out in plain language, the service area drawn accurately, and real photos of completed jobs added so the listing looked like an active business rather than an empty placeholder. It is the same groundwork we cover in our guide to Google Business Profile optimisation.
With the profile in shape, the priority order was deliberate. Reviews came first, because reviews were the missing ingredient holding everything else back. Every completed job became a chance to ask, at the right moment, while the customer was still standing in a room that had been too hot or too cold that morning and was now comfortable. A short, friendly request with a direct link removed the friction that stops most happy customers from ever leaving feedback.
Responses mattered too. Each new review was answered promptly and personally, which signals to both customers and Google that the business is attentive and genuinely active. None of this is complicated on its own, but doing it consistently, job after job, is what turned a quiet profile into one that compounds.
Leads now, an asset for later
And the knock-on effect: with more reviews, the business started showing up in organic local search results on its own, not just in paid placements.
How it unfolded, stage by stage
The plan depended on a loop that had to be allowed to turn. Each stage set up the next, and the value shifted over time from raw activity to a self-sustaining asset.
So I switched the ads off
After 90 days, we paused the campaign entirely, specifically to see whether the ad spend had built something that would outlast the ads. In two weeks with zero ad spend, the business still generated 4 leads organically. The ads hadn't just bought leads, they'd built a Google Business Profile credible enough to generate leads on its own.
Want the full method behind results like this? Read the guide on how to rank your Google Business Profile and website in local search.
More on this vertical: our HVAC marketing service, and an independent ranking of the best HVAC digital marketing agencies.
The lesson is bigger than one account
Every new local business faces some version of this chicken and egg problem: you need reviews to rank, and you need visibility to earn reviews. The lesson here is not that ads are magic. It is that paid and organic local search work best when you treat them as one system rather than two separate budgets fighting for credit.
Point ad spend at completed jobs, not clicks
Treat reviews as the product, not an afterthought
Give the profile time to compound
Measure the asset, not just the campaign
For a new HVAC business, the takeaway is simple. Spend in a way that leaves reviews and rankings behind, and the same dollars start doing double duty: winning the job today, and making the next job a little easier to win tomorrow.
Want ads that build an asset, not just buy clicks?
Get in touch and we'll map out a local plan that turns ad spend into reviews, rankings and leads that keep coming.