A heat pump is an air conditioner that also heats
The buyer is the homeowner whose air conditioner died in April. On a house that already has a furnace, the sale is the difference between the two boxes, and the conversation is about the winter bill and what backs the system up when it gets cold.
After that: houses on propane or fuel oil, where the running cost comparison sells by itself. All-electric new construction and gut renovations, where there is no gas line to argue with. Cold-climate houses going dual fuel with the existing furnace kept as backup. And anyone sitting inside a utility rebate.
What went away is the homeowner who read up to $2,000 back and started shopping. That buyer was shopping for the credit, and no version of the page brings them back this year.
What ended on December 31, 2025
The 25C credit, 30% of qualifying equipment cost capped at $2,000 a year for a heat pump, ended for property placed in service after that date under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025. The 25D credit, the one geothermal used, ended for expenditures after the same date.
Utility rebates did not end. Each utility sets its own, they change through the year, and some run until a pot of money is empty. The state programs funded under the Inflation Reduction Act, HEAR and HOMES, run state by state, and several were paused or reworked during 2025.
So the heat pump page carries a dated list: the utility by name, what it pays on, the date you last checked. Anything you have not verified this month comes off the list. A rebate that expired in March turns into a phone call about why the quote is higher than the website said.
What to say about cold weather
Homeowners ask two things. Does it still heat when it is 10 degrees out, and what happens when it cannot keep up.
Answer both without specifications you would have to defend on the phone. The version a technician can say out loud runs about like this. The units we install keep heating well below freezing. The output falls as the temperature drops, and on a dual fuel system the furnace takes over below a switchover point we set for your house and your gas rate. Then one sentence about what you have put in around that metro and how those houses came through the winter.
The page, in order
The replacing-the-air-conditioner-anyway paragraph first, with the increment priced. The monthly payment second, with the rate and the term printed next to it, the same way a straight replacement page carries them. The dated rebate list third. Then a photo of a unit your crew installed, on a house, with the technician's name under it.
What to buy in search and on Meta
In search the terms worth money have a decision inside them: heat pump installation cost, heat pump vs furnace, cold climate heat pump, and the name of the local utility next to the word rebate. That last one is cheap and the intent is high, because a homeowner reading a rebate page has already decided to spend money.
On Meta the audience is the part of your own customer list with systems past 12 years old, the segment built for the spring campaign. Those households have met your technicians and have a service history with you.
The metro decides how much of this to build
In the Mountain West and Northwest metros, Denver, Portland and Seattle among them, the rebate deadlines move the calendar, so the dated list is the page and the deadline is the reason a homeowner decides now. In the Southeast the heat pump is the default cooling system already, and the heat pump page is a replacement page that happens to say heat pump.
In a gas-heated Midwest metro the heat pump page is a small share of replacement traffic, and writing more of it does not change that. Budget it as the page that catches the propane households and the dual fuel conversions, and put the rest of the money on furnaces and air conditioners.