These are the oldest channels an HVAC company has, and they are the ones a consolidated competitor with a call center two states away has the hardest time copying. They are also the worst reported, which is what the last section is about.
The wrap
Four things go on the side of the truck: the company name, one line saying what you do, the phone number, and the website. All four have to be readable from across the street, which is about 40 feet. The twelve-service list, the four manufacturer logos and the financing badge are unreadable at 40 feet, and they push the phone number down to a size nobody can make out from a driveway.
The number on the trucks is its own tracking number, so the call log can tell you what the fleet does. Same colors on everything you drive, including the two old vans and the owner's pickup. And wash them. A truck carrying two weeks of road film is still the ad, and the homeowner in the driveway is looking at it while the technician carries the old condenser past.
The yard sign
Asked for at the end of the install, while the homeowner is standing next to a system that works and is happy about it. The sign carries the truck's tracking number and stays about two weeks. The homeowner who says yes to a sign in the yard is the same one who will write a review, so the technician asks for both in one breath, at the door, before he packs up.
Signs get mowed over and walk off. Buy them a hundred at a time and stop counting them.
The door hanger on that street
While the crew is on site, somebody walks the twenty closest houses with a hanger that says you were on their street today, names the technician, and carries one offer: the tune-up at its real price, with the booking link and the sign's tracking number. It never names the house and it never says what the job cost.
This works on install days and on the day after a storm run. As a monthly mailer to the whole zip code it does nothing.
Nextdoor
Claim the business page and put the same name, hours and phone number on it that are on everything else. Neighbors post recommendation requests for HVAC work all summer, and an answer inside the hour from the owner's own account gets the call; an answer the next afternoon gets read by nobody.
Happy customers can be asked to recommend you there. The FTC's review rule, in effect since October 21, 2024, bans paid and fake reviews, undisclosed insiders and incentives tied to what the review says. A recommendation asked for with nothing attached is inside every rule. A discount for a recommendation is an incentive: the FTC's endorsement guides say it has to be disclosed, Google's review policy bans it outright, and a discount offered only for a good word breaks the FTC rule itself. The neighborhood favorite awards run once a year, and the badge goes on the website when you win one.
Referrals
One program, the same terms for everyone, paid after the referred job closes. A credit on the next service visit or a check; pick one, put it on the invoice and on the website, and tell every technician the same sentence about it. The tiered version with three levels gets explained three different ways by three technicians and then nobody uses it.
How to tell whether any of it works
Two tracking numbers carry most of the measurement: one on the trucks, one on the yard signs and door hangers. Both land in the call log with a source attached, and both get listened to and tagged like every other call, because they feed the same cost per booked job line. Ask how the caller heard about you on every booking and write the answer down next to the tracked source, because the two disagree often enough to be worth reading side by side.
The truck's real effect never shows up on the truck's number. The neighbor who watched the crew work on Tuesday looks the company up on Thursday, types the name into Google, and clicks the ad or the map listing, and the report credits Google. The closest thing to a measurement is the branded search line: watch impressions on your own company name in Search Console and in the brand campaign for the six weeks after a heavy run of installs in one neighborhood, and see whether the line moves.