Home Services Marketing
Customer feedback and case studies from Lonta AI, a marketing partner for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses.
60 reviews
Last year I had to go to one person to change the website and another to find out where a call came from. This week I emailed Lonta our winter schedule and they updated the hours, the ads, and the booking page together. By Thursday the first batch of furnace tune-ups was on the board. That about sums up why I've stuck with them.
They helped us get our service ads and website in shape for a new territory. The first map included a few ZIPs we skip because of drive time. That took one email to fix. We ran our first service calls there in October and have two panel estimates on the calendar this week.
Update after six months. I can hand the team a list of towns and the kinds of calls we want, then get back to work. They handle the page, Google, and the tracking and show me what booked. We're spending about what we did with our last agency. We're running more of the jobs I actually wanted to buy.
I was going to bump the budget because we had a quiet week. They showed me three good calls we'd missed while both of us were on a commercial job. We fixed how the calls roll over first. The following week we picked up two jobs I'd have missed with the old setup.
We wanted to sell more repipes and were still getting mostly emergency calls. The page Lonta made for repipes worked well once it was up. I'd have liked to see a rough draft sooner. The new form tells us whether it's copper, galvanized, or unknown, which helps my estimator show up prepared.
By September we usually have to find things for the install crew to do. This year the gap between summer and heating season was pretty manageable. Lonta helped us get replacement quotes out earlier and advertised the tune-ups while we still had room. We stayed busy enough to keep everybody on a full week.
I'm usually the one who notices when the hours are wrong on a holiday. They asked for the whole schedule ahead of Labor Day and put it in the listing and on the site. They also made sure ads stopped when we closed. Came back to a manageable inbox Tuesday morning for once.
I'm happy with the calls we're getting. The first few weeks involved more meetings than I expected for a company our size. Some of it was access and some was going over the pages. We settled on a short email every week. That works a lot better when it's just me and two guys in the field.
Finally have the same tune-up offer in the ads and on the site. I can book it straight off the script we keep by the phone.
I asked for help making sense of a big jump in leads. They found we'd started counting clicks to the phone number even if nobody called. They cleaned that up and pulled a list of the actual jobs we booked. We were still ahead of where we'd been at the same point in July. I trust the smaller number a lot more.
Google is bringing us more jobs and the new site is easy to keep up. My one gripe is that the links to the ad previews expire before I remember to open them. They started putting screenshots in the email after I asked. Much easier for me to share with my partner.
They got us off the stock pictures of a guy holding a thermostat. Took the job photos we already had and built a replacement page around the work. The calls off it are better. Homeowners have usually read enough that I can spend the visit talking about the house.
One homeowner called, hung up, and then filled out our form. That used to show up as two separate leads and get two callbacks. Now I can see it's the same person and who got back to her. Works the way I'd expect it to. Took some back and forth to get it right for our office.
Booked a whole run of generator estimates for July. What surprised me was they told me to stop the ads when we got three weeks out on installs. I'd rather have a few people happy with their date than a bunch of people I can't get to.
I wish the first call recap had been in plain English. I had to look up what they meant by match types. I said so and our contact started writing out the actual searches they were changing. That I can work with. The calls have been much closer to what we asked for.
Water heater calls have been steady since we switched. If I need something changed on the site, I send one email. Good crew.
We took 41 more repair bookings in May than the previous May. It was a warmer month and we had another tech on call. I wouldn't put all 41 on the agency. What I can point to is 18 completed jobs from the new search campaign. That's a good chunk of work for us.
Pretty happy so far. The first couple of weeks felt slow while we got the photos and account access together. The ads started paying for themselves once we had the dedicated troubleshooting page up. I can see why they wanted the page finished before pushing the budget.
I had the same offer in three different folders and couldn't tell which one was live. Now they send me the actual page and a screenshot of the ad. The crew got their promo cards with the same wording. This is the first spring I can remember when everybody knew which coupon we were running.
We had 19 booked service calls from paid search in March and 31 in April. Same ballpark on spend. It got hot early, and the new AC repair page started doing its share. I like that the report lets me check the bookings against our schedule.
I had to ask for larger text on the mobile estimate form. My dad tried it and couldn't see what he'd typed. They fixed that and moved the call button up. We get a lot more pictures with estimate requests now, which makes it easier for us to tell what kind of visit to schedule.
Our install work was doing fine. Repair had holes in the schedule on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I showed them the dispatch board and they ran with it. We booked enough water heater and leak calls to keep a second repair truck moving midweek. Would have been nice to have that figured out last year.
The handoff from our previous agency was painless on our side. Lonta gave me a short list of what to request and did the rest once I sent it over. They kept the old campaigns going while the new pages were being checked. Our office barely noticed the switch, which is exactly how I wanted it to go.
I hired them because I was still messing with Google Ads at 10 at night. They took the whole thing over and explained it in terms of jobs. Last week there were three service upgrades in my schedule from the same campaign. I spent maybe twenty minutes on marketing all week.
Some of the first ad photos were too slick for our shop. I sent pictures from my camera roll and they redid them. We ended up with a full Saturday of maintenance calls off the spring offer. One customer said he recognized the truck in the picture from down the street.
My favorite change was the missed-call text. We used to try people back at lunch and half of them had already found a plumber. In the first couple weeks I booked five jobs from people replying to the text. Lonta set it up with our existing number and I can see the replies at my desk.
Three months in. Plenty of little service jobs and a steady trickle of panel upgrades, which is what I asked for. They answer the email and get on with it. Suits me fine.
Our second location was getting calls for the original shop because the site funneled everything to the same number. Lonta separated the location pages and put the right numbers on the ads. I can tell which shop is busy now and move the spend accordingly. Took something off my plate that I'd been putting off for a year.
I liked working with one person for the ads and site edits. We did have to move a standing call since it kept hitting our dispatch meeting. The office sees the source on each call now. That's been handy when the owner asks me where the day's work came from.
It took a while to get on the same page about sewer work. We charge for some inspections and will quote certain repairs for free. The distinction matters to the person on the phone, and I wanted it clear before they turned the ads on. They rewrote the page after sitting down with our dispatcher. We nearly doubled the number of sewer estimates we ran from Google over the last six weeks. We had an extra tech available, which helped. I've left the sewer campaign running and backed off on the broad drain stuff.
The new site is easier to update and we're getting more service requests through it. The walkthrough assumed I knew where everything was. I ended up asking for a recording and some notes. They sent both. I would've saved some time if those had come with the handoff.
Good experience. They asked for photos of our own vans and jobs. The page actually looks like us now. Had a homeowner mention one of the panel photos when he called to book.
I look at the bills more than the ads. I can reconcile the Google spend with the report and trace the install revenue to actual tickets. That alone would get a good review from me. Our cost per sold install also came down over the fall, with roughly the same budget.
We don't advertise all our services all year. Had them push tankless and leave the rest alone in December. They updated the ads, put up a page, and gave me a rough idea of what we'd need to sell to make it worth doing. Four installs sold so far this month. Happy with that.
We stayed on the phone longer than planned for the tracking setup. I'd tell the next customer to have whoever runs the phone system on the first call. The setup itself has been solid. We found a batch of estimate requests the old form was sending to an address nobody checked.
The week of the first freeze we were already full for two days. I asked them to ease off emergency repair and keep replacement estimates going. By the time I got back from a job they had it sorted. I used to have to get on a call to make that kind of change.
Our website said we were open Saturday. The Google listing said we closed Friday at noon. Both were wrong. They went through it with me and fixed the hours everywhere, then scheduled the weekend ads around the person actually answering the phone. Saturdays are much better organized now.
We had the ads grouped under general electrical. Breaker calls and full rewires were basically in the same bucket. Lonta split the work up and built a page for the jobs we wanted to estimate. I can now see what it costs us to get a rewire on the schedule. That number used to be a guess.
The fall maintenance campaign worked. We booked a good chunk of our open tune-up slots in two weeks. I'd have liked the final ad previews a day earlier so I could go through them with the owner. When we asked for a change to the dates they turned it around that morning.
They got us showing up for sewer camera inspections. It's a small thing until you own a camera that sits in the truck five days a week. We ran it on three paying jobs last week.
We had an internal person for social and needed somebody to own the rest. Lonta came in on search, the site, and tracking. They kept my team in the loop and gave us the ad files to work from. August was the first time I could sit with dispatch and match our spend to the jobs they were looking at.
Wanted a basic booking form and the first one asked way too many questions. They trimmed it down after we looked at it on my phone. Forms are coming through regularly now. A couple of people even told me they submitted one while standing in the hardware store trying to figure out what part to buy.
Our second truck used to spend the mornings waiting for the first call. We've been sending both out with a job already lined up most days this month. Lonta handles the search ads and the repair pages. I give them a heads-up when I'm short a tech and they adjust it.
We moved shops. They fixed the address on the site and on Google the morning we opened. Even the directions link worked. That one usually gets us.
I'd give them four. Took me a while to get used to doing most of it by email. In June I asked for more repair calls on the west side because that's where I had trucks free. They moved the budget over and the calls started landing there. Easier to work with once we got into a rhythm.
We used to send the same estimate follow-up to somebody who had already booked. Pretty embarrassing. Lonta tied it to the job status and helped the office clean up the old list. A few people we thought had gone with someone else called back and booked. I didn't expect much from that part of the project.
We're a small shop and do EV chargers when we have room between bigger jobs. I texted over a couple pictures from an install and they made the page out of that. By the end of the month I was quoting two or three chargers a week. That was a new source of work for us.
The new AC page brought in enough calls to fill the slots we'd set aside before Memorial Day. The weekly email comes in a bit late on Fridays for our office. I usually look at it Monday. I do like that it tells me what changed without making me sit through a call.
They asked what a good call sounded like and listened to a few with me. One was a homeowner with a leak. The next was somebody asking for a job. Both were showing up as leads in my old report. Now I can open the list on Friday and see what my guys actually ran.
Our spring tune-up went out on Facebook and Google the same week. We had one offer, one page to send people to, and the office knew what to book. Sounds simple. Last spring I was still answering questions about the old coupon in June.
People used to call our pumping line to ask for a real estate inspection and we'd play phone tag. They gave inspections their own page and added a field for the closing date. We had six inspections on the calendar off that page in March. I used to be happy with two from the site.
Good work on the website. Getting all the approvals done was clunky. I had comments in a doc and the owner had his in email. Then one of our techs printed the service page and marked it up by hand. We went over a few things twice before everyone was looking at the same draft. The part I like is what happens when people call now. They can tell me which service they were looking at. I used to ask a bunch of questions just to figure out which person in the office should take the call.
Been with them about four months. Biggest difference is the kind of call coming in. More people with a furnace that's actually down, fewer people trying to buy a part over the phone. I was ready to spend more. They cleaned up what we were already paying for first.
Website requests finally come through where I can see them. I used to forward them to myself from the office. Very happy with that fix alone.
The generator page took one extra round. We use two brands and the first version made it sound like we installed whatever the customer brought home. Once we cleared that up they handled the page and the ads together. Two of those estimates turned into installs before the month was out.
January last year we had the install crew doing shop work on Fridays. The first two Fridays this year we had changeouts scheduled when the guys came in. Some of that was weather. I can also pull up the calls from the new replacement page and see which jobs we sold. Having that trail made the budget conversation a lot easier.
Good people. I told them once where we stop taking drain calls and the ads were fixed the next day. The old setup kept sending us across the river.
We do a lot of panel work. The old site made it look like we mostly hung ceiling fans. They fixed that and set up a separate campaign for panel upgrades. I got two estimate requests with photos of the panel in the first week it was live. Had to go back and check the date on the emails.
The first report was a little much for me. I asked if they could just send what we spent and which calls got booked. The next one fit on my screen. They also got the water heater page and the ads saying the same thing, which saved me from explaining the offer ten times a week.
I had a guy for the website and another guy running Google. If a form stopped coming through, I got two different answers. Lonta took over both. By the end of October we were putting furnace calls on the board from towns we actually work in. That was a pretty big deal for us going into winter.
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