HVAC Organic Demand Trends - September 2025
AI referrers now included 👀
👋 Hey, Jon here!
It’s been a little while since our last Substack —> between a torn Achilles (ouch!), a wedding, wearing a boot during said wedding, and expanding SearchLight (now over 20 team members), this summer proved to be tough to find the time to execute on this.
BUT, WE’RE BACK!
Not only are we back, but we also have a larger data set to pull from, starting with Organic channel performance for the full month of September, including year-over-year data across 100 different HVAC/plumbing businesses spanning the country.
Our data now also includes AI/LLM referrers like ChatGPT!
Organic Unique Lead Volume Increased by 5% Year-over-Year
Unique lead volume (new and existing customers) from organic channels was down 5% from the prior month, but increased 5% year-over-year in this sample.
Note: Some businesses in this sample experienced declines in organic lead volume of up to 55% year-over-year, while others saw as much as 70% YoY growth. The aggregate trend suggests increases, but this may be different in your market or region.
New customer leads from organic channels were down 8% from the prior month and down 7% year-over-year.
Note: In this analysis, unique leads are defined as the number of individuals who contacted a business through organic channels in the selected time frame. This does not indicate qualified or non-qualified leads, but below I will summarize the number of bookings, run jobs, and paying customers from organic channels.
New and Existing Customers Combined:
Booked Customers: -3% from prior month | -6% year-over-year
Run Jobs: -7% from prior month | -9% year-over-year
Paying Customers: -8% from prior month | -1% year-over-year
New Customers Only:
Booked Customers: -6.5% from prior month | -6% year-over-year
Run Jobs: -9% from prior month | -9% year-over-year
Paying Customers: -9% from prior month | -2% year-over-year
While overall unique lead volume was up, all of the major funnel metrics were down both year-over-year and month-over-month.
In this sample, businesses got ~293 unique leads from organic in September (new and existing customers) on average.
144 of those booked an appointment, 137 jobs were run, and 73 turned into paying customers.
New customer leads were down 8% month over month and 7% year over year, with each business averaging 44 new customer leads from organic channels in September.
That means 15% of the total unique organic leads were from new customers.
On average, of the 44 new customer unique leads per business, 56% turned into paying customers who spent $3,764.90, across all business units.
Existing customer leads converted into paying customers 43% of the time, but spent much less, with an average ticket of $2,600.77.
To summarize, just 15% of organic leads were from new customers, but those new customers spent 45% more than existing customers, accounting for 42% of the total closed revenue from Organic channels.
It Cost $43.59 to Acquire a Paying Customer From Organic Channels in September, Up 3% Year-over-Year
Lead volume increased slightly year-over-year, but as I’ve kept an eye on this data, the CAC from Organic tends to stay in the range of $40-$50 per unique lead.
But as we saw above, a small percentage of those are from new customers (15%) and cost more to acquire from Organic channels:
Note, I am taking the full Organic spend and dividing it by the number of new customers to get the CAC for new customers.
It cost $128.68 to acquire a new customer from organic channels, and once again, Google Business Profile generated the most new customer leads and revenue out of the organic channels measured in this sample:
We’re also tracking leads from Gemini and Perplexity, but for this month, they did not generate leads for this sample of contractors.
It’s worth noting that ChatGPT did generate just over 1% of total closed revenue from Organic (new customers) and generated nearly 1% of the revenue potential (new customers):
We’ll be tracking the trends of LLMs like ChatGPT to stay ahead of both the volume and how well those specific customers are converting to revenue as it’s been a hot topic in our industry (and others).
Next up, let’s take a look at average tickets.
Average Tickets Increased by 0.38% Year-over-Year to $2,993.67
For September, average tickets across new and existing customers were $2,993.67, up 0.38% year over year but down 2% month over month.
New customers spent $3,764.90 on average, up 4% year-over-year and up 2.5% month-over-month.
If we go a step further, we can see the breakdown of average tickets by channel across new customers with corresponding lead volumes:
ChatGPT referred leads generated the highest average tickets, by far, but had a small lead volume and the lowest overall paying customer rate out of this group of channels.
Although this does at least prove that customers who come from ChatGPT are willing to spend money once they get in your pipeline.
We can then add in existing customers to look at average tickets by new and existing customers:
Interestingly enough, 100% of the unique leads from ChatGPT were new customers, but the trend of high lead volume channels having lower tickets remains true, with GBP generating a substantial amount of the lead volume but also contributing the lowest average tickets.
Sold Revenue from Organic Leads Increased 14% Year-over-Year
Sold revenue was up 7% month over month and 14% year over year - both increases are good to see, especially coming off of August, when we tend to see a dip entering shoulder season.
For new customers only, sold revenue was up 4% month-over-month and 10% year-over-year.
Overall (new and existing customers), 56% of the total revenue opportunity generated by organic channels converted to sold/closed revenue.
Our suggested target is 50%, so the general trend for organic is outperforming our benchmark.
Now, let’s take a look at closed revenue and closed ROAS for organic channels 👇
Closed Revenue from Organic Leads Decreased by 4% Year-over-Year
Closed revenue volume from organic channels decreased by 4% year-over-year and decreased by 13% from the prior month.
Each business in this sample earned $177,565 in closed revenue on average from organic channels (new and existing customers) and $74,747 in closed revenue from new customers only:
The ROI on closed revenue for new and existing customers was 56x (down 15% from the prior month and down 5% year-over-year), while the revenue potential for new and existing customers was 122.7x (down 15% MoM, and down 7.5% YoY).
Looking at new customers only, closed revenue was down 0.34% year-over-year (down 9% from the prior month) with a 23.6x ROI (based on total spend, not just spend on new customers).
Until next time . . .
-Jon