THE SHORT ANSWER
For HVAC installers, Meta ads costs EUR 20 to EUR 250 per enquiry and works out at EUR 80 to EUR 1,500 per signed job once you allow for 4 to 6 enquiries per customer. Viable for HVAC installers if you have a genuine offer and someone to filter the enquiries, not just a lead form.
Channel advice written for contractors in general is worth roughly what it costs, because the economics change completely between trades. What follows is Meta ads applied to one trade only, HVAC installers: what it costs per enquiry and per signed job, where the ceiling sits, what it demands of you, and an unhedged answer at the end.
The numbers that govern the decision: projects run EUR 3,000 to EUR 8,000, the buyer is typically a homeowner or small office that wants cooling before summer, demand peaks the first heatwave and falls away in December to February, and 4 to 6 genuine enquiries are needed for each customer signed.
The numbers, at a glance
Modelled cost per enquiry: EUR 20 to EUR 250, from clicks at EUR 0.72 to EUR 3.00 converting at 1.2 to 3.5 percent
Modelled cost per signed job: EUR 80 to EUR 1,500, once you allow for 4 to 6 enquiries per customer
Time to first enquiry: days, but the learning phase eats the first two weeks from a standing start
Verdict for HVAC installers: Viable for HVAC installers if you have a genuine offer and someone to filter the enquiries, not just a lead form.
The shape of Meta ads for this trade
Intent on Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) is low at the moment of the click and manufactured by the offer, because nobody opened the app to buy a heat pump. Clicks are a fraction of search prices, and you can reach people who have not started looking yet.
The limit that rarely appears in a sales conversation: around 50 conversions a week per ad set for the delivery system to optimise properly, which most contractors never reach. For an air conditioning business covering one metro, check that before anything else, because a channel you cannot feed will underperform its own benchmarks indefinitely.
The downside is worth stating plainly. Enquiry quality is markedly lower and the volume of unqualified contacts will occupy someone's whole morning unless you filter hard. Skill required: Creative is the whole job. The targeting is largely automated now; the difference between a working and a failing account is the offer and the first three seconds of the video.
The offer and creative that work for air conditioning on social
Air conditioning is the trade where paid social timing matters most. The campaign has to be live before the heat arrives, because once the heatwave starts every competitor is bidding and the household is already searching.
Offer: a fixed price for a single-room installation with a named unit and a guaranteed installation date before a stated week, which is the only urgency claim that is actually true
Creative that works: a short clip of a unit running with the decibel figure and the room temperature drop on screen, filmed in a normal living room rather than a showroom
Launch on the forecast: start spending when the long-range outlook turns, not on the first hot morning, because the auction moves ahead of the weather
Qualifier to build into the form: whether the property is owned, rented or commercial, since landlord consent decides whether the job can proceed at all
Retargeting is where the economics actually work
Cold traffic in the trades is expensive per enquiry. Traffic that has already seen a project gallery, watched most of an installation video or abandoned a form is dramatically cheaper. Building those audiences means running cold campaigns that lose money on a last-click basis for the first month, which is why contractors who judge week one on cost per lead switch the channel off before the profitable half of it exists.
The arithmetic, with every assumption visible
Here is the full chain for air conditioning, with every assumption visible so you can substitute your own.
Click cost: EUR 0.72 to EUR 3.00 for air conditioning keywords, which tracks job value rather than competition alone.
Landing page conversion: 1.2 to 3.5 percent of clicks become an enquiry, assuming a page built for one trade rather than a homepage.
Cost per enquiry: EUR 20 to EUR 250, which is click cost divided by conversion rate.
Enquiries per customer: 4 to 6 for this trade, because not everyone answers, quotes or proceeds.
Cost per signed job: EUR 80 to EUR 1,500.
Set the worst case of EUR 1,500 against a midpoint project of EUR 5,500 and acquisition is 27.3 percent of the contract. Whether that works is a question about your gross margin rather than your turnover, which is the step almost everybody omits.
Air conditioning demand arrives in a six-week window and nothing widens it
The first genuine heatwave produces more enquiries in ten days than the preceding four months combined, and the household wants the unit fitted this week. Capacity rather than demand becomes the binding constraint immediately. The businesses that make money here fill the shoulder months with maintenance contracts and commercial work, then treat the summer spike as margin rather than as the business plan. Every acquisition decision in this trade should be made against that shape.
A defensible first ninety days
Decide before you start what would make you stop. For air conditioning work at 4 to 6 enquiries per customer, a fair test needs enough volume to expect two or three signed jobs. Anything smaller measures luck.
Fix the service area and job types in writing before the first enquiry arrives.
Record median time to first call attempt from week one, because if that number is poor you are measuring your own follow-up rather than the channel.
Review at the end of the period on cost per signed job, not on cost per enquiry.
Change one variable at a time afterwards, or you will never know which one worked.
The learning phase punishes small budgets split many ways
Delivery needs a run of conversions per ad set before it stabilises. Splitting a modest budget across five ad sets guarantees none of them reach it, and every edit restarts the process. Fewer ad sets, larger budgets each, and a rule against touching a campaign for the first week or two are worth more than any targeting refinement available in the interface.
Domestic and small commercial cooling are two different sales
A homeowner decides alone or with a partner and buys on comfort. A small office buys through whoever manages the building, needs landlord consent for an external unit, often wants the invoice structured around a lease, and asks about maintenance on the first call. Both arrive through the same form. One question at intake about whether the property is owned, rented or commercial routes the enquiry correctly and saves a wasted visit.
Work through this before committing to Meta ads
Write down your own gross margin percentage on a typical air conditioning job, not your revenue.
Multiply that gross margin by the share you are willing to spend on acquisition, usually 10 to 20 percent, to get your ceiling per signed customer.
Divide your ceiling per signed customer by 4 to 6, the enquiries-per-customer range for this trade, to get the maximum you can pay for one enquiry.
Compare your maximum per enquiry against the EUR 20 to EUR 250 per enquiry modelled above. If your ceiling is lower, fix conversion or job value before you touch the channel.
How these figures were built
These figures are a benchmark model, not a survey. They combine an industry base range observed across Western European home-improvement campaigns with a country multiplier for local auction pressure. Treat them as a band to negotiate against, not a quote. Channel figures on this page carry a second layer of modelling on top of the lead-price band, since click cost and conversion rate both vary by market as well as by trade. Treat the spread as the important part rather than either end of it.
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Related answers
Frequently asked questions
How much should an air conditioning business budget for Meta ads?
Work backwards from a signed job rather than forwards from a budget. At EUR 80 to EUR 1,500 per job and a typical target of one to two jobs a week, the monthly figure follows arithmetically. Setting a round number first and hoping it produces work is the most common and most expensive mistake in this channel.
How long before Meta ads produces a signed job?
First enquiries take days, but the learning phase eats the first two weeks. A signed job takes that plus your own sales cycle, which for air conditioning work runs from a few days on urgent jobs to several months on planned ones. Judge the channel on cost per qualified enquiry early and on cost per signed job only after a full cycle has completed.
What is the single biggest mistake in Meta ads for this trade?
Sending traffic to a homepage instead of a page built for air conditioning alone. It typically halves the conversion rate, which doubles the cost per enquiry, and no amount of bid management recovers that.
What should an air conditioning enquiry contain before it is worth quoting?
At minimum number of rooms, building type, existing ducting and timeline. Those answers are what separate an enquiry from a phone number, and collecting them at the point of enquiry rather than on the call removes most of the wasted quoting time in this trade.
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