Schmidt Mechanical Group

Schmidt Mechanical Group is an HVAC company serving the San Antonio, Texas, area. In a market that size — one of the fastest-growing metros in the country — there's no shortage of demand for heating and cooling services. But there's also no shortage of competition.

Schmidt needed to grow. The question was how to do it in a market where everyone was already fighting for the same clicks.

During our initial evaluation, we found that San Antonio had over 50 HVAC companies all doing different levels of paid digital marketing. That density created an intensely competitive environment, especially for Google Local Services — the ad placements that appear at the very top of search results and often determine which company gets the first call.

In a market that crowded, simply running the same playbook as everyone else wasn't going to work. Competing on budget alone would be a losing game against larger companies with deeper pockets. Schmidt and our team needed to think differently about where and how to spend.

The ThinkFirst™ evaluation mapped the competitive landscape in detail — who was spending what, where the gaps were, and which channels were oversaturated versus underexploited. The finding was clear: Schmidt couldn't win by outspending the competition on the same platforms. They needed to find channels and tactics that the other 50 companies weren't using, while still competing aggressively on the core platforms that drive HVAC leads.

That led to a strategy built around three principles: precision on Google, experimentation on alternative platforms, and relentless testing to improve conversion.

Precision PPC campaigns. We built multiple pay-per-click campaigns focused on branded and non-branded keywords related to Schmidt's services. These weren't broad, scattershot campaigns — they were targeted, tightly managed, and optimized daily. As campaigns matured, we continuously added negative keywords to eliminate unconverting search queries, improving efficiency with each iteration.

Testing alternative channels. While competitors battled over Google placements, we helped Schmidt build and test campaigns on platforms that most HVAC companies in San Antonio weren't using. We tested eLocal, Facebook, and other paid digital channels to expand Schmidt's exposure and reach customers who had never worked with them before. The eLocal test proved particularly valuable — it brought in a steady stream of brand-new leads at a $5.55 return on marketing spend, generating over $33,000 in attributable revenue in just seven months from 19 closed deals with an average ticket value of $1,766.

A/B testing to stop the leaks. During the first several months of the partnership, we noticed that Schmidt's landing pages were losing a significant number of visitors to bounce. People were clicking the ads but leaving the page without converting. Rather than guessing why, we implemented systematic A/B testing on the paid media landing pages — changing layouts, offers, calls to action, and form placement. Over the next six months, conversion rates increased by 11 points. That's 11 more out of every 100 visitors turning into leads — from a page that was already getting traffic.

In their first year of partnership, Schmidt Mechanical generated over $1 million in attributable revenue at an $8-to-$1 return on marketing spend.

The eLocal channel alone — a platform most of their competitors never tested — produced 19 closed deals, $33,000+ in revenue, and a pipeline of customers who had never heard of Schmidt before. That's the value of testing: finding growth in places no one else is looking.

The A/B testing program turned an underperforming landing page into a conversion engine, capturing leads that would have otherwise bounced to a competitor's site. And the core PPC campaigns delivered consistently strong results in a market where 50+ companies were all bidding on the same keywords.

Schmidt Mechanical's story is a case study in competitive strategy as much as marketing tactics. In a crowded market, the companies that win aren't always the ones that spend the most. They're the ones willing to test channels no one else is using, measure what's actually working, and optimize relentlessly.

When you can't outspend the competition, you out-think them. And then you out-measure them.