Sheets Heating & Cooling

Sheets Heating & Cooling is a locally-owned HVAC company serving home and business owners throughout the Fort Wayne, Indiana, area. Founded in 2016, the company grew quickly on the strength of their service — and in 2019, they accelerated that growth by acquiring another local HVAC business.

The acquisition brought new capacity, new customers, and new opportunity. It also brought a branding problem that would take years to resolve.

After the acquisition, Sheets was operating two brands under one roof. Two names, two websites, two Google Business Profiles, two sets of customer expectations — none of which had been consolidated. Operationally, the businesses had merged. But in the market's eyes, they were still two separate companies.

The original business relied heavily on word-of-mouth referrals. Previous marketing efforts and online presence were limited for both brands. Both websites were outdated and slow, lacking the kind of SEO-focused content needed to compete in a mid-sized market. And customers of the acquired company had no idea that their trusted HVAC provider was now part of something bigger.

Sheets' leadership knew the situation wasn't sustainable. They needed to consolidate the brands, build a unified digital presence, improve their online visibility, and start marketing aggressively toward their revenue goals. The longer the two-brand confusion persisted, the more opportunities they were losing.

Our ThinkFirst™ process involved a complete analysis of both brands — their combined customer base, their individual online presences, the competitive landscape in Fort Wayne, and the specific risks and opportunities of a brand consolidation.

The strategy we recommended started with the brand itself. Before building campaigns or optimizing content, Sheets needed to be one company with one name, one look, and one voice. From there, we'd consolidate the digital infrastructure — one website, one domain, one Google Business Profile — and layer on an SEO strategy designed to rapidly build authority for the unified brand.

The domain change was the highest-risk element. Changing a website's domain can devastate search rankings if not handled carefully. We developed a plan to mitigate that risk while still executing the consolidation on the client's preferred timeline.

A brand refresh from the ground up. Our design team built a refreshed brand identity that honored elements from both original companies while creating something distinctly new. We recommended an updated color palette, presented multiple logo and iconography options, and delivered comprehensive brand guidelines. From there, we produced the full suite of brand assets: business cards, presentation folders, vehicle wraps designed to be visible even while moving, and building signage to draw attention from the community. Every touchpoint was redesigned to introduce the unified brand.

One website, built to convert. With the new brand guidelines in place, our designers and developers built a consolidated website incorporating best practices for conversion rate optimization and user experience — clear calls to action, a short submission form above the fold, and visual structure that guides the eye toward conversion points. We included a prominent callout above the fold to reassure customers of both original companies that the same quality of service they'd relied on was still there, now under one name.

A carefully managed domain migration. The client wanted the new website on a new domain — which our operations team flagged as a risk to the domain authority both original sites had built. We developed a sequenced plan: execute the domain change first, before launching the full SEO strategy, so we could build authority on the permanent domain from day one rather than investing in a domain that would eventually be retired.

We set up individual 301 redirects for every page on both original websites, mapping each one to its corresponding page on the new domain. This page-by-page approach takes significantly longer than a blanket redirect, but it's the best way to preserve the ranking equity built by the previous sites.

Google Business Profiles, merged without losing a single review. Once the website and redirects were live, our SEO team worked directly with Google Support to consolidate both original Google Business Profiles into one. The client had been concerned about losing reviews in the process — a valid worry, since reviews are one of the most powerful local search ranking factors. The merge preserved every review from both profiles, giving the unified listing a higher review count than either original had alone. More reviews on a single profile meant better visibility in local search results.

The impact was measurable almost immediately.

As of October 31, 2023 — just before the new site launched — one of the original domains had a search visibility of just 0.78%. The new website went live on December 20, 2023. By February 20, 2024, the new domain's visibility had climbed to 15.04% — an increase of over 18x.

In that same two-month window following launch:

- New users increased by 17.7% compared to the prior period
- Website leads increased by 26% — the consolidated site was converting at a higher rate than either of the originals
- Every review from both original Google profiles was preserved and unified

Beyond the metrics, the client's team expressed particular satisfaction with the design process. Our designers worked collaboratively, making changes to proposed logos and assets live on calls, creating space for the client's preferences while advising on what would perform best in the market.

Brand consolidation after an acquisition is one of those projects that companies know they need to do — and keep putting off because it feels risky and complicated. And it is complicated. A domain change, a profile merge, a full rebrand — any one of those carries risk if handled poorly.

But the cost of *not* doing it is higher. Every month with two brands, two websites, and two Google profiles is a month of diluted authority, confused customers, and split search equity. Sheets' story shows what happens when you rip the bandage off the right way: a unified brand, a single powerful web presence, and growth that neither of the original companies could have achieved on their own.