HVAC Contractor

Jet Hardegree, office manager at Hanson Air Conditioning Heating and Refrigeration Inc., was constantly frustrated with the level of service she received from marketing vendors. Read how Yodle was able to change that.

A Proud History

Luke Hanson was still in high school when he was drafted to fight in World War II. He returned home from the war to Alabama, and several decades later, built Hanson Air Conditioning Heating and Refrigeration Inc. from the ground up. Luke’s son – Steve – started helping out his father side when he was only seven years old. Today, Steve runs the company, which has now been in business for 46 years, and they could easily write a history book with all the lessons that father and son have learned along the way.

Recently though, Steve started to realize that the company needed to rethink their approach to secure a higher volume of new customers and better manage the business.

That’s when he decided to hire Jet Hardegree as the new office manager.

Moving Online

When Jet came on board, she had a number of different tasks to tackle.  In addition to creating an accounting system and developing more formal customer contracts, a key priority was to begin advertising for Hanson, something the company had barely done before.

After paying $800 for phonebook listings that didn’t provide a strong return on investment, Jet determined that it was important to establish an online presence for Hanson.

“I had no idea how to do that. I really needed someone with that expertise to come in and help,” Jet explained.

  At first, this endeavor proved to be frustrating.  Jet found that the vendors she was initially considering were expensive, required long term contracts and were usually unresponsive. Jet didn’t want to make that commitment and was unsure what to do.  That was until she spoke with a Yodle salesperson and was impressed by his knowledge.

Generating Business

Jet signed up with Yodle for both paid search advertising and SEO, as well as a desktop- and mobile-optimized websites.

She shared that “I’ve only been with Yodle a few months, and it has already paid for itself. We are getting more traction every day. Our sales have increased by 10% as a result of Yodle and we are reaching new markets that had been inaccessible to us before.”

Jet has also learned how to run the business more effectively as a result of listening to call recordings that come through to Yodle’s tracking number. “She discovered that the person answering calls was having trouble responding to some of the questions. Since then, Jet started answering the calls, which has further improved the number of jobs that Hanson obtains from online marketing.

Perhaps the best part for Jet is that she sees Yodle as not just her marketing partner but also as a great educator and resource. Jet commented: “I needed a vendor that could really help and guide me and I feel I have that relationship with Yodle.”