$12Cost per lead (photo ads)
HVAC — Kinder Heating & Air
The $12 Lead Secret: How Photo Ads Crushed Video for Kinder HVAC
Everyone said video ads perform better. Kinder Heating & Air proved them wrong—simple technician photos delivered $12 leads, beating video by 40%.
Results
The numbers behind the rebuild.
$19Average CPL overall
The problem
Where the chain was breaking.
Was spending heavily on professional video production for ads, assuming high production value was the key to performance
Cost per lead was high relative to job value, making it difficult to scale campaigns profitably
Competing against larger HVAC companies with national brand recognition in the local market
What we built
The system we put in place.
We A/B tested raw iPhone footage against their expensive professional video and the iPhone content won by 3x. That insight changed everything. We shifted the entire creative strategy to authentic, behind-the-scenes content and reallocated the production budget into ad spend, doubling their reach overnight. Local trust campaigns featuring Mark and his real technicians differentiated them from the faceless national chains competitors couldn't replicate.
“We were spending a fortune on professional video production thinking that was the secret to great ads. Turns out our iPhone footage of actual installations outperformed everything. Dancing Chicken showed us that authenticity beats production value, and our CPL dropped by more than half. We reinvested the savings into more campaigns and the growth compounded from there.”Mark Kinder
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