A repair company in the U.S. is turning its head to the skies and taking direction from Mother Nature as to where, and when, it should place its search ads.

Bad weather is good news for American Residential Services (ARS). The firm specializes in the repair of air-conditioning, heating units and plumbing systems across the U.S., often called out to towns that have experienced disasters on a major scale.

When ARS turned to TMP Directional Marketing for help with their search marketing strategy, the agency turned they eyes skywards - literally. By analyzing keywords, they made the connection between increases in keyword use and incidents of meteorological mayhem such as torrential flooding, ice storms, and heat waves.

“As we were ramping up the campaign and doing keyword expansions, we started to notice that often times if there was unseasonably cold weather in certain areas or flooding, there was an increase in traffic,” said Liz Serafin, senior director for SEM at TMP Directional Marketing, via ClickZ. “And in certain markets, depending on the duration of the triggers, they were running out of budget faster. So we took a step back and tried to get a little more strategic.”

Using Google alerts and a team of coordinators who kept tabs on meteorological sites such as Weather.com, the TMP Directional Marketing was able to divert ARS’ budget to areas that were far more likely to see an increase in need for their repair services.

Without the need for increased spending or exceeding cost per lead expectations, ARS increased leads nationally by 57%.

“For ARS, local search is growing significantly because you have the flexibility to define your audience, to define your geography and to move very quickly in the interactive environment — whether that is paid search, natural search or Internet Yellow Pages,” said Elizabeth Young, executive director of marketing and customer satisfaction at ARS.