Plumbing business has become a crowded sector in many towns and cities due to many new businesses entering it every year. This takes a toll on the number of customers that you get and so it becomes extremely important to implement the right plumbing marketing ideas to grow your business despite the growth in competition. Broadly speaking, customers for a plumbing business can be either an emergency customer, first-time install customer or routine maintenance type customer. The plumbing business advertising methods given here would serve all types of customers and all types of plumbing businesses. Let us explore the methods one by one.
1) Website
Since your plumbing business will get more leads online than offline, so the most basic thing that you can do for growing your plumbing business is having a professional website with good attributes. By good attributes, we mean that it must be able to convert a significant portion of visitors into clients. To do so, make sure to have these things on your website:
A) A fast loading website (as the attention span of people is continuously decreasing)
B) A mobile-friendly design (to show right resolution on mobile devices)
C) A contact number placed on the most visible part of the website.
D) An appointment booking form on the main page
E) Testimonials and reviews placed on the main page.
F) Achievements, big clients, top features and affiliation (accreditation) showcased on the home page.
2) Press Releases
By paying a one time cost for press release distribution of your plumbing business, the benefits that you will get are:
A) Placement of your article on many news websites and blogs.
B) New links arising from this distribution help towards SEO of your website.
C) Branding of your plumbing business due to quality pickups of your content on reputed sites.
D) Visitors to your content as a result of the big distribution.
The level of distribution and end results will vary with the service provider. So, it is important to select the ones that have a good portfolio of distribution networks. You can also use press releases regularly to avail the above-listed benefits and to grow your plumbing business.
3) Get the Site Ranked
Having a professional plumbing website is good only if people can find it online when they are searching for plumbing services. Once you get your plumbing business website to rank in Google using good optimization techniques, you will get consistent leads for your plumbing business. Factors like backlinks, on-page optimization, landing page experience, etc play an important role in determining the placement that your website will get in Google. To avoid taking care of all these things by yourself, you can just get the service of an experienced SEO agency. Organic ranking of a website is therefore much better marketing method to grow a plumbing company/business.
4) Local Pack
For searches that indicate local search intent like “best plumbing service in [city name]”, Google shows 3 businesses/services from the local region on its first page. Though these results are taken from the “Google My Business” page, there are a number of parameters that it considers to select 3 listings out of all the available ones. You can opt to learn these factors yourself and can implement them to get more customers for your plumbing business or can take professional help from an SEO agency.
5) Ads
While optimizing your plumbing website to naturally rank may take some time (2-3 months), running online ads for plumbing business advertising can enable your business to start getting plumbing leads within no time. Though one can find numerous paid ads platforms online, the top and best performing in terms of sending active leads for business and services is Google Ads. Since most people move over to Google to begin their searches, there is no better ad platform than Google Ads for a plumbing business. Managing keywords, ad sets and bids are essential to determine success in Google Ads. One can either learn and optimize these ads or can get them handled through any internet marketing service.
6) Videos
For many long-tail keywords (queries with length 5-6 words and above), videos do rank much easily in Google. You can, therefore, utilize such keywords to gain more clients for your plumbing business. You must create 1 video for every keyword and must post it on Youtube. By posting 1 video every 2-3 days, you will have many video assets online that will send you leads from Google and Youtube. These videos will also be helpful when people will search for reviews of your plumbing business and they will come across these videos. If you don’t know anything about video editing and posting, any freelancer can do it for you for a few bucks.
7) Taking Advantage of Big Businesses
As a local plumbing business owner, you must be knowing all the top plumbing businesses in your city/town. You can utilize their (competitors’) names to showcase your website in two different ways. Let us say that the biggest plumbing company in your locality is “XYZ Plumbing”. Now, you can create one blog post on your official website by targeting the keyword “XYZ Plumbing”. If you have done good optimization for this keyword (which is the brand name of your competitor), then your website will be found every time someone will type “XYZ Plumbing” in Google. So you can seize some potential customers using this method. You can repeat this process with all other competing businesses too.
The above-mentioned process can be repeated much more efficiently by using Google Ads. Here, you will use the name of your competing plumbing businesses as keywords so that your ad and website will be shown to every prospect who types names of your competing plumbing businesses in Google. Depending upon how relevant and convincing you have made the post related to your competitors, your conversion rate will vary.
8) Social Media
Social media is a bit slow but rewarding source for getting leads for local businesses by making contacts with people from your local community. Establish the presence of your plumbing business on all the well-known social media platforms and start growing your followers by sharing relevant and interesting content (with very less marketing content during the initial phase). Once you get a sizeable audience, you can enlarge the marketing content and can focus more on getting leads. There are also different local groups and communities that you can join to start growing your plumbing business.
9) FB Ads
Though most people head over to Google to search for emergency plumbing services, this is not the case always. On occasions where people look for maintenance or non-emergency plumbing-related services, you can use ads on Facebook to target and capture such leads. Facebook has many options using which you can target people from your locality. By coming up with the right set of targeting, you can get more leads and sales for your plumbing service using Facebook Ads. You can initially start with a small budget and can then enhance the ad marketing budget once you get a fair bit of knowledge of the platform.
10) Big Directories
To get more leads for your plumbing business, utilize sites that rank well in Google and have good traffic volume. Some of these sites where you can create a profile of your business and can get more visibility and traffic are HomeAdvisor, Yelp, Crunchbase, Manta, etc. Apart from giving direct visibility for your plumbing business, they also help to build valuable backlinks and references for your website which in turn benefits your website.
11) Content Strategy
You can use content marketing effectively to gain more eyeballs and clients. You can create good content around topics relevant to the plumbing industry and can then reach out to big websites in your industry to get your posts published. This will help your plumbing site in two ways. First, these articles will link back to your main site which is a great ranking factor in Google and high rank equals more traffic and sales. Secondly, it will establish your brand identity because once your posts start getting featured on big sites, it will be much easier to get a chance to publish on high-end magazines and news sites due to your strong portfolio.
12) Flaunting Your Best Achievements
You must always keep track of all the achievements, accreditations, mentions of your plumbing business and must showcase all such factors in your marketing content, be it on your website, flyers, ads, etc. You must also look for opportunities where you can somehow gain mention of your business be it sponsorships, charity, events, etc. Every small and big recognition, award, mention would help you to add more factors for convincing any prospect to a customer.
13) Referrals
Your existing customers are the best assets that can help to grow your plumbing business. Give them the best service and ask them to refer your business to others. To make sure that most of these customers would take the step of promoting you, you can look for incentivized opportunities like coupon codes, gift certificates, free maintenance, etc that they will get if they refer others to you.
14) Email Marketing
Find blog owners from your city/town who collect email addresses of visitors through pop-ups and/or subscription forms. Connect with them and ask if they would like to do a promotional email marketing campaign for your plumbing service in exchange for a fee/charge. Since they are more likely to have the email addresses of local people, you can broadcast your message (rewards, offers) to thousands of local people in a single email marketing campaign. You can also add such a form (email subscription form) on your own website to build your own email marketing list.
15) Marketing Through Physical Appeal
You must come out with a logo and a physical identity for your plumbing service that must be used consistently across all possible marketing mediums to showcase your uniqueness and to boost the recall value of your plumbing business. For example, your staff must be in a consistent attire with the name of your business printed on their t-shirts. You can also put flags, banners on the premises of your customer (by taking prior permission) throughout the process of your work at their home. You can custom print calendars, hats, mugs, etc with your business name and logo and use it across your business as well as serve as a gift to your customers. Many online services are there that can do custom printing of products like T-Shirts, Mugs, Books, etc.
16) Network
Network with related businesses and services that are more likely to send leads for plumbing. Some of these are hardware stores, construction contractors, handymen, real estate dealers, electricians, etc. To enhance your chances of referrals from these networks, you can use incentives and/or gifts to establish connections with these groups of people. Networking is a vital element in plumbing marketing as many local entities can start sending you customers.
17) Build Your USP
Businesses and services that stand out from the rest are more likely to achieve faster growth. So try to build your own USP (Unique Selling Point) that is missing in other plumbing services or is present in only a handful of them. You can include 24/7 service, free warranty on services till a predecided amount of time, fast turnaround time, free inspection and quotes, etc. Also, keep an eye on the best plumbing services around the world (through Google search) and imbibe it in your business to stand apart from the slow adapters.
18) A+ Reviews
Maintain good reviews by providing the best service to your customers. With more and more people searching for reviews on Google, don’t underestimate the power of reviews. They can cause a significant effect on how many customers actually try your service after coming across your business name. It has also become an influential factor in ranking your business in local listings on Google. Since most people are too lazy to leave reviews even after getting good customer service, incentivize the customers with free custom printed mugs, t-shirts or gift cards, etc so that they will have a powerful reason to leave reviews online.
19) Ads on Newspapers
People, mainly in the older demographic, are more likely to know about your plumbing business through offline means especially ads in newspapers. Newspaper ads, though being untargeted, are a good means to build awareness of your business and also to get sales. This method can be used as an additional complement to the mainstream online marketing methods for your plumbing business.
20) Influencers
People or businesses within your city/town who are on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc and have a fair amount of local following (in a few thousand and above) are good contenders for advertising your plumbing business. You can ask for advertising opportunities with these entities and can then spread your message using these profiles.
21) Creative Flyers and Brochures
One of the local level plumbing marketing ideas is to use flyers and brochures. While people are habituated to throwing flyers and brochures as they have become too used to seeing them, creative things do make an impact. You can attach a small calendar or diary (with your business name printed on it) with brochures and flyers so that people don’t ignore it.
22) SMS Marketing
Do you know that SMS has much more open and read rates than emails? SMS marketing for your plumbing business can help to convey your message easily and quickly. There are many SMS marketing services online that have database of people from most big cities and towns. While advertising a plumbing business through SMS marketing, you must also be updated with local laws related to sending text messages.
23) LinkedIn
To increase your plumbing business revenues faster, nothing can be better than commercial clients. To get commercial clients for your plumbing business, the best platform is LinkedIn. You can start connecting with big business profiles from your service area on LinkedIn and can land high-end deals for your plumbing business. Also, once you get a few big commercial clients, it will be much easier to get more businesses from such entities through cross-promotion.
24) Recurring Subscriptions
Come up with a great subscription plan that would help save money for your customers. You can make your customers aware of these subscription plans so that the overall revenue generated per client would become higher and it will also help to build loyal customers.
25) Be Active Locally
Let the local people know about your business through your active participation in local events, shows, contests, etc. You can either participate or sponsor such local level events to gain more public attention and in turn sales.
This sums up our top recommendations on plumbing business marketing ideas. If you have more ideas that have worked towards the growth of your plumbing company, then do share them through the comments below.
