No matter how great your plumbing services are, you’ll struggle to grow if few people know about them. That’s when plumbing marketing comes into play.
With the right strategies and knowing how to apply them, you can attract all potential customers. They can find you whether they urgently need a plumber to fix their clogged drain or look for the right plumbing services to install a dishwasher.
Here are a few of the most effective plumbing marketing ideas we have found to work. These are based on our over a decade years of experience in the HVAC industry, and specially as a leading plumbing marketing agency
Create a Strong and Consistent Plumbing Brand
One of the simplest ways you can attract new customers for your plumbing business is to create a brand that instantly makes an impact in the mind of your target customers. Whether having a catchy slogan or clever brand name, a “sticky” brand boosts lead generation and brand awareness for your small business.
This landing page from Roto-Rooter is an excellent branding example. It has a well-defined color scheme, clear copy, and cohesive design.
Your brand should be able to communicate your services, why customers should choose you, and how to get in touch.
To build a strong brand, you need to create a logo. But even before that, begin with defining what you want to stand for and choose your brand’s colors.
Request Referrals from Existing Customers
Referral or word-of-mouth is one of the best sources of new leads because referred customers are likelier to stay loyal to your plumbing business than any other means. One of its reasons is that they’re referred by existing customers who already know and trust you.
The key to getting more referrals is to provide exceptional customer service—for instance, responding quickly to emergencies, providing maintenance services, or giving customers tips to prevent future issues.
These small things help your clients remember you and refer you to others in need. However, actively asking your plumbing customers for referrals is always a good idea. You can do it either in person or by sending them a professional email after providing a great service.
Another way to do it is to begin a referral program—for instance, offering a discount on maintenance services if customers send a lead your way. Ensure it’s presented in an easy-to-understand format on your plumbing website and easily accessible to customers.
Furthermore, why limit yourself to only customers? Ask for referrals from other plumbers, your local community, friends, and family.
Infuse Your Brand in Local Communities
Local community involvement is another way of getting more new clients. You support your community, and they help you in return by giving you more plumbing business indirectly. You can begin by donating to charities or volunteering for low-income community members.
It can help you get local press coverage and more plumber marketing and PR opportunities.
Meetup is a great place to find such communities, or you can explore the volunteering work on Habitat.org. This is an organization that helps you find construction projects to volunteer services.
Connect with Local Homeowners Associations (HOAs)
Look for homeowners associations in your area and ask if they are already partnered with a plumbing company. If not, offer to partner with them in exchange for exclusive discounts for residents or referral fees for each client acquired through the HOA.
You can also host a DIY plumbing demo for the residents where you can share your expertise, promote your business, and get more leads.
Share Your Plumbing Business Card
It might sound like advice you’ve heard a thousand times, but it’s still worth mentioning.
Sharing your plumbing business card is a great way of expanding your connections. You never know when you might meet someone who needs your services or knows someone who does.
Plus, it’s a cheap yet effective form of marketing your plumbing business.
Partner With Builders in Your Geographical Location
Another way to get more plumbing business for your plumbing company is by collaborating with local builders. Just search for such local businesses in your area and determine if they have any upcoming construction projects where they might need plumbing services.
However, get ready to negotiate the prices as they would probably be getting many offers from your competitors too.
The bidding process may be tedious, but it can ensure a steady cash flow. You can consider investing in an automated system to track all your bids and invitations, calculate the cost and margins for each project, and cut the manual time. It’ll make it more manageable and help you bid to more builders.
A toolkit that offers smooth integration for all these activities with a minimum learning curve will be your ideal choice.
Create a Cohesive Plumbing Digital Marketing Plan
If you haven’t created an online marketing plan yet, then it’s time that you do. It’s as simple as writing down your marketing goals and listing your action plans to reach them.
- Your plumbing digital marketing plan should be able to answer these questions:
- What is my plumbing business’ overall digital marketing strategy?
- What is my goal for this marketing campaign?
- Which tactics or channels will I use to reach my goal?
- When do I want to achieve this goal?
- How much is my marketing budget?
- How do I want to implement my campaigns?
- How will I know if my strategy is working?
- How can I improve my campaigns for better results?
You are planning for each stage of your digital marketing journey, from creating your first campaign to tracking and analyzing their performance. When you have a clear answer to every question, you won’t lose sight of what to do next.
Claim Google Business Profile for Your Plumbing Company
Another way to get in front of your target customers is by claiming your Google My Business profile so your business appears in Google Maps. It’s a free tool that helps you promote your business listing and website on Google.
Another advantage of listing your business in Google My Business is having a platform for publishing customer reviews. Your review rating appears under your business name, so it’s important to focus on having an overall review rating of four stars and up.
Design a Plumbing Business Website
After creating your plumbing marketing plan, you need a place to direct your target audience where they can find out more about you and your services. Hence, you need a high-performance plumbing website. It can help your clients get your contact information or book your services directly. Eventually, convert more plumbing leads into paying customers.
Some basic elements you’ll need on your plumbing website are these:
- Business name
- High-quality logo
- Contact information
- An outline of all the services you offer
- An easy-to-understand way to contact you or book your services
- A page for testimonials
you’ve executed the layout and design of your plumber website, you’ll need to focus on optimizing it for search engines. This means that having a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy for your website is essential to its success. We’ll touch more on SEO later in this article.
Use Compelling Copy to Persuade Prospective Customers
You only have a few seconds to convince prospective clients to hire you, so make every word count. Write straightforward headlines that target your customer’s pain point, offering the best solution.
This Google ad from Rooterhero highlights the terms “plumber near me” and “24 hours” to target prospects with plumbing emergencies. They also highlighted using “certified plumbers” and “$50 off” on plumbing services to seal the deal.
What’s the best thing about your plumbing service? Make sure that’s clear when you write advertising or website copy.
Kick Off Plumbing SEO
Merely having a website isn’t enough for your business. To generate traffic, you’ll also need it to appear in the Google search results when people query plumbing services-related keywords.
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it usually helps your website rank higher in three ways:
On-Page SEO: It means optimizing your web content for search engines. Its features include header, keyword placement, meta description, title tags, and URL structure.
Off-site SEO: Technical SEO is how you technically optimize the rest of your site for search engines. The features include brand mentions, link-building, HTML/CSS coding, responsive website design, site speed, and more.
Local SEO: This is all about optimizing your website for local search results—for instance, ranking for “near me” or “plumber services in ‘city’” keywords. It calls for understanding your service area properly and the kind of customers that you’re likely to serve.
Local SEO is a more involved process and differs greatly from creating a Google Business Profile (GBP). A GBP is essential for the success of a local SEO campaign, but it’s not the entirety of the campaign. With local SEO, you’ll need to implement a comprehensive keyword strategy focused on geography-based queries.
If you want to ensure the success of your SEO strategy or are simply short of time, you can hire our plumbing SEO services to dominate the search results in your locality.
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Create Separate Service Pages to Target Different Audiences
To boost your SEO efforts, create separate web pages for each plumbing service. With this strategy, you can target specific plumbing services for prospective clients looking for them online. For instance, you can create pages for drain cleaning, water leaks, and toilet repair.
A prospective client who has a clogged toilet might not use “plumbers near me” to search for a plumbing company. Instead, he might use “toilet repair.”
In addition to improving SEO, service pages can help tell potential clients more about a service, which helps them decide whether or not it is truly what they need.
Get Instant Traction With Plumbing Pay Per Click Advertising
Online advertisements help you get instant exposure. Pay Per Click (PPC) is a form of online advertising where you only pay for the number of clicks you get. You can also limit your daily spending, which puts you in control of your marketing budget.
Different types of PPC ads you can use are:
Search engine ads: As the name suggests, these ads are displayed on search engines like Google, Bing, or Duck Duck Go every time someone searches for your target keyword (for instance, plumbing services).
PPC ads are a good way of advertising your business as they’re cost-effective and provide fast results. Plus, they allow real-time tracking of your ads performance and target the right audience—for instance, potential customers searching for the term plumber services will need a plumber.
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