If you want to have a successful and profitable plumbing business, you need to have a healthy cash flow. To have the sales and money coming in, you need to have customers coming in at a steady pace and potentially growing. Customers are what keeps your plumbing business going and if there are no lead emails or phone calls pouring in – obviously there is no one to sell your services to and business will suffer.
Plumbing is a great tradie industry where you can find a decent amount of customers at a reasonable price – but only if you target them the right way.
It’s not just about fixing drains and pipes – you need to market yourself to people who are searching for licensed plumbers near their homes who can come and save the day!
Why plumbers should be using online marketing
There’s no doubting plumbing is a very competitive market. Your customers are mostly limited to the locale you are in. Your customers may be within a 50-100 km radius from you. Thus you need to be very focused on getting more and more leads from new and existing customers.
Traditional methods of marketing such as placing ads into local newspapers, distribute flyers and magnets, and maybe even some radio and TV advertising can be hit and miss. If you do radio and TV ads – these can get expensive.
Today the internet and particularly search engines, make it easier than ever for people to search for tradies to come fix their problems they may have. This is where internet marketing is not just important – it’s an absolute must have.
We have helped a lot of plumbing businesses increase their presence online and generate masses of relevant leads for them. As a business owner – we know how difficult it is for you to both run a business and do the marketing well at the same time.
So from our extensive experience on what works well for plumbers, we have compiled a list of 9 marketing ideas that you can help your plumbing business stand out from the competition.
The Best Online Marketing Strategies For Plumbers
Today people are far more likely to first search online for tradie services particularly for plumbing.
1. Create A Website
The first item on the list for any online business is of course a website. Your business website is the hub of your online marketing. But don’t just get any website – you need a functional website that attracts your customers and converts them into leads.
You need to make sure all the contact information like your current address, email address and your phone number mentioned on the website are correct and working. You don’t want potential customers landing on your website and losing the leads and inquiries just because you made a typo. Believe me I’ve seen it done many times.
If designing a website is something you cannot do it by yourself or simply don’t have the time – hire a professional marketing company (or web design company that knows marketing) to get your task done.
2. Submit your website to local online directories
Your potential customers are going to find you through local online business listings such as Yellowpages.com.au, localsearch.com.au, and even gumtree.com.au. Having your business listed in local directories like these are vital and many have paid listings to promote your listing higher where more customers will see them.
Adding your business to these directories will build trust and increases your chances getting found easily by your customer. Some of the most popular online local listing business directories are:
Local Search – https://localsearch.com.au
Yellowpages – https://yellowpages.com.au
Oneflare – https://oneflare.com.au
Hipages – https://hipages.com.au
Gumtree – https://gumtree.com.au
3. Create Blogs
Content is king. Search engines such as Google love relevant content. Building unique and engaging content around your keywords helps you get your audience’s attention and helps with the SEO.
Your plumbing business can write a blog on topics like:
- How to fix a blocked drain
- How to save money on your water bills
Do an extensive keyword research and write your content around the keywords that your audience is looking for answers online.
4. Create Demonstration Videos
DIY videos are very popular and lots of people search for them. Ensure you have relevant videos on websites such as YouTube and Facebook. Anytime, someone has a plumbing emergency make sure you have a quick video to find the answer – and your website!
People will associate your business’s brand with your helpful and informative videos and will contact you for plumbing to be done.
5. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation (or simply, SEO) is a technique which works by adding relevant and related keywords to your website’s content. Google crawls your website and finds those keywords on your page, and that is how it knows if it’s related to the search and that it needs to show it in search results.
This part of SEO is known as on-page optimisation. This includes optimising your page titles, meta tags, image alt tags and creating meaningful and valuable content around it.
You must ensure you are the right keywords – this is very important. If you don’t know what your targeted audience is searching online for – a) you are never going to rank for their searched terms and b) people may not be actually searching for that to find you. Ultimately that means no business is coming to your website.
One of the best tools to use is to do a simple search in Google. Within the Google results you will find suggestions of questions people ask, location information and even other related keywords that people have searched for.
If you want to do a more in-depth analysis – use the free Google Keywords Planner. Just search for the term: “Google Keywords Planner”.
6. Social Media Marketing
Social media doesn’t mean just Facebook – it can also include any portal where people interact with content and others such as Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube.
92% of marketers claim that social media marketing was very important for their business. With so many people now on social media – if you are not using social media marketing – you maybe losing a big chunk of the pie. However – social media may not be for every plumbing business.
Social media is a great place to interact with your customers. It helps you build a stronger relationship with them and win their trust. When you interact with your audience on social media, you get to know what them at a higher level, find out what their needs are and you can then offer them your services.
It’s important to start building relationships and increase the trust level with your customers so that they have you in mind whenever they have a plumbing emergency.
Build your Social Media Marketing Strategy right away – if you don’t know how and where to start your planning for one, we can give you some tips on how to build a social media marketing plan.
But what can plumbers do on social media?
Some things you can do are:
- Offer special deals and coupons, just for your social media followers.
- Share some DIY videos to help your customers out.
- Run social media contests and sweepstakes.
Each of these offer brand exposure and awarenes plus you can also capture email addresses which you can use later on.
7. Paid Advertising
This is a type of marketing model used to promote your business online where you run paid ads on the search engines and 3rd party websites and the advertiser (your plumbing business) pays a small fee when a potential customer clicks on that ad and lands on your website.
Paid advertising brings in traffic fast and increases exposure for your plumbing business.
There are a couple of different methods. Pay per Click (is normally the standard method) where you will only be charged when someone clicks on the ads you run.
Running Pay Per Click ads (PPC) on search engines (such as Google) has a lot of benefits:
- You get faster results.
- You reaching the right audience (targeted audience).
- Measurable results.
- Control over your ads – amount spent, what they say, and who sees them.
- Exposure and brand awareness – your ad may be shown often but only charged when clicked.
Pay Per Click is the best method of getting customers to your business fast – however just remember this: It is not “set and forget”! PPC cannot run on auto-pilot and will require a continuous monitoring and iterations to be profitable.
8. Reviews And Build A Good Reputation
Providing a good service and building a good reputation can take years of hard work, but the pay off can be very beneficial.
After a job is completed – ask your customer to leave a feedback on Facebook or Google Business or on your website. Local online directories list your reviews and show in search results. These reviews highly affect customer’s decisions in choosing you over other plumbing companies.
9. Create Your Brand
Your business’s brand is extremely important. It is the method your customers identify you.
How do plumbers brand themselves?
- Set yourself apart from the competition. Why are you different than the other plumbers and why should a customer go with you?
- Design a logo that represents you and is unique.
- Write a great tagline. That is what defines what you do in just a few words and separates you from the competition.
- Define a unique business voice for your brand. It could be anything from comical, controversial, friendly, professional or promotional.
- Continually evolve your branding over time.
Conclusion
Finding customers for your plumbing business can be challenging, but it’s not at impossible and imperative for your business to grow! We’ve shown you just a few plumber marketing ideas that can help you get you up and running with your internet marketing. Keep in mind though, these ideas are as good as what you make of them.
Be vigilant and manage, track and maintain your strategies and change them based on its success of failure as not every tactic would work for your audience.
If you have any questions on what is the best marketing for your plumbing business – just call us and we can help you out.
Hear from the fastest growing maintenance plumbing company and see how they grew their business using online marketing strategies