If you have a plumbing business, you already know that your services are in high demand. Many potential customers are looking to hire someone right away.
But home services is still a competitive industry. When a customer needs help the most, you’ll be competing with dozens of other companies to catch their attention and convince them that you’re the best fit.
Taking advantage of digital marketing can help your business stand out from the crowd. So how do you get started with plumber marketing to bring in more leads, appointments, and plumbing jobs?
You’ll need a plumbing advertising strategy that uses a variety of different channels, from local SEO to email marketing. In this guide, we’ll cover all the fundamentals of plumber marketing, step by step.
Top Places to Advertise Your Plumbing Business
If you already know you want to expand your Internet marketing efforts, you might be wondering: Where do I go to advertise my plumbing services?
The key is to go exactly where your new customers are. And with the rise of online marketing over the past several decades, that place tends to be the Internet. From Google search results to an email inbox, placing advertising right where a potential customer is most likely to see it is the best way to set yourself up for success.
Here are some of the top places to advertise your plumbing business.
Pay-Per-Click Advertisements
When you’re competing with larger, more established plumbing companies, it might feel like a hopeless effort to try and get your plumbing company near the top of the search results. That’s where pay-per-click advertisements, or PPC ads, come in.
Some small businesses avoid paid advertising because of the high cost. But if it’s used the right way, a small budget can go a long way with PPC ads. This form of advertising allows you to choose your own budget. You only pay for the clicks — or even conversions — that you get from each ad.
Another benefit is that more organic forms of search engine boosting take time. A plumber SEO strategy could take months or even years to pay off, while an ad can start getting you results as soon as it goes live. In fact, visitors who come to your website through a PPC ad are 50% more likely to buy than organic visitors.
One way to tap into pay-per-click advertising is by using Google ads. Google ads offer Local Services ads, which are exclusive to local service providers, including contractors, plumbers, and electricians.
Google’s Local Services ads appear at the top of the search results for people searching specific keywords in your local area. This allows your local service ad to reach a more targeted, local audience — and you only pay when someone reaches out to your business.
Facebook Ads
Beyond search engine ads, another opportunity for advertisement is social media marketing. Facebook advertising offers huge potential for plumbing business owners. With all the options out there — Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and more — more than 90% of social media advertisers still turn to Facebook to promote their businesses.
Why is Facebook so valuable? Here are a few top benefits of advertising on the platform:
- It can get you results (followers, conversions, etc.) quickly
- It opens you up to a vast audience of almost three billion people
- It costs less on average compared to other digital marketing, like Google ads
- It comes with detailed statistics on how your ads are performing, along with personalized recommendations on how to improve your ad campaigns
Email Marketing
One of the most effective and targeted ways to reach potential customers is through email marketing. Email marketing doesn’t just reach new people at a higher rate — it allows you to develop deeper relationships that encourage those people to book with you.
While social media marketing is only responsible for 1% of all online sales, email marketing makes up 13% of all online sales. Unlike other forms of online advertising, email marketing reaches people directly in their inboxes. What’s more, it reaches the people who are already invested in your services and are closer than ever to reaching out for an appointment.
So how does it work? First, you need to build an email list of people already engaged and interested in your services. This can come from a website pop-up, contact form, or a sign-up bar on the header and footer of your website. Try enticing them with a coupon, special offer, or an informative PDF.
Once you have their emails, the real marketing strategy begins. You can start sending out emails to encourage people to use your services. Avoid being too strong in your sales pitch — focus instead on providing value. That could look like offering discounts and seasonal deals, but it could also look like helpful tips, a DIY guide, or links to other valuable resources that make people interested in opening your emails every time.
Social Media Marketing
If you don’t have a social media presence, you could be missing out on valuable leads. These days, thousands of your potential customers are on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and more.
With social media marketing, you can post organic content that showcases the best side of your business. More than just content, you can answer questions, address concerns, and connect with people interested in your business.
While they may not be overt advertisements, each post you make can have a call to action that draws the reader back to your website. For a more direct approach, you can create paid advertisements on other social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram as well to attract more traffic.
4 Top Plumber Advertising Tips
Once you have a few channels in mind, it’s time to start your Internet marketing strategy. With the right plumber marketing ideas, it doesn’t have to be complicated. But there are still a few best practices to keep in mind.
Whether you’re crafting an email list or building your social media presence, here are four of the best plumber advertising tips.
1. Invest in Local SEO
From content marketing to social media posts, every part of your advertising strategy should incorporate local SEO. When people are looking for a solution to their plumbing concerns, they turn to a Google search.
For example, they might search “plumber near me” or “plumber in (region).” You want your plumbing website to be one of the first results that pop up on the search results.
Of course, this is easier said than done. When you’re competing with larger, more established businesses, it’s likely that your website will get pushed to the second page of the search engine’s results. Not ranking on that first page could cut down on your traffic significantly — 75% of searchers on Google don’t go past the first page.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way to boost those rankings. By using keywords and phrases related to your plumbing business and your local area, you can make sure that the search engine is working for you, not against you.
This strategy is often applied to website design or blog posts. But it can go for other forms of plumber marketing as well, like advertising. For example, those keywords can be placed in your social media posts and PPC ads as well. Or you can incorporate some of your search-engine-optimized blog posts into email marketing to make sure it gets as much traffic as possible.
For local SEO specifically, you want to be focusing on keywords that relate to your local area. Try using the city or county in your keywords to narrow down the most relevant results, like “plumber in Atlanta” or “plumber in Orange County.” Using Google’s built-in location services, you can also use keywords like “clogged drain repair near me” to attract potential customers in your area.
2. Make a Public Listing
One simple yet effective step you can take today to step up your plumbing marketing is claiming your listing on Google Business Profile. This free service provides a listing on Google search results, showing your business name, hours of operation, contact information, photos, and reviews of your business.
If you haven’t yet created this listing and filled out all the necessary details, you could be missing out. When a customer Googles your business, this is the first thing that comes up. Why not make the best first impression?
If you have a website or a blog, this is a great place to plug those resources.
3. Manage Your Reviews
Whether someone stumbled across your services by Googling your business or they followed an advertisement to your website, very few potential customers will book your services without first checking one thing: reviews.
82% of online consumers read reviews before they make a purchase. The home services industry is no exception.
That’s why it’s always important to manage your online reputation as part of the plumber advertising process. If you don’t have enough Google reviews, you can always directly encourage them, either verbally or through a follow-up text message. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback or honest reviews. Once you get a review — good or bad — be sure to respond to thank them for their business.
4. Revisit Your Website
There’s no better plumbing promotion than your own website. Having a solid and easy-to-navigate website with all the relevant information easily available can do a lot for your business.
No matter how successful your other advertising efforts are, you’re directing all that traffic straight to your website. If that website is hard to read or doesn’t give a casual browser the information they need to know with a brief skim, you could lose those hard-earned leads.
The best way to keep that from happening is by keeping your site clean and simple. Someone searching through their options during a plumbing emergency should be able to take a quick look and understand the core values of your company.
Make sure to prioritize these elements in your design:
- Plenty of white space with no cluttered text
- A professional logo, name, and font
- Unique and concise selling points on your home page
- Easily accessible area and contact information
- A list of products and services provided
- Photos and reviews to back up your claims
Tools for Plumbing Advertising
While the right marketing ideas can take you a long way, advertising isn’t something that you can do overnight. It can offer great returns for your plumber business, but you’ll need the right tools to get there.
Tools like social media platforms or Google My Business are free and easy to use, but they’re not always enough.
Here are a few Internet marketing tools that can take you one step further to a successful advertising strategy:
- Keyword tools like Keyword Tool and Semrush can help you find the perfect keywords to make the most of your SEO strategy
- Website builders like WordPress can help you create a polished, professional website
- Advertising platforms like Google Adwords or Facebook ads allow you to launch your own advertising campaign with little effort
Of course, all of these tools, channels, and strategies can quickly become overwhelming. Companies like Scorpion make that process simpler — putting all the marketing technology you need right at your fingertips. They handle the marketing strategy while you handle the plumbing business.
Getting Leads With Plumber Advertising
With all the terms being thrown around — digital marketing, PPC, local SEO, and email marketing — it can get complicated fast. It’s important to remember to keep it simple. All it takes is the right know-how and some thoughtful strategizing to get your plumber marketing right and start bringing in new customers.
As a plumbing contractor or business owner, you already know how stressful it is to manage every part of your company. You’re already putting countless hours into serving your customers and delivering top results. So why waste more time on advertising?
When you work with Scorpion, you get a team of plumbing industry experts ready to help you reach your goals. From marketing strategies to SEO services, learn more about what we can do for you.
Let’s talk about plumber advertising. Schedule a consultation.