6 Plumber Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business in 2020

I talk to plumbers every day, and you’re all looking for the same thing: You want your phone to ring more. You all share the same frustration, too: You’ve spent a ton of money on your plumber marketing and you have maddeningly little to show for it. So you’re feeling discouraged, and, quite frankly, ripped off. But what are you gonna do? Not market your business? Of course not. 

Here’s what I recommend instead: A comprehensive plumber marketing plan for 2020 that leverages high-ROI strategies to bring in more qualified leads, convert them to paying customers, and make them raving fans. 

No gimmicks. No tricks. Not a single dollar wasted. Sound good? Read on.

Before I share those high-ROI strategies with you, I need to let you in on a little secret most marketing experts don’t want you to know: There’s no such thing as the “right” way to do marketing. There’s no one “best” plan. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, there are multiple versions of right and a whole lot of “it depends.” 

So, if someone’s telling you what to do without first asking a whooooooooole lot of questions—about your business, your goals, your market, and your competitors—hang up the phone. Likewise, if you’re working with a marketing company that can’t (or won’t) show you exactly what results you’re getting for your money—in plain language you can understand—it’s time to move on. 

I take plumber marketing personally, and it honestly pisses me off to see hard-working business owners being taken advantage of. I’m not saying you have to hire me. In fact, I only work with one plumber in each service area, so you might not be able to. But I want you to find someone who’ll use your marketing dollars well. You deserve that.

OK, rant over. Let’s talk strategy.

Note: If you’re a medium- to large-sized plumbing shop, it’s likely none of these will be particularly surprising to you. But if you’re like most business owners, you set your marketing plan a year or more ago and haven’t looked at it since. So, use this as a bit of a marketing checkup. If you get to the end and you have no new action items, gold star for you! 

(Of course, if you have that gold star and your competitors are still killing you, let’s talk. I’d be happy to do a free digital audit for you—which includes taking a look at your competitors’ strategy.)

Yep, my second high-ROI marketing strategy for plumbers is once again about people. Later, I’ll talk about how to optimize your website for Google to get more traffic/leads, but first you need to make sure your website is optimized for people. That sounds fancy, but here’s all that means: Make sure people can find what they’re looking for—fast. 

Three Ways to Make Your Plumber Website More People-Friendly

• Make sure your website is mobile-responsive. More than half of your web traffic is coming from mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly—if, for example, people have to scroll across to read text, rather than down, and if links and buttons are too close together for someone to click—you are losing business. (And Google doesn’t like you.)
• Rewrite your website header so it answers three questions: What do you do? How’s it going to make my life better? How do I get it? It’s not enough to say you offer plumbing services. Somewhere “above the fold” of your website, list your three major value propositions, e.g., 24/7 service, free estimates, spotless repairs, and so on. Then make it ridiculously obvious what button people need to push to reach you.
• Humanize the text. If your website’s full of insider/industry lingo, long and complex paragraphs, or grammatical errors, people won’t bother with it.

Leverage Your Google Business Profile Listing

Google Business Profile (GBP) is a free and highly effective means of driving qualified leads to your website. I’ve written about this in my book , over here , and also here . I can’t overstate this: If your shop isn’t on GBP, you are losing business. 

Three Ways to Optimize your Plumber GBP Listing

• Post relevant, high-quality content right in GBP: promotions, photos, blog posts, and so on. Do this at least once a week.
• Pay attention (read: respond!) to your reviews, questions, and leads that come through the GBP mobile app.
• Double-check the accuracy of your business hours and contact information. (Some shady competitors will suggest changes to your GBP without you even knowing.)

Almost all web traffic these days (93%) comes through search, and nearly all of that (92%) happens on Google. If Google can’t “see” your website, customers won’t either, which means you need to make sure your site is set up in a Google-friendly way—otherwise known as search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is a giant, hairy, (often) cranky beast, so I can’t explain all the ins and outs of it here. But as I summarized in this post, the gist of SEO for plumbers is: 

• making intentional decisions about the content on your website
• that increase the chances of a search engine finding it
• and showing it to someone who’s looking for a plumber who does what you do.

Google takes into consideration two hundred ranking factors—some of which you can’t manipulate (like how old your website domain is). But optimizing what you can is well-worth the investment.

Three Ways to Level-Up Your Plumber SEO

• Visit Google’s Keyword Planner to determine what words are most beneficial for your plumbing business. (You will need an active AdWords account to use this free and valuable tool.) Make sure you’re using plenty of these words on your site—but not toooooo frequently. Get more keyword tips here.
• Add metadata to your website images. Using accurate and complete metadata for your site’s visual elements is every bit as important as it is for text. At the very least, the name of each image should be meaningful (not just IMG_1425.jpg) to help Google make sense of it. 
• Get backlinks. What the heck’s a backlink, you ask? Here you go.

Improving your customer service, tweaking your website for people and Google, and getting more intentional with GBP will undoubtedly have a positive effect on your business— over time . But if you’re looking for fast ROI, nothing will get it for you quite like PPC Google Ads.

Done well, Google Ads will dramatically improve your position on the search engine results page (SERP)—placing you above all unpaid (organic) results. That visibility matters , whether you’re a one-person shop or a multi-million-dollar business. And because you only pay for Google Ads when people click on them, they offer high potential ROI with very little risk. Google’s conservative estimate is that advertisers get $8 in profit for every $1 they invest in Ads.

Google Ads “done well” is admittedly tricky, and most businesses find they need help to avoid making common, costly mistakes. If you’re not confident about your Google Ads set-up, I’d love to help . 

Three Ways to Get Better ROI from Your Plumber Google Ads

• Spend enough . If you’re new to Google Ads, you’ll need to spend $50-65 a day ($1500-2000 a month) to get sufficient data to know what is and isn’t working. Minimum . If you can’t afford that, set aside as much as you can each month until you have 90 days’ worth of Ads spend saved up. Then launch your Ads strategy.
• Pay attention. Too many plumbers push “go” on their Google Ads and do nothing more than pay their invoice every month. Big mistake. To get the most bang for your buck, you have to review and revise your Ads at least every four weeks to make sure they’re performing well.
• Check for Google Local Services and Google Guaranteed. Google Local Services is a supplementary Google Ads option that drops your listing at the top of searches like “Plumbers [your town].” Google Guaranteed screens service providers so customers can feel confident they’re legit. If a customer books a service call through Local Services and isn’t satisfied, Google will issue a refund (with some stipulations, of course). And Google Local Services plumbers only pay for legitimate leads. It’s a win-win—but it’s not yet available in every community. If you can only afford either Google PPC Ads or Google Local Services, go with Local Services if it’s available.

Listen, I know plumber marketing is complex and confusing and (can be) expensive. I didn’t even get into social media and directories and referral marketing and… Yeah. It’s a lot.

You have more important things to do than try to figure out how to become a digital marketing expert in addition to being a kickass plumber. Can I help? Start with a free digital assessment today.