Drain the Competition: 8 Plumbing Marketing Tips to Flush Out the Best

You can fix a leaking faucet. You can unclog a drain and you can repair a broken water line. But what do you know about plumber marketing?

There is no doubt that plumbing is a highly competitive market. Success means that you plan your marketing the right way, target the right people, and generate plenty of quality leads and high-paying customers. In this article, I will show you how marketing can help you grow your business and share some useful tips. Let’s jump into it!

Local Services Marketing

I recently moved to a different neighborhood, now too far away from my old place. Twenty minutes on foot. Still, I found myself in an alien land. I had to find a new barber, a new optics store because I am prone to damaging my sunglasses, a new butcher, a new gym, etc. My best friends in that quest were Google and the vaunted “X in my area” search term.

As you can see from the stats above, local marketing is a driving force in growing revenue for local businesses, and plumbing is by definition a local service. Customers in your county or city or town are your main base of income so, you need to plan a marketing strategy that will reach them.

With local marketing, you can focus your resources on a very targeted audience that is specifically looking for your services and will respond to your advertisements, whether they are digital or print.

Now that you know what local marketing is, let’s talk about some strategies and tips that will help you.

Create a Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile is essential for local businesses to be discovered online. By optimizing your profile with local SEO, you can boost visibility in search results, attracting potential customers searching for nearby services. Additionally, a Google Business Profile fosters customer engagement through reviews, photos, and direct communication, building trust and credibility, ultimately leading to increased leads and business growth.

Put Your Business on the Map

A well-rounded plumber marketing strategy should involve Google Maps. It’s a surefire way for locals to find you, contact you, and read reviews. Plus, when they search for plumbing services in Google, below the ads section, there is a part where nearby businesses appear on the map.

Users typically don’t go for the first result that pops up on their screen. They will check the alternatives and will scroll down a bit further, where they see the map, along with all the reviews.

Google Local Service Ads

Just as the name implies, LSAs are ads that cater to service businesses that serve their immediate area. They appear above regular ads on Google searches, in their dedicated area. LSAs are displayed as small rectangles, with pictures and business info. They also show customer reviews, which can be a great motivator for customers. Local service ads are a great addition to Local SEO and are more effective in generating leads and calls than regular Google Ads.

Here are some local service ad benefits:

Setting them up and running is easy. You won’t even need an agency to do it for you. We have a full guide on local service ads you can consult.

Optimize Your Website for Local SEO

As I said, when you are planning your marketing strategy, you need to think local. This applies to your website as well. People won’t find you by typing your name or your business name. Most likely they don’t even know the names of their immediate neighbors. No, they will find you by searching for things like “plumber in my area” or “faucet repair Los Angeles”.

When this happens, Google’s all-mighty algorithm will search for results that best answer these queries and also are closest to the searcher. Now, what you want is to appear on the first page and as high as possible. Users will rarely look beyond the first three results and expecting to be found on the second page is like trying to find the Holy Grail. Stuff of the legends.

To appear on the first page, you need to use combinations of your services with area keywords. Something like “water line repair in Chicago” or “toilet replacement in Manhattan”. You get the gist. Sprinkle those keywords on your website, landing pages, blog posts, headlines, subheads, tags, and descriptions. This will help Google push your website higher in search results and drive more customers to you.

The best way to rank locally on Google is by conducting a competition analysis using any other SEO tool. Look out for the keywords that your competitors are ranking for in the same city. Then come up with better and more optimized content to compete for those keywords. Investment in link building will also boost your domain authority and get you to rank higher than your competitors on Google.

Ask for Reviews & Manage them Properly

An essential component in local marketing is customer reviews. The more and better you have, the more trustworthy you will seem to people that need your service. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Would you trust a plumber that has a 2.5/5 stars in Google Maps? Probably not. How about someone with only three reviews, one of which seems to be by their mother? Quite sketchy, right?

What you need is genuine reviews from actual customers. Don’t be afraid to ask for them. You can either do it in person, when finishing your interaction with your customers or you can set up your Google Business Profile to automatically ask for reviews.

Most people enjoy leaving positive reviews, but they simply don’t bother to do it because they don’t know how or where to do it. If presented with the opportunity though, they will jump into it.

On the other hand, negative experiences are a great motivator for customers to leave bad reviews. This will happen. It’s inevitable. You might make a mistake or the customer might be unreasonable. If that happens, don’t take it personally. Respond to the review in a calm, professional manner. Apologize if it was your fault and offer ways to fix the situation. If it wasn’t your fault, explain why. Always be kind. A rude reply will drive potential customers away and hurt you in the process.

Respond to positive reviews as well. A simple “thank you”, is more than enough. You don’t need to drool over them. Remember, stay calm, stay kind, and stay professional.

More Plumber Marketing Tips to Tip the Scales in Your Favour

OK, we talked about local marketing. Now, I will give you some more general marketing tips that will help you formulate a complete marketing strategy.

Content is King

People crave content. When they have a problem or need a solution to something, they will read about it. They will watch videos or even listen to podcasts. Content can be your evergreen method of guiding leads into your website and your appointment book.

Your content marketing strategy should involve a combination of blog posts, and social media marketing on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Put your brand out there for everyone to see what you’re capable of. This can involve doing a live stream of how you approach a project and uploading it on your social media channels such as YouTube or TikTok. Articles with guides and tips on common plumbing issues or images of your equipment and staff. Content is very versatile and can adapted to everyone’s needs.

Remember, your content needs to solve problems. Your objective is to first help people with it, gain their trust, and then sell them higher ticket offers by showcasing your abilities.

Reach a Wider Audience with Google Ads

While SEO and content promise good returns in the long run, paid ads give quick results. Google Ads, unlike local service ads, serve a bigger customer base. They focus on keywords and phrases included in search queries. So Google Ads allows you to quickly get new customers that are willing to pay high for your service. This is because Google Ads target audiences searching directly for your service.

First, of all, we should clear any confusion there might be with local service ads. LSAs are ideal for local reach, don’t require any keyword research, have their own spot in search results, and charge per successful lead, not per click. Regular Google Ads can be set to reach an audience as wide as you and your budget allow. Keyword research is your responsibility and you have to craft copy and spend more time monitoring and optimizing them. Also, you pay per click, no matter what the result.

You might be thinking that with LSAs around, it’s not worth investing in Google Ads. But, a good marketing strategy should involve both. Not all clients search for plumbers using local terms in their queries and maybe you are not focusing solely on your area. Maybe you are looking to expand or to take up bigger contracts in other places as well. Google Ads can help you grow and scale your business beyond the confines of your county or town.

Stay on Top of Your Marketing Campaigns with Web Analytics

Web analytics is a powerful tool that provides invaluable insights and data into the performance of your online marketing efforts. By understanding how people interact with your website, you can make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing strategy and drive business growth.

That is, you get to identify your best-performing content and ads. This allows you to improve your site and marketing and focus your campaigns on people who have shown more interest in your plumbing service.

You can always rely on G4 Analytics for optimum results. It’s free and offers robust data and clean dashboards. And since, by nature, plumbing is a business that relies heavily on the phone for leads and appointments, I recommend integrating a call tracking tool into your website. That way, you can get full marketing attribution data, not only for your online leads but your offline as well.

What call tracking does essentially, is that it provides you with tracking phone numbers you can place on your website, ads, brochures, and even billboards. These phone numbers will direct calls to your actual number and capture important data when a call is placed, like source of call, duration, whether it’s a new or repeat caller, etc. Plus, with a good call tracking tool, you can also record and transcribe calls to go through at a later time or keep for safety reasons. You can also design call flows that will save you time, and enable voicemails and call greetings.

With great call tracking tools, like Nimbata, you can utilize AI as well. Nimbata can generate summaries after every call, so you can get all the important info of a call in a very short text format, instead of reading or listening to whole 10 or 15-minute conversations. Or you can take advantage of its word and phrase spotting and have it tag your calls automatically based on the keywords you yourself chose.

Takeaway

In this article, we talked about the importance of local marketing in designing your plumber marketing strategy effectively and also talked about the effectiveness of content marketing, SEO, Google ads, data, and analytics as well.

A successful plumber marketing strategy should be multi-faceted and based on actual information, instead of relying solely on your hunch. Experience sure is important, but real data can make a difference. This is why it’s crucial to invest in the right tools, like G4 Analytics and call tracking software like Nimbata, that will provide you with a 360-degree view of your marketing efforts’ results.