Growing a plumbing business on a small budget can seem impossible, but if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can see serious growth.
Here are eight plumbing marketing strategies, including a mix of traditional and digital marketing tactics, you can grow your plumbing business while spending little or no money. Think of these ways as free plumbing advertising.
Low-cost plumbing business ideas
Make Your Website a Resource Center
Your website can be much more than just a place where customers find your contact information. There are ways to utilize your site to plant seeds into your customers’ minds that build trust and even give them new ideas for how they can use your plumbing services!
The best way to go about this is by prioritizing an education over a sales pitch.
Blog to Educate
Blogging about plumbing-related topics establishes your expertise in the field and educates potential customers.
Writing DIY tutorials probably seems counterintuitive. Why would you teach customers how to do something you want them to pay you to do?
The thing is, people remember those who teach them. And when they run into a problem they can’t fix on their own, you’ll be the first business that comes to mind. So teach them to do the little things, and they’ll call you for the more complicated (and expensive) work.
Blog to Build Trust
Educational opportunities include more than just how-tos. Consider writing things like remodeling guides. They can help encourage your existing or potential customers to pull the trigger on big projects. And they can go a long way to show that you do, indeed, know what you’re talking about.
Blog to Be Found
When you write really relevant blog posts, it can attract a significant amount of search traffic, especially if you’re writing in-depth posts. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), Google typically rewards longer posts with rich, relevant information.
How do you know what to write about? Start with questions that often arise on job sites. If customers are constantly asking you the same questions, chances are people are also searching for those same questions.
Learn more about whether starting a blog is the right course of action for you in our Ultimate Guide to Blogging and SEO for Plumbers.
Email Consistently
Once you’ve taken the time to write those educational resources, don’t stop at posting them online! Expand your marketing channels and share them with your current and new customers.
Plumbing email marketing is an incredibly powerful tool for home services companies. In fact, marketing emails earn an average of $40 for every one dollar spent.
Sending monthly emails keeps your company top-of-mind and can increase the earnings you make from your existing customer base and get more plumbing jobs booked.
- Those informative resources you’ve created.
- Seasonal promotions that you’re offering.
- Company news such as new services you’re offering or employee news that helps personalize your company.
Go Live on Facebook
Want to get more out of your social media accounts and build your online presence? Try going live on Facebook. Live videos receive six times the amount of interactions as regular videos, giving you the opportunity to truly engage with your community.
We recommend going live for things like job walk-throughs (with the permission of the customer, of course), company news, and how-to videos. But we also encourage you to be creative. For instance, Transou’s Rooter and Plumbing, a plumbing company in North Carolina, maintains goes live weekly for their “The Plumb and Positive Show,” with each video receiving hundreds of views. The Transou’s team sets themselves apart by doing something unique and memorable.
Check them out for inspiration and follow our tutorial to learn how to go live and tips on doing it well.
Identify Older Homes
If you’re less of an internet marketing person, these next three ideas might be more up your alley. Strategy number four — direct mailing owners of older homes — is pretty straightforward.
Most homes that are older than five years can have potential plumbing problems. So how do you identify homes older than five years? Many real-estate websites such as Zillow allow you to see specifically when a house was built.
Granted, this isn’t the easiest technique, but it can certainly generate highly qualified leads. Once you’ve identified homes older than five years, send mailers to them that contain your contact information. You may even want to offer them a special deal on your services.
Direct mail advertising is still a relatively effective way to generate plumbing leads. A recent Canada Post study found that more people notice and read direct mail (53%) than they do of their email messages (26%). After all, a promotional email might end up in someone’s junk folder or get deleted before they even open it. With physical mail, the recipient must collect and sort each item by hand.
If you don’t want to spend the money on mailing them, you can hand deliver them to different homes throughout your community and other targeted communities.
Partner With A Builder
Strategic partnerships can really up your revenue in a big way. Typically, when a person builds a home, they seek out a builder first who then recommends or subcontracts a plumber.
If you can create a good relationship with a builder, there’s a good chance they’ll send many customer referrals your way. To build such a referral relationship either contact local builders or join professional groups and network with builders. You’ll probably need to provide references so have those ready.
Be Active In Your Local Community
Plumbing is a local business, and being active in your local community connects you to the residents in an authentic way that can lead to more word of mouth referrals. The key is visibility. The more people see you around, the more they’ll think of you when they need a plumber.
How can you increase your visibility? Some simple ways include:
- Introducing yourself to local small business owners
- Joining the Chamber of Commerce and meeting business owners
- Sponsoring a table or booth at local events
- Partnering with local charities to host events
- Sponsoring a local sports team
- Take a day a month for your whole team to work together on a volunteer project.
When sponsoring events or working on volunteer projects, consider partnering up with other local service businesses like HVAC or electrical companies. These are good opportunities to start up referral relationships.
If you’re at a local event, be sure to have a supply of business cards on hand to give to anyone who will take one. You want to get your contact information into the hands of as many people as possible.
Automate Your Review Requests
Whenever you finish a job, as long as you believe the customer is satisfied, you should be asking for a review. Most customers are willing to leave a review, but it’s easy to forget to take the time. It’s also just as easy for business owners and office staff to forget to follow up. This is where automation comes in.
Housecall Pro automatically sends review requests after you complete a job and connects to your Google My Business account to help customers leave reviews where they’ll matter most. If you’re not currently a user, you can try this feature out during a two-week free trial.
You can also set up post-job follow-up campaigns through email management systems like Mailchimp and Constant Contact to remind customers to leave reviews and any post-job information they’d find valuable.
In your correspondence, make sure you link to multiple options where you accept reviews, such as Google, Yelp, and Facebook, so that people can leave reviews where they’re most comfortable.
Final Thoughts
Growing your plumbing business isn’t easy by any means. It takes creativity, diligence, and a whole lot of hard work. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, you can take your plumbing business to the next level. And the good news is that you don’t even need to spend a fortune on advertising.
All of the plumbing marketing ideas we explored are low-cost strategies that can go into your results-driven marketing plan.
