Fixing leaky faucets, clogged drains or broken water lines are second nature for a professional plumbing business. Designing a marketing strategy that gets new customers and grows your business requires a different skill set altogether, especially when your marketing efforts need to include digital platforms, such as Google Ads and social media platforms.
And, when you’re also focusing on the day-to-day operations of your business, such as call booking, scheduling, and customer service, implementing an effective marketing campaign can be overwhelming.
ServiceTitan has helped thousands of plumbing businesses grow with our field management software. We provide a range of tools to manage advertising and marketing, attract new business, and track the ROI of every campaign (e.g. Google Ads and Google reviews). We also offer tools to help manage all the operational processes of your business, too.
In this guide to plumbing marketing, we remove the guesswork for you with 16 proven plumbing marketing tips to grow your business, specifically:
In addition, we’ll also explain how ServiceTitan can help your plumbing business fulfill all of these marketing services.
Want to discover how ServiceTitan can help your plumbing contractor business with your marketing strategy and other essential business operations? Book a free, personalized demo here.
1. Make Your Plumbing Website Mobile Friendly
Optimize your site for smartphones, tablets.
Put great reviews front and center.
Be where your customers are—on mobile devices.
The first objective in your plumbing marketing plan is to make sure that you have a strong online presence and that customers can find your mobile-friendly website quickly and easily from any smartphone or tablet.
Being mobile-friendly means that your website should display comfortably on a mobile device, such as smartphone or tablet. Compared to a desktop version, a mobile-friendly site should be uncluttered by images or excessive text blocks, and include the following features, which a good web developer can help you apply:
Responsive design: The site adapts to any screen size.
Dynamic serving: Users see an adapted version of your site, depending on the type of device they use.
Mobile app development: Creating a mobile plumbing app for your business is a great idea to maximize your mobile-friendly website.
Why is a mobile-friendly website so important? It’s how today’s connected customers find plumbing company names online, read customer reviews, and engage with plumbing marketing ideas. If your plumbing website isn’t fast, secure, easy to navigate, and immediately accessible via their mobile, they’ll lose patience and move on to the next company with a better plumbing website design.
In 2019, American adults spent about 3 hours and 30 minutes a day using a mobile device to search online, and that time is expected to have increased to over 4 hours in 2021, according to a study conducted by Zenith Media. Potential customers searching for a ”plumber near me” use their smartphones to do so.
Read more tips on how to grow your plumbing business.
2. Optimize Your Plumbing Website for SEO
90% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses.
Think local when picking the best keywords.
Sprinkle variations of keywords throughout your website.
Think about today’s busy homeowner as you strategize plumbing advertising ideas to improve your company’s search engine optimization (SEO) rankings. Many people don’t even know their neighbors’ names, let alone communicate enough to ask for a plumber referral.
So, when they need a plumber, they pick up an electronic device—whether it’s a phone, mobile tablet, desktop computer or laptop—and search online for “plumbers near me” with good reviews.
When someone types “plumber near me,” “unclog drain,” or “fix water leak” into Google, Google’s algorithm searches for results most relevant to those keywords and closest to the geographic location of the shopper. To get your plumbing company to appear on Page 1 of Google’s organic search results, think local when choosing the best keywords people use to find your services online.
If you’re a plumbing company in Charlotte, for instance, be sure to use “Charlotte toilet repair” as one of your main keywords. Sprinkle variations of the keywords on your website’s landing pages, content blogs, headlines, subheads, meta tags, and meta descriptions to improve the SEO health of your website. Then, when potential customers do a local search for a plumber, your business stands a good chance of coming up on top.
Learn more about SEO with this guide for contractor businesses.
3. Set, Manage and Adjust Your Plumbing Marketing Budget
Dedicate 10-15% of sales to your marketing budget.
Allocate that marketing spend where it’s best utilized.
Focus on targeted campaigns that build an online reputation.
Establishing a plumbing marketing budget means committing a certain percentage of your sales revenue to plumber advertising, in whatever combination works best for your company to reach more customers.
Experts in the industry say plumbing contractors need to dedicate at least 10% of sales toward their plumbing marketing budget, if they truly want to grow their business. A 5% marketing budget is considered a small “maintenance” budget that yields minimal results.
Set your plumbing marketing budget, then take a look at the plumbing marketing costs and where you need to spend those dollars to maximize plumbing marketing profits. Options might include traditional advertising on TV, radio, newspapers, and billboards, or printing and sending direct mail flyers.
Mastering digital plumbing advertising ideas—from targeted email campaigns and paid social media marketing to Google Local Services ads and 5-star Google reviews—increases brand awareness for your plumbing company and helps you build an online reputation.
Test a combination of traditional and digital for best results, or focus on one before adding another. Once you set your plumber marketing budget, manage and adjust it regularly by tracking results for each campaign.
4. Focus on Lead Tracking & Reporting
Measure success with lead tracking and reporting.
Demand tracking details about every lead.
Accurately calculate cost and ROI.
To truly measure the success of your digital marketing strategy, advertising consultant Chris Yano advises plumbers and other service companies to focus on lead tracking and reporting.
And if your marketing agency isn’t helping you track data, it’s doing you a disservice, says Yano, the CEO of Ryno Strategic Solutions and co-host of the trade-focused “To the Point” podcast.
To make good decisions about how to best spend your plumbing marketing dollars, you need full transparency and specific details about all your leads, so you can accurately calculate the cost and determine your ROI.
“You’ve got to know,” Yano says. “You have to know 100 percent where you stand.”
How to Track Leads with ServiceTitan
ServiceTitan ensures you have a system in place for tracking how many leads and customers you generate, and from which sources. This means you know exactly how much business you’re getting for each dollar of your marketing budget.
ServiceTitan offers campaign tracking telephone numbers and real-time ROI reporting for all your marketing campaigns.
For each campaign, you can track the number of calls, how many jobs you booked from those calls, and the number of sales made from those jobs right in your ServiceTitan dashboard. You can also calculate the ROI on your plumbing advertising campaigns by tracking how much revenue each advertising source generated and identifying total cost per lead.
By measuring the marketing ROI for each campaign, ServiceTitan helps plumbing businesses:
Know how much revenue each plumbing marketing campaign generates
Measure how well staff convert leads into appointments and sales
Focus plumbing marketing dollars on the right campaigns that drive revenue
Stop wasting money on ineffective ads and digital marketing platforms that don’t perform
Need a better reporting system? Learn more about ServiceTitan's plumbing software.
5. Demand Transparency with Call Tracking Software
Listen to every customer call.
Tie calls to specific marketing campaigns.
Adjust marketing spend and training.
Utilize call-tracking software for full transparency into which plumbing calls convert to real job leads from actual customers. But keep in mind, simply deploying the software and listening to every third call won’t give you a clear picture.
Every call needs to be listened to and classified appropriately, Yano says. Separate new customers from repeat customers. Take referral leads out of the equation. Remove solicitations and missed calls. Filter requests for parts from calls tied to a direct mail campaign.
At Ryno Strategic Solutions, they listen to and categorize each call by tracking date, time, location of caller, CSR name, booking status, objections, a call transcript, and more. That level of detail identifies problems and training opportunities, and lets businesses solve problems.
Call Tracking with Service Titan
ServiceTitan’s call booking software automatically records every phone call between your customer service team and your customers. Because each incoming call is captured, you have a complete record of how your CSRs are handling the calls and exactly what was said, so you can provide coaching, if needed.
We also offer a cloud-based add-on service, Phones Pro, that’s fully integrated with the core software. Phones Pro is designed to improve your CSRs’ performance by increasing efficiency, higher booking rates, and revenue.
With Phones Pro, you can access call recordings from anywhere so your plumbing techs can listen to them to check job details before arriving on site. Real-time call transcription and customer sentiment analysis can help you identify the customers who may need assistance, as well as future training opportunities for your CSRs.
6. Verify and Promote Your Google Business Profile Page
Use Google My Business effectively.
Appear on Page 1 of organic Google search results.
Take simple steps to protect your brand.
Verifying your Google My Business page (formerly known as Google Local) is simple, and it’s completely free. Take your time to set up a quality Google Business Profile to attract new customers.
If your plumbing company operates multiple businesses, you can set up a Google My Business profile for each one, as long as you add different addresses and phone numbers for each.
With a well-optimized website, glowing customer reviews, and a verified Google My Business page, your plumbing company can gain more leads by showing up on Page 1 of organic Google results (and include an entry on Google Maps) when a customer in your area searches online for plumbing services. Companies can also buy Pay-Per-Click digital ads for better visibility, as well as set up call tracking to measure ROI.
7. Tell Your Company’s Story in Videos or Blogs
Build authority with your target audience.
Target high-ranking keywords in your market in key text.
Regularly update your company’s website with authentic content.
Get to know your plumbing customers by letting them get to know you. Frequently posting blogs or videos about your company helps build authority with your target audience, improves your search engine ranking, and increases organic traffic for your brand. It’s the best kind of plumber advertising and relatively inexpensive compared to other marketing tactics.
Use blogs and video marketing to target high-ranking keywords in your market, such as “fix leak” or “water heater repair,” and offer helpful information and tips. Include keywords in the headline, captions, subheads, and throughout the content, as well as photo alt text and metadata fields. Be sure to share those ideas in your content marketing on plumbing social media pages (e.g. LinkedIn and Twitter) to drive more traffic to your website.
Regularly updated websites rank higher on Google and other search engines, and posting content with high-ranking keywords is a cost-effective way to improve your website’s SEO. Just make sure the content is authentic, and not simply overstuffed with keywords.
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8. Make Your Plumbing Brand Sticky and Disruptive
Do customers remember your plumbing company name or logo?
How can you make your brand unique, so it doesn’t get lost in the crowd?
Do customers feel at ease and find your company trustworthy?
According to Dan Antonelli, President and Creative Director of KickCharge Creative, branding can make or break a small business, so in times of economic uncertainty, it’s imperative to set your brand apart from the herd.
Start with creative plumbing company names and plumber logo ideas that tend to stick in the minds of potential customers, so they remember you the next time they need a plumber.
How prospective customers perceive your company also extends to your advertising campaigns, signs on your trucks, and the uniforms your employees wear. Always strive to make your brand sticky and disruptive, Antonelli says.
“By sticky, we mean it stands out in their mind, they can remember who you are when they need to,” Antonelli says. “As contractors, we're trying to counter the fact that a lot of homeowners are scared about who's coming to their home, right? They want to figure out, who can I trust to be inside my home and fixing something of mine?”
Be disruptive by standing out from the crowd. Your plumbing brand should be unique, something that doesn’t blend in.
Antonelli advises a good brand does the following to attract customers:
Puts customers at ease.
Diffuses negative stereotypes or biases.
Aims to make people feel confident in their choice and reaffirms the company values.
Matches the company deliverables.
Takes control of the conversation and sets the tone to show customers why they should choose to do business with you.
Whether you’re leveraging the longevity of your brand, your trustworthiness, or catchy plumbing business names, just make sure your foundational branding stands strong. Subscribe
9. Ask Plumbing Customers for Google Reviews
Develop a better strategy for securing positive reviews.
Customize your message to make the request personal.
Make it easy for customers to leave a 5-star Google review.
Managing online reviews is an area of online marketing that’s worth spending time on because over 80% of prospective customers will check out your online reviews before making contact.
Real customers who leave positive reviews help build trust in your business.
According to the 2019 Local Consumer Review Survey, the average consumer reads 10 reviews before feeling able to trust a business. In fact, 89% of 35-54-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
How ProSkill Services Uses ServiceTitan to Manage Online Reviews
With more consumers shopping online today, your company’s plumbing marketing plan better include a strategy for managing online reviews. Your online reputation depends on it, says Travis Ringe.
Ringe co-owns ProSkill Services, a full-service air conditioning, electrical, plumbing, water heater, and water treatment home services company in Arizona. It’s a $14 million operation with more than 3,000 5-star Google reviews.
Ringe says he focused ProSkill’s marketing on getting more 5-star Google reviews by using ServiceTitan’s built-in survey tool to customize a personal message and ask customers specifically to leave a Google review. Our all-in-one marketing software automates the process for better results.
“If you want to drive reviews,” Ringe says, “you have to deliver a full experience worthy of writing a review.” Additionally, you need to make it easy for customers to leave a review. Ringe says. “We get between 5 and 15 Google reviews per day, on average.”
ServiceTitan’s customer experience software automatically sends survey requests to customers after a job has been completed. This makes it easy for customers to share their experience on an online review site (Google, Yelp, etc) while it’s still fresh in their mind.
We also offer a reputation management tool that automates sending review requests to customers, lets you reply to reviews, and gain insights into which techs they relate to.
Learn more about how to ask customers for reviews to improve your online rankings.
10. Master Local SEO by Geo-Targeting the Right Audience
Learn as much as you can about your service area.
Join local groups on platforms such as Nextdoor and Alignable.
Build awareness and trust for your business brand.
Remember how we discussed optimizing your plumbing website above? The same plumbing marketing tips apply to mastering local SEO, or identifying the right local audience for your company. It’s how you get in front of those local customers searching online for “plumbers near me.”
Do you know how many people own homes in your service area? Do you know your customers’ age, gender, average household income, and credit score? Do you know what specific plumbing keywords they search for most often in your locale?
Learn as much as you can about your customers before starting any plumber internet marketing campaign. Join local groups on platforms such as Nextdoor and Alignable to help build referral traffic, distribute a plumbing advertisement in local neighborhoods, or post a funny video to local Facebook groups to engage new customers.
The more your company appears in front of the right audience with the right message, the more awareness and trust you build in your brand.
Learn more about local SEO and other strategies.
11. Send Targeted Email Campaigns
Put the most relevant message in front of the right customers.
Segment your email audience based on relevant data.
Improve your customer relationship management to target appropriately.
Targeted plumbing email marketing is considered one of the most effective marketing channels today, earning $40 for every $1 spent.
According to Megan Bedford of Mugyver Consulting, the best plumbing email marketing campaign gets your company’s name in front of the most customers with the most relevant message at the right time. Many companies don’t do automated email marketing, because they can’t manage it themselves or find a cost-effective provider to do it for them.
Mass emails with generic messages typically don’t resonate with customers and result in lower conversion rates.
Use ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro to Automate Your Email Campaigns
ServiceTitan's Marketing Pro allows you to segment your email audience by ZIP code, age of equipment, date of last service, new homeowner, and more. Using data already collected in ServiceTitan, you can target previous customers with a “We Miss You!” email campaign, follow up with existing customers on unsold estimates, or offer a discount to new homeowners.
For Cody & Sons Plumbing, Heating & Air in Dallas, ServiceTitan Marketing Pro helped improve the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) system to target their own customers appropriately, says Robin Cody, the company’s Director of Marketing.
“Before, we just didn’t have the time or tools to target existing customers,” she says.
With Marketing Pro, the contact information automatically updates in real time so you can “set and forget” audience lists that focus on specific customers. For example, those who have yet to respond to an estimate or are due to update their service contracts. Email these “cold” customers a reminder and give yourself another opportunity to convert them into revenue.
Sending targeted emails is easy. Choose from our huge range of email templates, adjust the text to fit your campaign, and deliver to your chosen audience.
Targeted emails mean higher open rates and more calls coming in. With ServiceTitan, you can also monitor the exact ROI for each campaign by tracking the email performance and the revenue attribution within the ServiceTitan dashboard.
Read more email marketing tips for plumbing companies.
12. Invest in Google Local Services Ads
Google Local Services puts your digital ads at the top of search results.
Craft a snapshot of your business to sell your services.
Pay only when customers contact you through the ad.
While a well-optimized website can produce organic Google search results, buying Google Local Services digital ads makes it more likely your company appears at the top of Google search results, above PPC ads and organic listings.
Local customers looking to hire a plumber can view a quick snapshot of your business—such as your plumbing company name, Google review rating, and years in business—to determine whether your plumbing company fits their needs.
Costs for Google Local Services ads vary, but you only pay when a customer contacts your business through the ad. This cuts down on useless job leads from customers simply price-shopping plumbing services online.
ServiceTitan integrates with Google Local Services Ads to allow homeowners to directly schedule online appointments with your company, and provides business owners with ROI metrics on every campaign.
If you qualify for the Google Guarantee, you are eligible to buy these ads, which can be the first thing consumers see when they search.
Google Local Services Ads are different from Google ads because you select categories of work you do rather than optimizing for keywords that prompt your ads to show up when a potential customer searches for them.
Google has an algorithm for how this works. Some factors that will affect how a plumbing services ad ranks include your company’s proximity to a searcher, your company’s Google Business Profile rating and number of reviews, your responsiveness, and even your business hours.
Google Local Service ads allow you to advertise your plumbing services on Google and receive plumbing job leads directly from potential customers. When a homeowner searches “leaky faucet, Charlotte,” your Local Services ad appears at the top of the Google Search results.
Ensure your plumbing company operates from a physical building in the specific area where you’re advertising your services—not just a P.O. Box address. Otherwise, Google may penalize your company by removing your name from their local plumbers list.
A partnership between ServiceTitan and Google makes jump-starting your plumbing advertising success easier with Google’s Local Services Ads.
Learn more about plumbing marketing with Google Local Services.
13. Leverage Direct Mail Marketing
Make creative direct mail part of your brand strategy.
Catch customers’ attention with catchy slogans and incentives.
A marketing agency can help make your direct mail look professional.
Combining traditional direct mail marketing with plumbing social media posts and other plumbing digital marketing works well for many companies. Find the right combination of plumbing business marketing that works best for you.
Some companies get to know their customers better by giving back to the local community. This might include offering a free plumbing repair for a neighbor in need or donating funds to support a local Little League team. While charitable, these efforts also promote brand awareness and trust.
Creative direct mail marketing can also capture customers’ attention with catchy plumber logo ideas, unusual plumbing company names, and interesting plumbing ads. Including an incentive or coupon to inspire action never hurts either.
Hire a plumbing marketing agency to help you create the most professional-looking plumbing marketing flyers, so customers remember your company the next time they need a plumber. Brainstorm creative incentives or campaigns to get new customers to call.
Read more on how to grow your plumbing business.
Manage Direct Mail with ServiceTitan
ServiceTitan has a library of postcards that plumbing businesses can choose from to execute their direct mail campaigns. Set-up takes minutes. Simply choose your design, adjust the text, then print and mail your postcards to your chosen audience.
Direct mail campaigns cost a flat rate per postcard, so you only pay for the number that you send. And, as with the email campaigns, you can track the results of each campaign so you can see exactly which ones are driving revenue.
Bill Highsmith, Jupiter-Tequesta Air Conditioning, Plumbing & Electric says:
"The ROI is definitely there. With our first few campaigns, we paid for a year, easily. We made over $4,000 in the first week of the first campaign."
14. Use an App-Based Plumbing Lead-Generation Service
Generate leads through Yelp, Angi (formerly Angi Leads and HomeAdvisor), and other directories.
Be careful with costs; make sure leads prove useful and cost-effective.
Do research to find which platform performs most effectively in your market.
Utilizing app-based plumbing lead-generation services, such as Yelp, Angi (previously Angi Leads and HomeAdvisor), Thumbtack, and others, creates another avenue for plumbing marketing leads. The jury is still out, however, on how effective these lead-buying services really are for growing your plumbing business.
Some contractors say plumbing lead-generation services pay dividends, while others struggle to see their value when they find themselves, more often than not, paying for useless leads that never turn into real jobs.
With more than 90% of consumers using the internet to find a local business in the last year, listing your company on heavy-hitter websites such as Yelp or Angi can help your plumbing company rise to the top of organic Google searches.
Just be sure to read the fine print before signing up to know whether you’ll gain value from investing. Do some research to find out which platforms perform best in your market.
Learn more about how sites like HomeAdvisor (now Angi) work.
15. Measure the Results of Your Marketing Campaigns
Tie all new customers to the marketing campaign they used to find you.
Use call-tracking software to help you figure cost per lead and ROI by source.
Review your marketing strategies regularly, and adjust accordingly.
No matter which plumbing marketing tools or combination of tools your company deploys, what matters most is measuring the results and adjusting accordingly.
Measuring Marketing Results with ServiceTitan
Create a marketing scorecard of all current campaigns, then tie all new customers to the specific marketing campaign that brought them to you. Boost spending on campaigns with higher returns, and drop channels with poor performance.
If your company uses call-tracking software, such as ServiceTitan Phones Pro, you can easily track the number of calls, booked appointments, sales, revenue, cost per lead, and ROI for each plumber advertising source.
ServiceTitan's Marketing Pro also makes sending targeted email campaigns a breeze, and allows users to track real ROI by measuring email performance and revenue attribution.
Ready to market like a pro? Click here to learn more about Marketing Pro.
16. Deliver Outstanding Customer Service From Start to Finish
Getting 5-star Google reviews requires giving 5-star service.
Train every technician to go “the second mile.”
This simple, old-school method of marketing produces word-of-mouth referrals.
The best plumbing marketing ideas from industry leaders always include providing awesome customer service to every customer, from beginning to end. Even in today’s digital world, that’s how companies get more plumbing leads, more 5-star Google reviews, and more loyal customers.
A recent ServiceTitan webinar video gave Operations Manager Shane Spiller a winning plumbing advertising idea for Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Drain Service in Baton Rouge, La.: Become known for delivering “second-mile service.”
In the webinar video, Travis Ringe of ProSkill Services explains how his CSRs and techs go above and beyond by always offering to do more, such as providing ladder service to help elderly customers change lightbulbs or smoke detector batteries, or simply bringing the trash can from the curb.
“The second-mile thing changed everything,” Spiller says.
As well as helping you take your marketing strategy to the next level, ServiceTitan’s all-in-one software offers features that help you manage your entire plumbing business.
ServiceTitan's features include:
Tools for pricebook management
Estimate and proposal templates and builders
And more
All of these tools are fully integrated and communicate with each other so you never have to spend time transferring information, making for a seamless workflow across your business.
Find out more about how ServiceTitan can help you implement your plumbing marketing strategy, as well as help you run your entire business by booking a free, personalized demo.
ServiceTitan Plumbing Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive plumbing business software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and achieve growth. Our award-winning, cloud-based platform is trusted by more than 100,000+ contractors across the country.
