Running a successful business means bringing in positive cash flow from your investments. This holds true whether we are talking about employees or a marketing budget. Plumbing marketing, having said that, is fairly simple and cost-effective. But it doesn’t happen overnight.
Plumber Marketing Ideas To Grow Your Plumbing Business
The plumbing industry, like most local business niches, can use the web to target customers in their market. A quality lead generation website to bring in good plumbing leads, professional seo, an active social media network, and Google My Business (GMB) are a few of the big ways to do this.
If you are the DIY type, just know that advertising for plumbers is not the easiest to target and a professional may be needed to compete.
High-Quality Leads From Your Website
It even sounds great right?
Your website can’t still be the same old 2013 cool site that you had made. Today’s web is so different and so are all the mobile devices.
Even if your website was made with great care, it still is too dated to be effective today when it comes to getting plumbing leads for plumbers.
So what makes a great lead gen site?
Today, the best pages have a contact form present above the fold, or before the user scrolls. You also want a couple of key reasons why you are the best bet for the user. The final key is to put some social proof right there, in the form of a testimonial.
Gone are the days when a “fancy” slider introduces your company. When is the last time you actually waited to see all 5 slides on a homepage? Even worse, if you do wait, do you ever find what you came looking for?
Beyond that top section of each page, you need awesome content that tells your potential plumbing leads how you can help them. Navigation should be simple and the site shouldn’t have a cluttered feel. You should use plumber images that are of your business where possible, otherwise purchase quality stock images. Don’t just grab free ones from Google, it looks tacky.
Finally, make sure that your website loads fast for visitors. Nobody wants to wait 6 seconds for the fancy moving images on your page. Keep it simple and clean, a fast site is often the result. And lots of leads for your business. All of these optimizations lead to a better user experience.
Search Engine Optimization Gets Your Website on Google
Perhaps you have heard the term by now. SEO. But what is seo?
SEO or search engine optimization is the act of attempting to make your web properties more visible in search engines for a given set of terms.
Take, for instance, a great looking website in the plumbing niche. If it doesn’t even get seen on search, how many potential plumbing customers could it possibly attract?
Not many, so how do you fix it?
The answer is simple, you perform seo to get the website ranking higher for searches that your potential customers use when they search online.
White Hat vs Black Hat (or Gray) Plumber Marketing
SEO comes in many forms, but it is often classified between either white or black hat, and now gray hat has emerged as a term.
White hat seo is a term used by the “purists” that cling to every word that comes from the Google propaganda machine. They claim to strictly adhere to every rule.
The truth is, nobody is abiding by every rule, or they aren’t performing seo.
Black hat seo means the gloves come off. Black hats do whatever is necessary to get the ranking. Often they are seen as lazy since automation is one of their main weapons of choice.
Somewhere in between those 2 “factions” lies the gray hat seo scene. As you may have guessed, it’s a mix of the two. On the surface and when talking to clients, they claim to be clean (likely). In practice, however, they only try to be. Also, everyone is willing to use black hat tactics if they can’t achieve the desired ranking.
Certain things need to be done regardless of your position on the color spectrum. These are foundational seo tactics that every website should strive to perfect. Quality keyword research and planning should begin and be the focus of every campaign.
- on page seo ~ optimize the title, description, headings, images, and text to make sure search engines understand the meaning of your content
- interlinking ~ to make your site more searchable, you want to link pages together where it makes sense
- citations/directories ~ there are still a few major data aggregators out there that send your data to websites across the world, get on those
One of the often overlooked pieces of seo is the social media network. It is important to have these powerful channels locked down for your brand.
Branded Social Media Marketing Network for a Complete Package
Don’t make these just to get them online either. Make them be a solid representation of your brand. Your social channels can be a great way to instill trust in potential customers, don’t take that lightly.
I’m referring to the big ones like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and so on. Grab at least those 5 for the plumbing industry.
By now you have probably heard that having an active social media channel is important for business. I can surely tell you that blindly posting will not grow your plumbing brand.
However, properly building out these profiles, interlinking them all together and with your website, and syndicating your content is great for seo.
It provides backlinks from high-quality websites, and they aren’t spammy links from fake fiverr gigs.
Aside from that, these profiles have the ability to rank. A well built, active and powerful Twitter or Facebook page can easily outrank a competitor’s poor website. You get 2 chances instead of one.
Then there is the obvious fact.
Social sites can generate traffic! Considering traffic is one of the main goals of seo, it just makes sense as a potential candidate in terms of plumber advertising options.
Perhaps the easiest avenue for traffic in the plumbing industry would be from YouTube. Considering the number of DIY plumbing projects there are that you may not necessarily want a call from, your content options are big.
Fix a leaky faucet and make a step by step video. That could well drive thousands of visitors to your website over time. Will they all be in your local market? No, but the traffic builds the authority of your channel, and consequently the website it links to (yours). Since you do the work anyway, this is a smart plumbing marketing strategy.
That brings us to the final point of the plumbing marketing must-haves. And it’s another Google product.
Plumber Marketing to Get on The Google Map
GMB is perhaps one of the best marketing channels for a business to generate inexpensive calls that are somewhat predictable and inexpensive.
One of the cool parts about the GMB platform is the Insights. This area tells you the number of calls, how many folks asked for driving directions to your shop, and the number of direct website visits generated by the map listing in the last 30-90 days.
Even Google is realizing the power of the map listing in local search. Consequently, they are testing paid service ads in that area of the search results around the country at times, and in certain niches.
The best part about Google My Business is that the listing itself is a free digital marketing opportunity!
The bad part is that getting your plumbing business listed is tough unless the searcher is in your driveway or you live in a small city.
I’m not trying to say the “average Joe Plumber” couldn’t rank in the map pack, but it’s unlikely. If you are in a bigger area like Milwaukee, it’s time for an seo expert.
If you must go it alone, here is a guide that will help you add your business to Google Maps.
The Google Map Listing is one of the most powerful business profiles you can build online. For that reason, make sure you provide quality plumbing images and text, as well as completely building the profile. This is perhaps the best advertising for plumbers that is available.
Get Your Plumber Advertising Plan Together and Running
This is just a handful of plumber marketing tips you will likely need to run a successful campaign, but it is the foundation. Once you have these items together and in place, you are ready for your business to climb the ranks. And of course, if you need marketing help, we perform awesome plumber advertising plans!