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5 Plumbing Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Business

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Within 5 miles of our office, there are 12 plumbers. All of which appear in the local search results, but none of them clearly differentiate themselves from the others. While plumbers may be experts when it comes to fixing broken pipes and unclogging drains, many fall short of marketing their business to allow their customers to find them. Get your plumbing business flowing in the right direction with these 5 marketing strategies.

#1 - Tighten The Bolts of Your Brand

You can’t fix a plumbing issue without tools, and you can’t build a business without a brand. The building and foundation of your brand is essential for success and local awareness. Define your plumbing company by clearly stating what makes your organization different and create a unique value proposition that will be the foundation for your plumbing marketing. Your brand must be consistent everywhere – from print to digital marketing. Brand guidelines, a set of standards for the design of documentation, signage, and any other form of other brand identifiers, will help to bring consistency.

#2 - Local SEO: Be the “Local Plumber Near Me”

Plumbing Marketing in Reading, PA

When it comes to search engine rankings, every business strives to be #1. What many don’t realize is that due to Google’s personalized algorithm, the top organic search results (for service related searches) tend to be businesses listed on Google maps.

To ensure your spot in the local pack, the content on your website should be specific to your service region and consistently show your name, address, and phone (NAP). In addition to on your site, this information should also be listed on your Google My Business. You should also include all of the services you offer within the region. This will help you to dominate in mobile searches and acquire positive reviews that will help you to stand out from the crowd.

You’re an Expert? Prove it With Plumbing Videos

Videos are an effective plumbing marketing tool because they can be placed on your website, local listings, social media, paid search, and more. Videos are a great way to engage your audience and provide relevant information. Create simple “how to fix” videos for minor issues, such as a clogged sink. You want to provide your customers with tips they can do themselves, without giving away everything and the kitchen sink.This will establish yourself as an plumbing expert and build your audience’s trust. Building their trust will improve new customer acquisition, extend brand reach and visibility via social sharing, link earning, and word of mouth, and increase your current customers’ willingness to give positive reviews and testimonials.

Target Your Customers With Paid Search Campaigns

When I search “plumber near me”, I see about 4 different plumbing companies running paid search campaign which appear before the maps and organic search. Paid search can be specific to your service region, banners, videos, text, gmail and mobile. It allows your company to be present when consumers are searching for your services. With remarketing, you stay top of mind as they make a purchasing decision.

Measure Campaigns and Adjust Your Plumbing Marketing

Just as you would test a pipe after fixing it, you need to make sure your marketing efforts are working. Invest in the measurement of marketing campaigns to reallocate budget to successful campaigns. Just putting Google Analytics on your website isn’t going to collect the necessary information. Most of the time, consumers are going to call you so you’ll need call tracking connected to Google Analytics and your marketing efforts. Look at the entire customer process and what marketing tactics impacted the decision. This will give you more context to make budgeting decisions.

Have a leak in your plumbing marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments below, or contact us today! For more information, subscribe to our newsletter.

How Home Improvement Brands Can Adopt Storytelling

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The research is in folks, and home improvement customers are heading back to their roots.

The well-known “big box” retailers still surpass equivalent brick and mortar businesses in sales, but that trend is beginning to shift. According to research conducted by The NPD Group, customers want to invest more in their local communities, and they’re becoming more receptive to home improvement locations closer to their homes. These shifts mean that the industry is now heading toward increased competition and a need for greater brand differentiation.

How can these local brands hope to highlight their favorable differentiating factors? Let me tell you a little story…

Your Customer Is Always Right (and very Influential)

We’re all aware that customer or client testimonials are a great way for home improvement providers to highlight the best aspects of their brands. But to really tell the story, reviews shouldn’t be limited to impersonal star ratings or detached mouse-clicks.

Taking a more proactive approach, such as via emailed follow-ups or online satisfaction surveys, will help you in two distinct ways. First, you’ll have the ultimate litmus test for your customer service processes. Second (and most importantly), you’ll have ammo for future marketing materials, including brochures, sales materials, and even online videos.

Bad Local Reviews Can Be Good

Yelp Home Improvement Reviews
Local home improvement businesses should take advantage of local review sites like Yelp to address customer concerns.

As you begin to embrace the collective voice of your customers, you’re likely going to catch your fair share of negative reviews. Whether on a social media platform that displays the inflammatory comment to the masses or an internal survey for your team’s eyes only, bad reviews shouldn’t be feared, and they definitely shouldn’t be ignored.

Instead, your team should recognize the feedback and work to remedy the situation as quickly and thoroughly as possible. In this case, a community engagement strategy can really come in handy. For smaller, local home improvement brands, customer service and conflict resolution is often one of the biggest draws for new customers. Personalize all communication and focus on the customer’s concerns, and your brand reputation will thank you.

The Greatest Story Ever Shown

If you’re part of a locally-run business in a specialty market, then there’s a lot that sets you apart from the country’s larger retailers. You know it and it’s your existing customers do too. But how do you get the word out? The answer lies in what’s known as your content marketing mix.

This mix represents the content you use to convey your brand’s unique story. This can take many forms, but the most effective by far is rich, visual content. Your content can highlight your excellent staff, show off new products, educate your audience, or entertain them. All it takes is a little creativity and focusing on the best parts of your already-awesome brand.

As customers’ attitudes and behaviors change, it’s important for the “mom and pop” businesses to stand out among the corporate juggernaut that makes up their top competition. To do this may mean evaluating your brand’s favorable characteristics, polling your existing customers, or heading back to the drawing board and reinventing the brand altogether. No matter the journey, every brand has a captivating story to tell. It’s just a matter of making it memorable and telling it right.

How has your local business fared in the battle of the brands? Let us know in the comments!