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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 to Use Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, and Houzz to Build Your Business

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As a part of the home services industry, people regularly open their doors to you and bring you into their living spaces. While many people may not consciously realize it, that action requires a certain level of trust. To enter any person’s home is to be trusted in one’s personal area of daily living.

To succeed in the home services industry, then, your target audience must know you. They must feel comfortable with your brand and your identity in order for you to be allowed into their lives (learn more on our industry page).

So, how are people hearing about you? If you are not active in the digital landscape, it may be difficult for you to answer that question.

With Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, and Houzz, your business can gain significant brand awareness to gain leads and stay informed with customer-reviews. These home services resources are both popular and currently growing solutions for consumers to both rate and find service-providers. A recent article from FieldPulse reports that, as of 2015, Angie’s List has over 3 million paid memberships.

These platforms provide both consumers and businesses with opportunities to connect with each other and ensure that reliable, valid work is completed. This avoids situations like the one, below.

Home Services Marketing Agency in Reading, Pa

Angie’s List: Establish a Higher Level of Credibility for Your Brand

One of the hallmarks of Angie’s List is the ability for consumers to openly discuss the quality of service-providers. Angie’s List utilizes a BPA-certified review collection process that filters any fake reviews of home services businesses. Therefore, fellow consumers only experience genuine opinions from actual people that had work done by those hired businesses.

This is a prime opportunity for your business to get maximum exposure of your high-quality offerings and completed projects. Find your business and claim your profile to get further insight into reviews of your work and consistently improve for better quality.

Positive experiences with your brand will most likely generate more positive experiences and profitable leads. Fellow consumers will see positive reviews; and, they may be more willing to trust you. Likewise, you will understand exactly what customers currently love about your services.

Do not underestimate the power of customer-reviews. Ironically, they operate as non-paid advertising for your business. And, they definitely make a difference to people. Even in 2014, a study by BrightLocal found that 88% of consumers reported that they equally trust online reviews and personal recommendations. Read the article from Think with Google that reports this statistic.

Overall Benefit for Your Business:

Your presence on Angie’s List creates a signal that your brand highly regards customers’ opinions. For those that are searching for help with their home improvement, repair, landscaping, home pet care, or a host of other needs: this signal makes you relevant to their current situations. This ultimately increases your credibility in the minds of your target audience because you value people’s feelings.

How to Use Angie’s List to Grow Your Business

HomeAdvisor: Generate Meaningful Interactions with Customers

Whereas Angie’s List can be seen as a valuable resource for consumers to obtain advice and recommendations for service-providers, HomeAdvisor is a tool that connects home services businesses with searching consumers. It is important to note that Angie’s List also offers this capability; however, this is not the primary focus of that platform.

In this way HomeAdvisor has an equal but also separate benefit than Angie’s List. Both of these platforms assist consumers; but, HomeAdvisor serves as a direct link between your business and a consumer that needs your help.

This home services resource allows your business to create a personalized profile that utilizes your specific business-related needs to meet consumers’ demands. People that use HomeAdvisor to find reliable home services businesses for their projects will be matched to your business as a function of availability, desired work to be completed, location, and other relevant factors.

Specifically, the platform walks searching consumers through the process of choosing a service-provider to get them the best possible help for their particular situations.

As a result of HomeAdvisor’s program, the quality and profitability of your interactions with consumers may increase. HomeAdvisor works to make sure that you, as the service-provider, and a consumer, as a person that needs a service, have the same goals to make more sales and loyal customers. There is significantly less ambiguity about the type of service that people need or the kind of work that you offer.

Overall Benefit to Your Business:

HomeAdvisor serves your business as much as it serves consumers. Where people gain the benefit of faster help for their projects, you gain the benefit of meaningful interactions with those people.

How to Use HomeAdvisor To Grow Your Home Services Business

Houzz: Increase Your Reach & Visibility in a Consumer-to-Consumer Network

Although it is not yet as well-known as Angie’s List or HomeAdvisor, Houzz is a growing social media platform that offers a digital community of both service-providers and consumers. Similar to both Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor, Houzz does allow direct communication between consumers and service-providers.

However, the particular advantage of Houzz is the ability of consumers with home improvement projects to discuss options, styles, and service-providers with each other. Houzz also allows users to read recommendations and receive information about current trends to generate ideas for their homes and gardens.

This is an interactive experience that does not simply entail a searching consumer that reads a review of your business’ completed projects. Rather, Houzz provides a lively and behavior-based space in which people can converse about a variety of home-related products and services.

You can become a part of that conversation to reach your target audience. Beyond the abilities that Houzz offers to consumers, this platform offers profiles for service-providers to actively gain visibility for their brands. You can publish photographs of your work to function as case studies wherein you solve customers’ problems with high-quality solutions. Solve those problems, quickly, by actually selling your products on Houzz.

Participate in consumer-to-consumer conversations to give clarification and expert-level guidance for their complex projects. Additionally, Houzz allows you to collaborate with your customers through digital interactions and the sharing of electronic documents.

Overall Benefit to Your Business:

As a social medium, Houzz gives your home services business the reach that you need to secure members of your target audience through direct interactions. Secondly, you receive visibility that gets you increased brand awareness through visual evidence of your work and the ability to sell your products.

Build Even More Trust in Your Home Services Business

The digital marketplace is a landscape that allows both consumers and service-providers to interact, discuss projects and needed work, as well as get that work accomplished. Three effective tools or resources that help your business to generate digital brand awareness are Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, and Houzz.

While each of three home services platforms offer distinctive benefits, all of them grant you the enhanced ability to get your name in front of the consumers that need you, now.

Need Help Optimizing Your Profiles On These Platforms?

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