25+ Plumbing Marketing Ideas to Scale Your Business

Article by Chintan Zalani and Kristaps Brencans

Last updated Jan 3, 2024

No matter how great your plumbing services are, you’ll struggle to grow if few people know about them. That’s when plumbing marketing comes into play.

With the right strategies and knowing how to apply them, you can attract all potential customers. They can find you whether they urgently need a plumber to fix their clogged drain or look for the right plumbing services to install a dishwasher.

Here are a few of the most effective plumbing marketing ideas we have found to work. These are based on our over a decade years of experience in the HVAC industry, and specially as a leading plumbing marketing agency.

Create a Strong and Consistent Plumbing Brand

One of the simplest ways you can attract new customers for your plumbing business is to create a brand that instantly makes an impact in the mind of your target customers. Whether having a catchy slogan or clever brand name, a “sticky” brand boosts lead generation and brand awareness for your small business.

This landing page from Roto-Rooter is an excellent branding example. It has a well-defined color scheme, clear copy, and cohesive design.

Your brand should be able to communicate your services, why customers should choose you, and how to get in touch.

To build a strong brand, you need to create a logo. But even before that, begin with defining what you want to stand for and choose your brand’s colors.

Request Referrals from Existing Customers

Referral or word-of-mouth is one of the best sources of new leads because referred customers are likelier to stay loyal to your plumbing business than any other means. One of its reasons is that they’re referred by existing customers who already know and trust you.

The key to getting more referrals is to provide exceptional customer service—for instance, responding quickly to emergencies, providing maintenance services, or giving customers tips to prevent future issues.

These small things help your clients remember you and refer you to others in need. However, actively asking your plumbing customers for referrals is always a good idea. You can do it either in person or by sending them a professional email after providing a great service.

Another way to do it is to begin a referral program—for instance, offering a discount on maintenance services if customers send a lead your way. Ensure it’s presented in an easy-to-understand format on your plumbing website and easily accessible to customers.

Furthermore, why limit yourself to only customers? Ask for referrals from other plumbers, your local community, friends, and family.

Infuse Your Brand in Local Communities

Local community involvement is another way of getting more new clients. You support your community, and they help you in return by giving you more plumbing business indirectly. You can begin by donating to charities or volunteering for low-income community members.

It can help you get local press coverage and more plumber marketing and PR opportunities.

Meetup is a great place to find such communities, or you can explore the volunteering work on Habitat.org. This is an organization that helps you find construction projects to volunteer services.

Connect with Local Homeowners Associations (HOAs)

Look for homeowners associations in your area and ask if they are already partnered with a plumbing company. If not, offer to partner with them in exchange for exclusive discounts for residents or referral fees for each client acquired through the HOA.

You can also host a DIY plumbing demo for the residents where you can share your expertise, promote your business, and get more leads.

Share Your Plumbing Business Card

It might sound like advice you’ve heard a thousand times, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Sharing your plumbing business card is a great way of expanding your connections. You never know when you might meet someone who needs your services or knows someone who does.

Plus, it’s a cheap yet effective form of marketing your plumbing business.

Partner With Builders in Your Geographical Location

Another way to get more plumbing business for your plumbing company is by collaborating with local builders. Just search for such local businesses in your area and determine if they have any upcoming construction projects where they might need plumbing services.

However, get ready to negotiate the prices as they would probably be getting many offers from your competitors too.

The bidding process may be tedious, but it can ensure a steady cash flow. You can consider investing in an automated system to track all your bids and invitations, calculate the cost and margins for each project, and cut the manual time. It’ll make it more manageable and help you bid to more builders.

A toolkit that offers smooth integration for all these activities with a minimum learning curve will be your ideal choice.

Create a Cohesive Plumbing Digital Marketing Plan

If you haven’t created an online marketing plan yet, then it’s time that you do. It’s as simple as writing down your marketing goals and listing your action plans to reach them.

Your plumbing digital marketing plan should be able to answer these questions:

• What is my plumbing business’ overall digital marketing strategy?
• What is my goal for this marketing campaign?
• Which tactics or channels will I use to reach my goal?
• When do I want to achieve this goal?
• How much is my marketing budget?
• How do I want to implement my campaigns?
• How will I know if my strategy is working?
• How can I improve my campaigns for better results?

You are planning for each stage of your digital marketing journey, from creating your first campaign to tracking and analyzing their performance. When you have a clear answer to every question, you won’t lose sight of what to do next.

Claim Google Business Profile for Your Plumbing Company

Another way to get in front of your target customers is by claiming your Google My Business profile so your business appears in Google Maps. It’s a free tool that helps you promote your business listing and website on Google.

Another advantage of listing your business in Google My Business is having a platform for publishing customer reviews. Your review rating appears under your business name, so it’s important to focus on having an overall review rating of four stars and up.

Design a Plumbing Business Website

After creating your plumbing marketing plan, you need a place to direct your target audience where they can find out more about you and your services. Hence, you need a high-performance plumbing website. It can help your clients get your contact information or book your services directly. Eventually, convert more plumbing leads into paying customers.

Some basic elements you’ll need on your plumbing website are these:

• Business name
• High-quality logo
• Contact information
• An outline of all the services you offer
• An easy-to-understand way to contact you or book your services
• A page for testimonials

Once you’ve executed the layout and design of your plumber website, you’ll need to focus on optimizing it for search engines. This means that having a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy for your website is essential to its success. We’ll touch more on SEO later in this article.

Use Compelling Copy to Persuade Prospective Customers

You only have a few seconds to convince prospective clients to hire you, so make every word count. Write straightforward headlines that target your customer’s pain point, offering the best solution.

This Google ad from Rooterhero highlights the terms “plumber near me” and “24 hours” to target prospects with plumbing emergencies. They also highlighted using “certified plumbers” and “$50 off” on plumbing services to seal the deal.

What’s the best thing about your plumbing service? Make sure that’s clear when you write advertising or website copy.

Kick Off Plumbing SEO

Merely having a website isn’t enough for your business. To generate traffic, you’ll also need it to appear in the Google search results when people query plumbing services-related keywords.

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it usually helps your website rank higher in three ways:

On-Page SEO: It means optimizing your web content for search engines. Its features include header, keyword placement, meta description, title tags, and URL structure.

Off-site SEO: Technical SEO is how you technically optimize the rest of your site for search engines. The features include brand mentions, link-building, HTML/CSS coding, responsive website design, site speed, and more.

Local SEO: This is all about optimizing your website for local search results—for instance, ranking for “near me” or “plumber services in ‘city’” keywords. It calls for understanding your service area properly and the kind of customers that you’re likely to serve.

Local SEO is a more involved process and differs greatly from creating a Google Business Profile (GBP). A GBP is essential for the success of a local SEO campaign, but it’s not the entirety of the campaign. With local SEO, you’ll need to implement a comprehensive keyword strategy focused on geography-based queries.

If you want to ensure the success of your SEO strategy or are simply short of time, you can hire our plumbing SEO services to dominate the search results in your locality.

Create Separate Service Pages to Target Different Audiences

To boost your SEO efforts, create separate web pages for each plumbing service. With this strategy, you can target specific plumbing services for prospective clients looking for them online. For instance, you can create pages for drain cleaning, water leaks, and toilet repair.

A prospective client who has a clogged toilet might not use “plumbers near me” to search for a plumbing company. Instead, he might use “toilet repair.”

Below is an example of Rocket Plubming’s dedicated service pages on their website:

When you click on the page for “Drain Cleaning,” you get the page below:

In addition to improving SEO, service pages can help tell potential clients more about a service, which helps them decide whether or not it is truly what they need.

Get Instant Traction With Plumbing Pay Per Click Advertising

Online advertisements help you get instant exposure. Pay Per Click (PPC) is a form of online advertising where you only pay for the number of clicks you get. You can also limit your daily spending, which puts you in control of your marketing budget.

Different types of PPC ads you can use are:

1. Search engine ads: As the name suggests, these ads are displayed on search engines like Google, Bing, or Duck Duck Go every time someone searches for your target keyword (for instance, plumbing services).

1. Display ads: These ads are shown on different websites.
2. Social media ads: Some social media ads work on the PPC model. In this case, your ads will be displayed on social media sites.

PPC ads are a good way of advertising your business as they’re cost-effective and provide fast results. Plus, they allow real-time tracking of your ads performance and target the right audience—for instance, potential customers searching for the term plumber services will need a plumber.

Try Local Services Ads

Besides PPC, you can also target local services ads. These ads help you to connect with the people making a local search on Google. These ads only display to the customers in your geographical location, and, as per Google, you’re only charged if people directly contact you through it.

Local Services Ads differ from Google’s text or image ads, as they have a “Call” button to contact the business directly from the search result page.

Focus on Improving Your Customer Experience

Learning what your customers want (and what they don’t want) is important for the success of your business.

Here are some ways to learn how customers feel about your service:

• Customer surveys – You can use marketing tools like SurveyMonkey or ZenDesk to create and send surveys to past clients and collect their responses.
• Read customer reviews – Online reviews for your business can tell you specific issues to improve, so it’s a valuable source of customer feedback.
• Ask – You can always ask clients if they’re happy with your work right after the job.
• Competitor research – Know what the competition is doing and do it better.

Improving your service is a great way to get more positive reviews and word-of-mouth referrals, and its benefits can last a long time as long as you keep learning what your customers think and want.

Get More Reviews for Your Plumbing Services

People leave reviews for your business under two circumstances. First, if they’re extremely happy with your services, and second, if they had a bad business experience. For the rest of the customers, you’ll need to ask them to give you a review.

You can ask them in person or via email. Make the process as simple as possible, with as few steps as possible.

Besides Google My Business, you can ask customers to leave reviews on sites like Facebook, Yellow Pages, Yelp, and BBB.

Get into Online Directories

In addition to creating a Google Business Profile, you can list your plumbing business in directories like Angie’s List, Home Advisor, and Yelp.

These directories work similarly to Google My Business. You’ll need to enter your plumbing business information, such as name, address, and phone number (NAP), consistently across all listings to ensure the best online visibility.

Potential customers who don’t necessarily use Google search might be going to these directories instead, so it’s best to maximize your online presence by creating listings on these sites.

Incorporate Direct Mail Marketing

Despite what you may think, direct mail is as effective as email marketing in terms of the response rate and return on investment (ROI).

Mailing flyers, postcards, and other creative marketing materials to prospective clients can help you connect on a tangible level that is said to elicit a positive emotional response in people.

Explore how you can add direct mail to your offline marketing strategy to reach potential customers who might not be into the habit of going online and are more likely to respond to physical, written advertisements from a plumbing company.

Experiment with Email Marketing

Email marketing is a way to market your business directly to customers by sending them regular emails. It can help you increase your brand awareness and keep your services in mind for your customers.

Start with identifying your email marketing goals. For instance, are you looking to generate new leads, nurture your existing customer relationships, or educate your prospects?

If you already have a list of prospects’ email addresses, ensure it’s scrubbed (the unengaged subscribers or bad emails are removed from the list). A high bounce rate may cause the email clients like Gmail or Outlook to mark you as spam.

Alternatively, if you don’t have an email list, you can set up an email marketing service like Mailchimp to get started or hire a digital marketing agency to do it for you.

Answer Questions of Potential Customers in Blog Posts

Great content is essential for your plumbing business, as content marketing helps you increase your brand awareness and let your target audience discover your business. So that when they finally need your services, they think of you instead of your competitors.

To get started with this approach, list all the topics you have expert knowledge of and write about them in detail, keeping your prospects in mind.

You can hire a digital marketing agency to create a cohesive content marketing plan so your blog posts are optimized for search engines and your target audience.

Remember to always have a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of your blog posts, whether it’s subscribing to the email list or scheduling an appointment.

Show Your Personality with Video Marketing

Besides writing content on your blog or social media channels, you can also consider video marketing. All you need to do is share your expert knowledge in the form of videos that can help prospects solve their plumbing problems and establish you as a knowledgeable person.

Some videos you can create are recommending the plumbing tools everyone must have, answering FAQs, or showing the installation or repair process to increase viewership.

Getting started with this approach is as simple as creating a YouTube channel and using your smartphone’s camera to record videos.

This video from Smedley Plumbing is a simple but engaging story of a day in the life of a plumber, which helps highlight how plumbers solve problems for customers every day.

A day in the life of a Service Plumber (#1)

Creating videos for your plumbing business can be a technical undertaking, but if you learn the basics and are creative, it can be a great asset for your brand.

Use a Plumbing Lead Generation Service

You can invest in a lead generation service to ensure a steady stream of clients. Getting potential customers for your plumbing company can be tedious. It might take a long time, but lead generation companies can help fast-track results and provide new customers for your business.

Lead generation companies guarantee phone-verified leads and often offer pay-per-lead schemes for plumbers.

With this option, you get more leads without changing your marketing strategy.

Host a “Plumbing 101” Workshop to Teach Homeowners Basic Plumbing Skills

Whether it’s an online or an in-person event, hosting workshops that teach basic plumbing skills can help attract potential customers and build brand awareness for your plumbing company.

Events like these put you in a positive light among your target audience, and they are more likely to remember and contact your business when they need plumbing services.

Don’t forget to have all attendees fill out their information in a registration or attendance form so you can reach out to them should they have queries or concerns.

Offer a Free Plumbing Inspection With Your Other Home Cleaning Service

People who hire a plumber for one service might not know that they also offer other related plumbing services. Take your time to provide a free plumbing inspection for clients while serving them for an existing issue.

Checking your client’s entire home for leaks and other needed repairs can boost the chances of repeat business with the client. It’s also beneficial for your clients, as they can save money by avoiding bigger plumbing issues in the future.

Reach Your Prospects on Social Media

Spending time on social media helps you build your online presence. If you haven’t started your social media marketing campaign yet, then it’s as simple as these two steps:

Create your social media business pages

Pick one or two social media platforms and update them regularly. Develop a content calendar so you always have something to publish. Some content examples include helpful DIY tips, before and after photos of repairs, and other information about your home services.

Here’s an example of Rocket Plumbing’s before and after post on their Facebook business page:

Engage with prospects on social media

People who respond to your content on social media can be your next customer. Be available for them in the chat or direct messaging section of the social media platform so you can answer their questions as soon as possible and get the opportunity to convert them into clients.

Have a dedicated social media manager in your team, or hire a social media management agency to manage your social media pages for you.

Leverage Customer Service Software to Automate the Booking Process

You can use customer service apps and software to automate your booking process, helping you save time and workforce. It also reduces the sales cycle time and makes it faster for you to serve your clients. Many appointment scheduling software are designed for business owners with small, mid, and enterprise companies.

Another advantage of using booking software is connecting it with your other digital platforms and tools, including Google Ads and Google Analytics, making tracking your conversion rates and other important metrics easier.

Track Your Digital Marketing Results, Analyze, and Iterate

Finally, besides marketing your business, another essential step is to track your plumbing marketing efforts. Google Analytics can help you track your website results—for example, where your traffic is coming from, whether it’s from the search engines, social media, or other websites where you’re using PPC ads.

On social media, you can track the performance of your content based on impressions—views, likes, comments, and shares. Depending on the performance results, you can change your approach. For instance, if people engage with your reels more than your long-form videos or images, you know which content to create more.

Ensure direct traffic to your website by providing the right links on your social accounts.

Get Started With Plumbing Marketing

So far, we have discussed many internet marketing tips and offline marketing tactics you can use to advertise your business and get new clients. But you don’t have to use all of them at once. Pick five strategies that you think can be easier for you to begin with and apply them to get more leads.

If you’re short on time or want the best possible results, you can contact us so we can create a custom plumbing marketing strategy that works for your brand.