Internet Marketing for Plumbers

Internet Marketing for Plumbers: Tips + Best Practices

You’ve done the legwork to get your plumbing business up and running, and it’s time for the next critical task: finding customers. Stiff competition in the plumbing industry can make securing solid leads a serious undertaking.

A well-executed plumbing marketing scheme is paramount for success—specifically, internet marketing. The days of advertising in the phone book and on the park bench are long gone. Now people go online to find the services they need. If your plumbing company isn’t findable via search engines, your business won’t grow—period.

So how do you become findable online? By learning the basics of internet marketing for plumbers, that’s how. Keep reading for the top tips and best practices for implementing an effective internet marketing campaign.

Search Engine Optimization

If you’ve never heard of search engine optimization (SEO), it’s time to get intimately familiar with this term. SEO is the first step to making your plumber website visible, and successful businesses invest a lot of time and resources in this area. It typically takes some time to see the fruits of your labor, but you need to pay attention to SEO if you want leads.

SEO refers to an umbrella of strategies to improve your site’s organic ranking in search engines (Google, most importantly). Improving your ranking increases your visibility to potential customers, which translates to more business. The goal is for your plumbing company to be at the top of Google when someone searches “plumbers near me.”

Keyword placement is a critical part of a comprehensive SEO strategy. You want to place keywords related to plumbing in your area (also known as local SEO) in several places on your website, such as:

• Title tags
• Header tags
• Meta descriptions
• URLs

But when it comes to plumber SEO, keywords (and knowing where to place them) are just the tip of the iceberg. Make sure to claim and update your Google My Business listing with as much information as possible. Many people use Google business listings to find local services, and if you can optimize yours enough to be one of the options shown, you have a high chance of getting new customers.

Because SEO is complicated, many business owners decide to hire a dedicated marketing company with experience in this area.

Pay-per-click Advertising

Instead of waiting months to see the payoff from your SEO strategy, pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is an excellent way to get leads in the short term. Any plumber who wants to jump straight to the top of Google can do so via PPC. The advantage of this plumber marketing technique is that it allows you to advertise directly to people searching for your services.

The system is simple. You bid on placement in a search engine’s sponsored links section. If you bid high enough, when a potential customer searches for a keyword related to your plumbing company, your ad will be shown. If the customer clicks on the ad, you are charged a small fee.

A PPC marketing strategy offers a significant return on investment. If the process works as it should, the visit the ad generates is worth much more than what the visit cost you. The caveat here is that your website needs to have PPC landing pages specifically designed for conversion. But if you do, a well-executed PPC strategy can put you ahead of your competitors.

Video Marketing for Your Plumbing Business

Video marketing may seem unimportant for plumbers, but it’s actually more useful for growing your business than you might think. Why? Because internet video traffic accounts for 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic. Having this type of content offers all kinds of benefits to your marketing strategy.

For one, videos make it easier for your audience to engage with your website. They’re also a simple way to show off your personality, which distinguishes you from your competitors. But perhaps most critically, videos help you build trust with customers who will be allowing you into their home in stressful and difficult situations.

Maximizing Video Marketing

Nowadays, anyone with a smartphone is equipped to create video content. You don’t need fancy equipment—just a good idea and a basic script to guide you. It’s best to keep videos under two minutes for maximum engagement.

Utilizing videos in your online marketing campaign is also an excellent idea, and you should aim to include at least one video on your website. Additionally, blogs with videos attract more visitors than those without them, and landing pages with videos can increase conversions by 80 percent or more.

Pro Tip: Always include your contact information, such as a phone number and strong call-to-actions, in your videos. By making yourself easily accessible to your customers, you can increase your conversion rate.

Social Media Marketing + Advertising

You probably already know that having an online presence on social media is critical. All kinds of businesses use social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to reach customers, build brand recognition, and manage their online reputations (more on that later).

Though social media requires commitment, the rewards can be significant. If you choose the right channels and share relevant, quality content, it’s a budget-friendly way to attract new customers. Quality content posts educate, engage, or promote your services, and you should share this content regularly. Decide on a schedule, and stick to it.

And remember: you’re on social media to be social. When customers interact with your posts or your page, respond to them. You want to create relationships, which helps people remember you when they have a plumbing problem. It takes time to yield sales with social media, but being on these channels is a long-term strategy that’s worth it.

Paid Advertising on Social Media

Paid advertising can be highly effective on social sites, as it allows you to target specific people. Displaying ads based on user location is a useful feature for plumbers given the location-driven nature of plumbing.

Sites offering paid ads provide metrics, which allows you to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. Another advantage of these ads is that they are generally inexpensive, so the barrier to entry to potentially reaching your target audience is low.

Email Marketing

Another excellent digital marketing strategy is email marketing, which, when done correctly, is an ideal way to tap into your existing customer base. As you try to attract new clients, keep the ones you do have at the forefront. It costs five times more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one, after all. Email is the perfect way to care for these relationships.

Email marketing can help you:

• Remain in contact with your customers
• Strengthen brand awareness
• Nurture leads
• Boost sales by including specials, rebates, and the like
• Develop relationships that encourage people to use your services

While the benefits are many, it’s vital to have a plan of action before implementing this plumber marketing tactic. Know what kind of content you want to send—will you create newsletters, or do you prefer to send email blasts? What type of sending schedule will you have?

Just as important as having a plan is creating valuable content that your customers will benefit from. You can send things like videos, articles, or infographics. Some plumbing services choose to create mini-series dealing with minor plumbing issues at home, for example. Of course, access to special offers is a must, as it helps customers feel valued.

Online Reputation Management

Especially in plumbing, you want to keep your customers as happy as possible. You likely work hard to make sure that each person you serve has a positive experience, but plumbers invariably run into some negative feedback at one point or another. If mishandled (or ignored), negative online reviews can dissuade potential new customers from choosing you.

For this reason, investing time in online reputation management should form part of every internet marketing plan. Online reputation management is all about monitoring brand mentions to address harmful or false comments. When you run across this type of feedback, you want to tackle it openly and directly—and most importantly, without attacking.

In today’s age, transparency is the name of the game. Brand transparency is a vital part of brand loyalty, and consumers want to have organic interactions with business owners, especially in personalized conversations like direct messages.

Depending on the size of your plumbing business, your marketing plan in this area may need to include automated online reputation management software.

Website Design + Development for Your Plumbing Business

We’ve already talked about the importance of optimizing your website for SEO in plumber marketing. While it’s true that you need to be findable on search engines, you also want to create the best experience possible for users via web design and development once they’re on your site.

The first interaction potential clients have with you is your plumbing website, and most of the first impression you cause is based on web design. Because this aspect can have a considerable impact on your bottom line, designing and developing an effective website is vital for digital marketing.

So what are some of the criteria a site has to meet to be effective? It must be:

• Mobile-friendly (also known as responsive)
• Fast
• Secure (HTTPS)
• Informative
• User-friendly
• Full of well-written and persuasive content

The easier you make it to navigate your website, the easier you make it for new customers to book your services or contact you. Many business owners lack a background in web design and choose to enlist the help of marketing experts to help them get their site up to snuff.

Suggested Reading

• Lead Generation for Plumbers: Tips + Best Practices
• Web Design for Plumbers: Best Practices to get more Customers
• Plumber PPC: Tips + Best Practices to Get Customers
• Plumber SEO: Tips + Best Practices to Get Customers