There are plenty of ways for a plumbing business to generate more enquiries. Before spending money on any of them, planning and research is essential to stop wasted budgets.
By looking at a few basic questions you can then start to look at what type of advertising will suit your business best.
Start with the type of work you want more of. Emergency plumbing, drainage, boiler installations and larger planned projects can have very different values.
Next, consider, honestly, how many enquiries you need to get to convert to a paying customer.
Look at what an average job is worth to your business and how many enquiries you normally need to win one job. This starts to give you an idea of what you can afford to spend acquiring an enquiry.
You also should consider how many enquiries you want and when you need them. Needing another five jobs each month is very different from needing a regular supply of customers to keep ten engineers busy. Some forms of marketing can produce enquiries quickly and others need time to start generating returns.
This small amount of planning will make it much easier to decide where and when to allocate your advertising spend.
What Can You Afford to Pay for an Enquiry?
One of the early questions we ask new clients is “what can you afford to pay for each job?”
By understanding this number you can then work out what you can afford to pay each lead more easily.
The starting point is your own business data. Look at how many enquiries become paying customers, what those customers spend and the profit you make from the work.
For example if you are happy to pay 20% of your profit to win every job, and you convert 1 in 5 valid leads on jobs that are worth £500 profit to your business, then you can afford to pay £20 per lead.
This gives you a figure against which you can assess different marketing channels.
Existing Customers and Referrals
When looking to grow your business, existing and previous customers are one of the best opportunities that are available.
Customers who already know your business can use you again and recommend you to other people. Asking for referrals, collecting genuine reviews and making sure previous customers still have your contact details costs very little.
The limitation is volume. You cannot normally decide that you need twice as many enquiries next month and generate twice as many referrals.
This makes referrals valuable, but difficult to use as the only source of growth for a business that needs a regular flow of new work.
Traditional Local Advertising
Flyers, local publications, sponsorship, signage and branded vehicles are still options for plumbing companies.
They can put your name in front of a local audience and may work particularly well for businesses with a strong presence in a defined area.
Measurement can be more difficult making it particularly important to consider how you will judge whether the spend is worthwhile.
These traditional advertising methods also tend to have a very short life span. For example flyers likely need to be designed, printed and delivered at least every quarter.
Digital Advertising
There are literally hundreds of ways to advertise online. The main difference between them is not simply cost. You need to consider the intent of the person seeing the advert, the type of enquiry it produces and the amount of control you have over who you reach.
Meta
Facebook and Instagram provide access to very large audiences. However facebook and instagram users are generally browsing rather than actively looking for a plumber.
Meta Ads can work really well for the right services and special offers. Examples of this are one off discount, special service or something that has a long consideration period.
Lead costs on Facebook and Instagram tends to be very low, however the lead quality also tends to be much less likely to convert. The quality and conversion rate of those leads needs to be considered as they may seem cheap at first but the cost to get a client may be much higher.
Google Local Services Ads
Local Services Ads are designed specifically to connect people searching for local services with relevant businesses.
Plumbing & Gas Safe work are services available through the platform and for many smaller limited companies this is a great place to start.
Advertisers pay for leads rather than clicks, which can make it an accessible way of generating local enquiries.
There is less control over individual searches and job types than with Google Ads meaning you can often get a lot of lower value jobs. The volume available can vary considerably based on competition and other factors.
This is a relatively low cost route to generate more phone calls.
Google Ads
Google Ads allows you to target very specific types of customers, when they are ready to buy. It is a hugely popular option for Plumbers in many countries including the UK.
Unlike many other advertising options Google Ads offers much more control over locations, services, budgets and the searches you want to target. This control often means that lead quality is much better as are conversion rates.
Compared to other advertising options Google has a high volume of potential customers for seeking plumbers steadily through the year. This means it is also one of the most reliable ways to generate consistent enquiries all year round.
On the flip side that demand brings competition. The competition in the plumbing industry means advertising on Google Search Ads can appear to be expensive. Most people could manage to set up a Google Ads campaign, but making it perform well usually needs the support of a professional team of Google Ads consultants.
For businesses that need regular and controllable lead volumes, Google Ads is one of the main options to consider.
Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising provides a similar form of search advertising through Bing and Microsoft’s search network.
There are far fewer users than Google, so the potential volume is smaller. Competition can also be lower, and we see good lead quality from Microsoft Advertising for some of the businesses we work with.
It can be worth considering as another source of search enquiries rather than expecting it to replace Google.
SEO
SEO aims to increase the number of people finding your business through unpaid search results.
It needs to be viewed over a different timeframe from many other paid advertising channels as results usually take months to come to fruition. Often there can be quick wins to be found, but highly competitive keywords/searches may require months of work before they produce regular enquiries.
For established businesses looking at longer-term growth, SEO is a great way to build another source of enquiries alongside paid advertising and referrals.
Your Website
Most digital marketing eventually brings a potential customer back to your website.
The website design needs to explain what you do, where you work and how somebody can contact you. It also needs to give potential customers enough confidence to make that contact.
If you are planning to increase advertising spend, it is worth considering whether the website is ready for the additional traffic. Sending more people to a website that generates very few enquiries can make every advertising channel look more expensive.
Setting The Budget
There are two ways to approach a marketing budget.
You can start with an amount you are comfortable investing and look at what that budget could realistically generate.
You can also start with a business target and work backwards. If you know how many additional customers you want, your conversion rate and an approximate cost per enquiry, you can estimate the budget needed to reach that level.
Both approaches require realistic expectations. A £500 monthly budget cannot be expected to produce the same result as £5,000, regardless of how well the advertising is managed.
The important part is having a target against which you can measure the money being spent.
Managing Marketing In-House or Using an Agency
Not every plumbing company needs an agency or specialist to support their advertising plans.
A small business with a limited marketing budget may be better managing its own activity and putting as much of the available money as possible into generating business.
Some larger companies have their own marketing teams and need little external support.
Agency support tends to make more sense where there is enough marketing activity and budget to justify specialist management. It can provide access to experience across advertising, websites, SEO, tracking and reporting without employing separate people for every area.
The agency cost needs to form part of the calculation. What matters is whether the total marketing spend produces enough profitable work to justify it.
Working With UTDS
UTDS Optimal Choice works with established trade businesses across paid advertising, website design, SEO, tracking and reporting.
We have experience managing substantial lead-generation activity for trade businesses, which means we understand the difference between generating enquiries and generating work that is commercially worthwhile.
We can manage individual services or look at the wider digital marketing activity of the business.
If you are looking to grow your plumbing business and want to assess where your marketing budget is likely to work hardest, Contact us now.
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