Categories
Marketing Plumbing

Top 10 Plumber Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

Plumbing companies like yours want to eliminate unwise, wasteful spending. I don’t know how many plumbing contractors enjoy spending dollars on marketing. They understand it’s important, and they might even allocate some advertising budget to it. But they don’t enjoy it. It’s challenging to put your hard-earned dollars out into the world without a guarantee of more clients, leads, and revenue. We get it.

The sad reality, though, is that are no real warranties in plumber marketing land. There are tons of variables, and too much that’s out of your reach. If you want to maximize your revenue or profits, then your marketing budget should be tightly reviewed and monitored. There are numerous ways you can waste their plumbing marketing dollars which we will discuss in this post. No plumber wants to see their hard-earned money going down the drain, and each plumbing contractor wants to tirelessly ensure their advertising budget is correctly utilized.

Biggest Plumber Marketing  Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Plumber Marketing Mistakes

Here are a few common blunders we see plumbers make when promoting or marketing their businesses. Get rid of those strategies, and you will generate consistent leads or revenue for your company every month.

1. Putting all their eggs in one basket

You have potential customers at various stages of your sales funnel and hanging out in all kinds of the spaces-at-home where they might come across your door hanger, performing research using Google, scrolling through Facebook, and out in the neighborhood talking with their family and friends. By spending too much of your advertising or marketing budget on one channel, you will risk missing a huge percentage of prospects searching for your plumbing services elsewhere online. A plumbing marketing plan crafted to drive more leads and therefore, more clients needs to be purposely diversified.

2. Improper Ad Spending

Not all ads should be focused on improving brand awareness

Not all ads should be focused on improving brand awareness, and a good advertising strategy should strike a good balance of non-lead generation vs lead generation spending. Yes, brand awareness is crucial, but further steps are required to get conversions.

Your ads must have a compelling call to action. Such CTAs like contact us form or link, phone number, or special offers will assist to skyrocket conversions. Brand awareness can’t be the only focus. If all you are doing is advertising-spending money on radio spots, print ads, and even internet marketing campaigns and not engaging in marketing- establishing relationship-adding value, gaining trust, and providing unmatched/superior customer service, you may as well as spend your plumbing marketing dollars and create a match for them.

3. No Tracking or Monitoring System in Place

Do you know where your plumbing leads are coming from? Do you know which ads or even which platform generates most of the best plumber leads?

You will never understand how your campaigns perform without proper measuring and analytics.

At a minimum, you need to have analytics connected to your advertising platform for proper attribution. As you scale the complexity of your internet marketing advertising, you might want to use phone call tracking, a customer relationship management tool, and marketing automation.

4. Targeting the Wrong Plumbing Keywords

Wrong Plumbing Keywords

If you are investing in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Google Ads for plumbers, make sure you are targeting the best keywords. If you are guessing, you are likely to waste money or at the very least, missing chances to leverage your ads for more leads.

Plumbing keywords work best when they are based on intent. Digital advertising is useless without targeting the right keywords, and these keywords are what prospects use when utilizing and researching search engines.

One good example is targeting the wrong geographical area. This could include focusing on an area where your target audience/clients don’t live. Don’t make the blunder of mistakenly targeting Murfreesboro, TN when your audience lives in Miami, Florida.

5. Lack of Consistency

Inconsistency can cause confusion.

Plumber marketing works best when you have a consistent message and strategy. Inconsistency can cause confusion. Ensure the key business information, such as name, phone number, and address, are all consistent wherever your plumbing company is mentioned online.

Likewise, dividing resources thinly or abandoning them too fast can lead to wasteful ad spending. Make sure your marketing campaigns, such as a newly launched Google Local Service ad for plumbers, have enough time to generate sufficient time.

6. Being Anti-Social

Anti-Social gif

Your potential clients are on social media. When they type “anyone who can recommend a plumber?” as their Facebook status, it would be great if people mentioned you, and it would even be more awesome if people mentioned you. It would be helpful if they would tag your Facebook page so a prospect could so check out, learn what kind of business you are, and see what other clients are saying about your plumbing company. But if your Facebook business page is dying or dead, that sends the exact wrong signals. Don’t underestimate the importance of social media advertising in your plumbing marketing plan.

7. Not Understanding Customer Behavior and User Intent

Knowing who your clients are and how they behave is the initial step to successful plumbing marketing campaigns. If you don’t know your clients, the campaigns that you run are bound to fail since you are targeting an audience that is in no way interested in your plumbing services.

As an example, we took an ad campaign for a plumbing contractor that had already spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on the keyword “Car AC repair.”

What a waste!

We fixed it by adding the term car as a negative keyword so our ads wouldn’t compete and display with the local mechanic. Actually, qualified clients use multiple keywords when they try to find plumbing services.

8. Poorly Targeted or Written Ad Copy

copying ad content from other advertisers

One of the most common blunders plumbers make is copying ad content from other advertisers. This can be an efficient strategy to save time, but if you are not keen on the ads shown, it may do more harm than good since they have the same keywords as yours, and their ads may not fit your business image at all.

Also, if you are not keen on the ad content you use, it may be too unclear or vague about what your company offers, so prospects will have a rough time understanding how your plumbing services actually assist them. The result? They are most likely to click through to learn more about your company.

Create a compelling ad copy by:

  • Using a unique selling proposition
  • Use special characters and numbers to stand out
  • Use keywords
  • Use a headline and question
  • Keep it reader-friendly and simple

Next, you will require to ensure your ads to the appropriate landing pages. If you have ads around plumbing services and point them to your homepage that begins off talking about who you are and the number of years you have been in business, you are likely to convert clients that you will be sending that traffic to a particular landing page about 24/7 plumber services.

9. Not Targeting Paid Search Ads

Demographic and geographic targeting in paid search advertising should be more specific.

Online advertising is an excellent way to improve conventional advertising (such as billboards, radio, print, and more) you may be doing (and internet marketing is often more targeted and cheaper).

Demographic and geographic targeting in paid search advertising should be more specific. Leads will not come if your targeting is left untouched or unclear. Know where your clients reside and what resonates with them. Target your ideal potential clients with purpose.

10. Broken Plumbing Website Pages

Broken site pages cause frustration to your prospects.

Broken site pages cause frustration to your prospects. If a customer lands on a site page (also known as a 404 page), they will normally click off your website. If a paid ad leads a client to a broken site page, that is even worse since you have just paid for the ad click.

If you are planning to run advertisements, ensure to send them to a working landing page. This page should have helpful and useful information, as well as a clear call to action so the customer can take a meaningful next step (like completing a form or calling).

Fix These Plumber Marketing Mistakes:  Find Your Perfect Clients with Better Internet Marketing Strategies with Blackstorm Design + Marketing

Promoting business within a particular industry calls for a specialized marketing plan for it to be effective. This is why investing in a plumbing internet marketing agency, like Blackstorm Design + Marketing, is crucial for plumbing businesses to attain successful advertising initiatives.

Blackstorm Design + Marketing‘s internet marketing professionals can assist assess your online assets and developing a custom marketing strategy to improve your online presence and get more service calls and more clients.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

plumbing SEO

The initial step to ranking your plumbing website in search optimization. Blackstorm Design + Marketing can help improve your plumbing SEO strategy, so you boost your online visibility. Our search engine optimization professionals will audit your plumbing website and recommend key SEO activities to help particular content and pages rank higher in search results.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

PPC

Pay-Per-Click or PPC ads assist you to obtain targeted traffic that is likely to convert. Blackstorm Design + Marketing’s online marketing for plumbers has exceptional PPC professionals to help you in managing effective PPC campaigns for your company. With the assistance of plumber internet marketing experts, you can obtain more plumbing leads with pay-per-click advertising.

Website Design and Development

web development and design

We provide web development and design as the main feature of plumbing internet marketing services. Whether you want to create a new plumbing website from scratch or revamp an existing one, our talented web designers can help. We ensure that your plumbing website is easy to navigate, fast, and has calls to action that skyrocket conversions.

Social Media Marketing

Clients are now expressing their perceptions about local businesses like yours on social media

Clients are now expressing their perceptions about local businesses like yours on social media, so your plumbing business shouldn’t be left. Blackstorm Design + Marketing’s social media experts will assist you on how to have a great following and generate more sales.

Online Reputation Management

online reviews are vital for your plumbing company’s online reputation

Customers are nowadays looking at online reviews before making a hiring decision. For service-based businesses like roofing or plumbing, online reviews are vital for your plumbing company’s online reputation. With positive review ratings, your business has a higher chance of generating sales and leads.

SEO Content Writing

SEO content

Whether you require copy for your email marketing campaign, web pages, or blog. At Blackstorm Design + Marketing, we have experienced writers, copywriters, and editors who can help you with your content writing requirements. Publishing relevant SEO content for your company improves brand awareness, which is just as important as generating leads.

Developing a result-oriented, comprehensive plumbing marketing plan can be overwhelming as a plumbing contractor, after all, you are not a marketing expert.

If you are tired of wasting your marketing dollars, schedule a free discovery call with Blackstorm Design +Marketing to get a plumbing marketing strategy that will help generate consistent leads or revenue every month today.

Categories
Google Advertising Roofing

Roofing Google Maps Listing E-Book

12 Steps to Rank Your Roofing Business Higher on Google Maps

Put your roofing business on the map, get discovered by clients, outrank your competitors, and secure more clients- all for free. Follow these top 10 ways to improve your visibility on Google Maps.

Let’s imagine…

You are looking for a roofing contractor in your area, and you need them for a leaking roof.

Where do YOU begin your search?

If you answered Google Maps, you are not alone.

These days, many people are turning to Google Maps to discover local service businesses like roofing, heating & air, or plumbing and make more informed purchasing decisions.

So how can your local roofing company rank higher in the place prospects are increasingly searching to book your roofing services?

Your Google Maps listing is an important roofing marketing tool for your company. 

It can assist you in getting discovered by new clients, generate more business and stand out above the competitors for FREE. But these advantages are only achievable if your listing has great visibility, and just because your roofing company is listed in a specific service area does not imply that Google will instantly rank it higher for organic searches in that area.

Google Maps

In fact, proximity is only one of the numerous factors that Google Maps uses when ranking your business listing. In this article, we are going to discuss 10 strategies/tactics to get your roofing business Google Maps listing to rank higher in organic results and reap all the advantages.

We are going to teach you on:

  • How to claim, verify and optimize your Google Maps listing if you have not already done so,
  • How to offer supplemental information that increases your rank and boosts your rank.
  • Additional action steps you can do on your roofing website to further boost the rank of your Google Maps listing.

Without further ado, let us dive in!

Why is Ranking Higher on Google Maps Crucial for Your Roofing Business?

These days, Google is the go-to for local searches, and with more than 50% of all searchers having a local intent, your roofing company needs to appear in Google Maps searches.

To outrank other roofers in such a competitive environment, you can have your listing through the Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business).

This will ensure that when prospects look for “roofing companies near me,” they see only the relevant details about the roofers, including availability and address, amongst others.

Optimizing your Google Business Profile will give you a competitive edge over other roofing companies and help you close more sales. Many advantages come along with ranking your roofing business higher on Google Maps.

Ranking Higher On Google Maps Increases Your Visibility Online

Research shows that Google Maps is the most preferred navigation app for more than 60% of internet users. And with users rarely searching past the first few results when searching for a place to go, it is important to ensure that your Google Maps listing is claimed, verified, and optimized to appear for relevant organic searches.

Google Maps listings provide an effective way to get your roofing business in front of ‘wallet out prospects’ or clients. The initial things that appear are Google Ads advertisements and local 3-pack, followed by organic results for the searched roofing service or product.

Visibility

When you create a roofing Google Business Profile, it will improve your company’s visibility online. 

You stand a great chance of obtaining more roofing leads by ranking higher on the maps.

Your roofing business will be perceived as an expert in the field because it is ‘preferred by Google. This will incline prospects searching for new roofs are likely to come across your website or business.

Listing Your Roofing Company on Google Maps Helps You Share Crucial Information with Your Prospects

Your roofing Google Maps listing is crucial for remaining in touch with your customers and updating them on the latest news.

You can share essential information about your roofing company, such as contact details, address, or working hours, to help potential clients learn more when they look online! More so, they will be able to call you if there are any concerns or problems around their home remodeling project.

Ranking Higher on Google Maps Will Help Your Roofing Business Earn Trust from Customers

It is a challenging job being the roofer of choice for customers, and you should win them and establish sufficient trust before they choose to work with your roofing company, which can be hard when there are so many other roofers out there.

From the time a prospect first contacts your business, you should earn that trust and prove to them that their roofing needs are priority enough for you to take care of.

Outranking the Competition

Your roofing Google Maps listing gives you a chance to stand out from other roofers in the industry. It offers a brief description that will help prospects identify what roofing services you provide, which may be vital for them if they have been searching all over the internet.

The last reason why you need to rank higher on Google Maps is that it will improve the quality of your listing and include several ways for clients to engage with your roofing business. With 86% of clients utilizing Google Maps to search for a local service business like plumbing or roofing, this opens a lot of opportunities to increase your engagement.

A Google Maps Listing for roofers has multiple advantages worth noting. Don’t let this chance slip away, so ensure it is correctly set up before another person captures it.

How to Get Your Roofing Business Listing Rank Higher on Google Maps

So how do you get your roofing company to show up higher in Google Maps?

Just like there are off-page and on-page optimizations for local roofing SEO, there are off-listing and on-listing factors for Google Maps. 

But first, you need to have your roofing business listed on Google Maps and claim your listing, which we will be discussing below.

1. Add Your Roofing Business to Google Maps

Of course, you can’t perform a successful roofing Google Maps marketing or rank higher if you don’t have an existing Google Maps listing somewhere. If you have an existing listing already, you can skip this part.

However, if you don’t have a listing, follow the crucial steps below to add your roofing company to Google Maps:

  1. Head over to Google.com/maps or go to the Google Maps app on your phone and look for your roofing business name.
  2. If your business shows up in the drop-down menu with a location alongside it, then your company is already listed. Head over to the next section.Steps to add your roofing company to Google Maps
  3. However, if your roofing company doesn’t appear, you will notice an option in the drop-down menu to add a missing place.Steps to add your roofing company to Google Maps

After you click on that, a prompt will come up asking you to input your location, category, and name.

Location, category, and name

Anyone in the world can add a roofing business to Google Maps. So, even if you haven’t claimed your business, we highly recommend that you check to make sure that your company listing doesn’t already exist. 

Don’t fret because the person who adds your roofing company to Google Maps doesn’t control the listing. Only the person who claims the Google Maps listing by proving ownership of the company has that control, which leads us to our next point.

2. Claim Your Roofing Google Maps Listing

The second step in getting your roofing company to rank higher on Google Maps is to claim your listing. If you want to reach higher positions in your roofing Google Maps listing, you need to prove to Google that you are the real owner of the business.

When you create the listing, all you will be able to offer is the category, location, and name.

But when you claim your listing, you will be able to provide many more details about your company.

The more details a roofing business listing offers, the higher it will rank on Google Maps.

Plus, you cannot proceed with any other steps in this book if you have not claimed your listing.

Having a free Google Business Profile is a prerequisite to claiming your roofing business on Google Maps.

If you have an existing GBP already, just pull out your Google Maps Business listing, choose the option that says “claim this business” or “Own this roofing business?” and later follow the prompts. 

Claim Your Roofing Google Maps Listing

Unclaimed

3. Add Complete  Details to Your Roofing Google Map Listings

By now, you have a Google Business Profile and a Google Maps listing attached to it; you are ready and armed to optimize it for higher ranking in local roofing search results.

As we stated earlier on, the more details your listing offers, the higher it will rank in organic search results.

To include more information in your listing, sign in to your Google Business Profile account. (google.com/business)

Here you will come across a dashboard with multiple tabs down the side.

Google My Business account dashboard

Choose the “info” tab, which includes your category, service area, address, name (where applicable), special hours, website, attributes, description, and phone number.

Here are some strategies for optimizing these Google Business Profile sections to achieve higher rankings on Google Maps:

Use Consistent Name and Address Citations

Google Maps ranks roofing companies it can trust, and one element of your trustworthiness is the consistency of details about your company across the web.

For instance, say you have a business called “North Shore Roofing Company.” Ensure your roofing business name in your Google Business Profile dashboard is precisely that and not a minor variation, like N. Shore Roofing Business or North Shore Roofers ltd. 

Also, make sure that your business name is the same (identical) across all your other online properties, such as your roofing website, Facebook profile, Yelp listing, and more. The same applies to your address information (for instance, using “St” vs. “Street”).

Use a Local Phone Number

Google doesn’t pay much attention to toll-free (800 and 877) numbers since these kinds of numbers are regularly utilized for spam. 

Use a local phone number together with the area code of your location.

This will assist you in ranking your roofing business higher in Google Maps, and it will also verify for searchers that your roofing business is situated in that area.

Include Your Main and Tracked Number

If you utilize a phone call tracking system, utilize a tracked number for your primary roofing business number and your main number as a secondary number.

This will help you to receive most of your calls coming in through a tracked line so you can understand the efficiency of your listing; however, with the main number available in your listing, Google can later match your number with the other listings and your roofing website.

Keep Your Operating Hours Updated

Google Maps roofing company listing tells browsers if your business is closed, open, closing, or opening soon. (And during the Covid-19 pandemic, whether it is closed temporarily- thus making it a crucial roofing SEO tactic).

Keeping your operational hours properly updated tells Google that you are active and, so, trustworthy, and this will assist you in ranking higher.

Operating Hours

This will also prevent clients from driving all the way to your office only to find that it is closed or closing, which can cause them to leave a negative review (which adversely affects your rankings on Google Maps).

Write a Clear Roofing Business Description

The description on your roofing Google Maps listing should offer an overview of your company to assist orient visitors, as well as unique attributes that compel searchers.

You should write your roofing business description in a tone that resonates with your brand to help build a better connection.

Make sure that you include your keywords in the roofing business description, as this will assist your business listing on Google Maps to rank for searches that contain your company name but for searches related to your roofing services and products as well.

Choose the Right Category for Your Roofing Business

When it comes to ranking higher on Google Maps, the category in your roofing business that appears on Google Maps is very crucial.

The primary category is going to be important in ranking your roofing business.

You would want to choose the primary category as the one that accurately describes your roofing business. You can also add secondary business categories as well.

Remember that you cannot add custom categories, but if you start typing your main offering in the box, you will see a drop-down menu of possible categories to select from.

4. Add Photos to Your Google Maps Listing

Adding photos to your Google Maps listing is a great way to show your clients more about your roofing business and show off your roofing services.

Google loves it when you upload quality photos to your map listing. 

First, it shows that you are an active listing to rank higher in organic search results. 

Second, Google’s photo recognition is progressing, and Google is beginning to show images in the local search engine results. 

Thirdly, the roofing SEO rule of thumb is that Google loves what clients love, and clients love photos. 

Plus, if you don’t include photos in your map listing, it will display a generic map image like the one below:

So, to enhance your Google Maps ranking, add compelling and high-quality photos to your company listing that catch what it is like to be in your roofing business.

You can do this by heading over to the “photos” tab in your Google Business Profile dashboard and clicking on the blue circle that has a white plus sign. From here, you will be able to drop and drag several videos and or photos at once. Ideally, you should try to add at least one photo daily.

5. Encourage People to Leave Reviews on Google

Google loves what clients love. You should not be surprised that Google Maps gives higher rankings to roofing business listings with stellar reviews on Google. 

So, how do I obtain more reviews on Google? 

Well, when you create a Google Map listing, this instantly opens your roofing business up to Google reviews.

Google reviews

But that doesn’t imply that you will receive them. 

As a roofer, you will need to be proactive in requesting reviews, and you will also be required to respond to them. 

Responding promptly to Google reviews encourages more of them and reduces the damage of less-than-stellar reviews. Plus, your responses show other potential clients how attentive you are to clients and how well you resolve problems.

Google reviews can be scary, but unless your roofing service is atrocious, negative reviews tend to be far and few between. Plus, as long as you answer properly, you can reverse and mitigate the damage of a negative review.

6. Consolidate Your Duplicate Google Maps Listing

Whatever you do, you don’t want several roofing businesses listed on Google Business Profile for the same phone number, location, and other details.

Google will discredit businesses with multiple locations or phone numbers listed for one real business.

When this occurs, you are impacting your organic rankings negatively for all these related map listings, as it is confusing to both your customers and Google.

Weed out duplicate roofing Google Maps listings and superfluous details to make sure your one real listing will rank.

7. Regularly Publish Quality Posts to Your Google Maps Listing

Like Facebook, you can create and publish quality content that shows up right on your Google Maps company listing. 

Regular posts like this tell Google that you manage your listing proactively, which is a major factor they look at when awarding rankings.

In addition, when clients are on search engines like Google, they have high intent, so via Google posts, you can obtain offers in front of a ready-to-engage target audience.

Create and publish quality content

How to Use Your Roofing Website Rank Higher on Google Maps

Apart from taking action directly from your Roofing Maps listing, there are some optimizations you can perform on your website to rank higher on Google Maps.

8. Make Sure Your Roofing Website is Responsive

The first step is to ensure that your roofing website is responsive, which implies that it operates optimally across any screen size or device.

This is because Google Maps listing has a link to your roofing website, and more than 60% of Google searches take place on mobile devices.

So if your listing directs searchers to a roofing website that needs zooming and pinching, has lots of broken links, or loads at a tortoise pace, your roofing Google Maps listings will be adversely impacted.

9. Optimize Your Web Presence by Using Local Keywords

If you want to rank higher on Google Maps, you should make sure that your online presence, including your external content and roofing website, is optimized for your local target market. Of course, this will assist your roofing website to rank higher in Google’s organic search, but it will also affect how high or low your Google Maps listing ranks.

So make sure that you include location-specific keywords on the major pages of your website, like the about us page, contact us page, blog posts, and even service pages- not just on the title of your pages, but also on the body text, image tags, captions, URLs and headings.

This shows Google that your roofing website is well known or prominent in your local service area, which can make the giant search engine feel more obliged to rank your company higher on Google Maps for that specific area as well.

10. Embed the Google Map on Your Roofing Website

Another way to rank higher on Google Maps is to embed a Google map on your roofing website, which most roofers do on the contact us page.

Adding a Google Map right on your roofing website is a great way to help Google connect your company with the location.

This is another way of telling Google that your company is actually situated where your listing says it is.

Utilize the same address that you have on your Google Maps roofing business listing.

To add a Google Map to your roofing website, look for your business name in Google Maps. Click on “share” in your listing and choose the “Embed a map” tab. Copy and paste the link on your roofing business’s contact us page.

11. Use Local Roofing Business Schema

When it comes to structuring your roofing website content, and particularly business details, Google and Bing prefer standardization- which has led to the invention of schema.

Local Schema helps roofing businesses to wrap code around the content to make it easier for Google to index and crawl your website.

The local roofing business schema covers most of the same company details captured in a Google Business profile, which will be cross-referenced by Google.

The easier it is for Google or Bing to validate your business location, the more likely your roofing business is to rank prominently in Google Maps.

12. Create Local Backlinks

Inbound links or backlinks are regarded as an extension of your NAP strategy, whereby you search for relevant, local third-party websites that link to your roofing website pages.

Backlinks can validate your roofing business from both service and local perspectives. If you maintain listings with links in local business directories, you will want to make sure those listings are in the good categories if category options are provided.

Generally, these links to your roofing website are “follow” links, which implies Google will recognize and follow the source of the link to your website content.

Most online business directories understand the importance of “follow” links and so charge for inclusion, but you should search for opportunities to get links from other non-paid sources such as service organization sites or industry-relevant partners.

Leverage the Advantages of Ranking Higher on Google Maps

We bombarded you with a lot in this article, so let us recap on how to rank higher in Google Maps:

  1. Create and claim your roofing Google Maps business listing
  2. Complete each section of your Google Business Profile dashboard
  3. Keep your NAP (Name, Address, and local Phone number) consistent on the web.
  4. Properly categorize and describe your roofing business.
  5. Add posts and photos to your Google Maps listing
  6. Obtain more Google reviews
  7. Consolidate duplicate listings
  8. Make your roofing website responsive
  9. Target your roofing website for local keywords
  10. Add a Google Map to your roofing website
  11. Use local business schema
  12. Build local backlinks

Roofing business listings on Google Maps are slowly becoming more advanced, helping clients to instantly obtain the information they require and make educated buying decisions. 

Follow the tactics in this book to get your roofing business showing up higher on Google Maps, and you will get the increased engagement, revenue, and visibility that comes along with it.

Categories
Plumbing SEO

How to Improve Your Plumbing Website’s SEO…

Visibility has been the main challenge hindering the success of small businesses up to date. Having a fantastic business and an eye-catching website can be of no importance if the potential customers cannot find you. That’s what necessities the need for Search Engine optimization. Search Engine Optimization is an art and science of improving your ranking on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Google uses search algorithms to find websites that have quality and informative content, thereby improving its ranking on search engines. Google keeps on tweaking its search algorithms several times annually. This is a clear indication that amazing SEO is not something that is attained instantly; it is a continuous process that requires dedication and commitment.

The following ways to improve your website’s SEO ranking

Publishing Relevant Content

informative content

Quality content is the secret to improve your website rankings on search engines, and nothing else can substitute informative content. You can increase your website traffic by publishing relevant content for your target audience, as this will enhance your site authority as well as relevance. To realize this, you need to perfect your web writing skills.

Keywords

Keywords

Every page on your website should have a unique keyword phrase. Take your time to define the phrases that the visitor can use to search for a specific page on your website.

Multiple Keyword Phrases

rank for multiple keywords

It’s never easy for a webpage to realize search engine ranking for several keyword phrases unless they are similar. A single page can rank multiple keyword phrases as long as they are somehow related, for example, Business jobs’ and business careers.’

If you intend to rank several keyword phrases with your website, you will be required to create separate web pages for the keyword phrases you are targeting.

Content

Content concept

Besides the page URL, title, and headings, content is very crucial when it comes to search engine rankings. Your keyword phrase should appear several times on the page, not forgetting the opening and closing paragraphs.

These keyword phrases should be highlighted to make it easy for the reader to identify them. You can use the available writing styles to highlight them, such as bold, italics, and even heading tags. You should neglect good writing for SEO. What you need to understand is that pages are written specifically for the reader and not SEO.

Keeping your Content Up to date

always update your content

Content is of much importance to the ranking of any plumbing website. Keeping your content up-to-date is one of the ways that is used to determine how relevant the site is, so it is necessary to keep it fresh. You should set time to audit your content and make the required updates.

Consistency

content consistency

To improve the SEO rankings on your website, you have to show consistency when it comes to publishing content on your blog. This builds trustworthiness among the visitors, and they will always visit your site because they believe that is the only place they can find answers to what they are looking for. To lure more visitors into your website, you should be consistently publishing new content, as this will create a good impression among your visitors.

You should overlook the consequences of not updating outdated or underperforming content. Visitors don’t like reading the same thing week in week out, and that’s why publishing new material is very crucial.

Readable Content

make your content readable

The content on your website should be easily readable. Your content should be in short and precise paragraphs, as this is what users want. Visitors are no longer interested in an endless block of content, and this may even turn them away from your website. You should strive to keep your content as short as possible while retaining the meaning.

The sentences should be short, and a paragraph should have no more than five lines. Readers find such content friendly, inviting, and easy to understand. Long paragraphs discourage the readers before they even begin to read them.

Provide Accurate Contact Information

Contact Information

Providing correct contact details is a trust factor search engine uses when ranking a website. You should provide your contact details so that users can reach out to you when in need. Users tend to lose trust in a business that does not have contact details as they think such businesses are no longer legit. Always include your phone number, location, and email address so that visitors can reach out to you easily.

The discussed above are some of the tricks on how to improve your website’s SEO.

Categories
Plumbing SEO

Strategies And Tips To Grow Your Plumbing Business (Both Offline And Online)

Use These Simple Plumbing Marketing Tricks To Outrank The Competition, Obtain More Leads And Grow Your Business The Right Way

As the owner of a plumbing company, you should understand that starting your business is just the initial step. Retaining and attracting clients requires aggressive plumbing service marketing. Plumbers face a huge challenge in acquiring, attracting, and converting prospects into paying clients. And to achieve that, your business needs to know how to sell plumbing services (both online and offline) to wallet out customers.

Business Meeting

The way people search for a plumbing company has changed in the past few decades. Earlier, homeowners used to go to their local directories or phonebook to search for a local plumbing service company but nowadays rely on Google search results to hire a nearby plumber.

Every plumbing company has one major goal: to obtain more clients and book more service appointments. And since there are dozens of tactics and strategies you can utilize, the beginning point remains the same: having a well-crafted plumbing marketing plan.

After all, marketing your plumbing services drives homeowners to schedule service appointments and bring in more revenue. But without a good plumbing marketing strategy, it is synonymous with heading to war without your weapons.

Without further ado, let us dive into our topic.

What is a Plumbing Marketing Plan?

Marketing Strategies

A plumbing marketing strategy/plan is typically a blueprint that illustrates the methods you intend to implement to make your clients schedule service appointments with your company. It serves as a roadmap that informs your marketing tactics, plumbing advertising slogans, marketing activities, desired results, and costs. It should outline your plumbing business’s actions to achieve its goals.

A plumber marketing plan is your crucial guide to growing and promoting your business. It is the engine that skyrockets your plumbing sales, so you require a solid plan of action to make the most out of it. It takes research, careful planning, and a complete understanding of your industry to craft a plan that will guarantee the success of your plumbing business.

Reasons Why Your Plumbing Business Must Have a Well-Crafted Marketing Plan

marketing strategy flowchart composition

Whether you are operating a small plumbing business or scaling a large one, you still need to develop a solid marketing plan.

After all, it comes with tons of benefits like the following:

1. A Marketing Plan Helps You Develop Measurable Company Goals

Concept of business strategy and action plan

Clarity is extremely crucial when setting your plumbing business objectives or goals. Thus your plan shouldn’t be as easy as ‘closing more sales this year’ or ‘not going broke’. Otherwise, you would be setting your plumbing business for failure.

If you don’t have a clear goal, you can’t implement advertising activities to assist you to reach what you want to attain.

With a plumbing marketing plan, you can concentrate on tangible targets, boosting company performance and sales throughout the year.

2. A Plumbing Marketing Plan Ensures Consistency

Most plumbers who don’t have a clear marketing plan advertise their services sporadically and find that they only do aggressive marketing when they really require more sales.

What generally occurs is that there is a wave of advertising or marketing activity that produces new customers. Then, since they have no dedicated resources or plan, their attention is dedicated to meeting the needs of new clients. On the flip side, their marketing activity has entirely stopped.

Ultimately, this results in troughs and peaks of activity, which offers an erratic pipeline of sales or marketing opportunities. A plumbing marketing plan with resources allocated to it allows you to advertise the business consistently and continuously.

3. A Marketing Plan Helps You Sell Your Plumbing Services

Character illustration of barcode as a plumber

The main focus of plumber advertising is that it should promote your plumbing services, and that’s how you maximize your profits. In the long run, plumbing marketing is what drives sales. Of course, it is crucial to have superior plumbing services, but unless homeowners get to understand your services, how will you advertise them? And that’s what a plumbing marketing plan does, it assists you to get your brand and name out there to draw clients and makes more sales.

4. It Helps You Offer Superior Services to Your Clients

Offer Superior Services to Your Clients

The importance of a plumbing services marketing plan goes over and above the process. You can utilize it as a guide in dealing with your customers. When you know what you require to do, you can address your target market better.

5. Metrics for Your Plumbing Business Success

Business metrics

A marketing plan also offers important data to assist your plumbing company to grow. Once a baseline is set up, goals are in place, a marketing plan is just an evolution of these crucial steps. Once you have implemented your plumbing marketing plan, success can be measured and will offer valuable metric data going forward. This information will inform your strategy, so it is essential to have the correct performance metrics being measured from the beginning.

While crafting a marketing plan for your plumbing business might seem challenging, it is no doubt one of the best ways to scale your company and achieve measurable success.

Having a streamlined, efficient marketing plan will give data on what is working and what’s not so that you can make excellent strategic decisions that impact your company’s growth.

6. A Plumbing Marketing Plan Helps You Target the Right Audience

Target the Right Audience

One of the primary reasons to develop a marketing plan for your plumbing business is to assist you to connect with the right prospects or clients. As we said in our post on how to start a plumbing company, knowing your target audience is crucial to success. With a marketing plan in place, you not only identify who your clients are and what they want from your business but also obtain insights on methods of reaching them.

7. It Helps You Spend Your Advertising Dollars in the Right Places

Budget for marketing

There are various marketing channels you can select from when you are trying to sell your plumbing services to connect with your clients. As well as conventional methods like TV and print advertising, there are also online marketing options such as content, email marketing, and social media. When you create a marketing plan, you can better understand where to invest your advertising dollars for maximum return.

How to Develop a Successful Plumbing Marketing Plan

Successful Marketing Plan

An effective marketing plan can bring a whole range of benefits to your plumbing business. That said, why do we need to discuss everything you need to know about how to create a plumbing marketing strategy.

There are major steps needed to develop a strategic plan, set your marketing objectives, perform a marketing audit, conduct market research, identify your ideal target clients, come up with a budget, craft specific plumbing marketing strategies, develop an implementation schedule for the tactics and craft an evaluation process.

  • Start with a Goal

measurable and realistic goals

Once you have decided to sell your plumbing services, you need to set measurable and realistic goals to attain within a given timeframe. This time span helps you plan activities around community events that are in line with plumbing marketing goals.

Your plumbing marketing plan goals should align with your overall business objectives. For instance, if your main goal is to reach a certain level of revenue, your marketing plan goal should be to increase conversions and website visitors by a specific amount.

You could also begin by defining a mission statement. This is essentially a ‘how and what’ of your plumbing business- a description of what you want to attain and how you plan to get there. Although not measurable from an internal perspective, it can assist you in developing a clear message for your plumbing marketing efforts.

  • Research Your Target Market

Target Market

Research is an important part of your plumbing marketing plan. You need to obtain more information about your market, such as growth, demographics, and size. It is crucial to keep an eye on your target market so that you are aware of changes over time, and this makes your strategy targeted and relevant. Before you begin crafting a marketing plan, you should understand the service area you are going to operate in. Marketing analytics are key to each step of the process.

  • Understand Your Customers

Your clients should be at the center of everything you do

Your clients should be at the center of everything you do when crafting a marketing plan for your plumbing business. With the assistance of your market research, you should be able to identify your “target audience”, which is a specific group of homeowners of a particular gender, location, and ethnicity. When you create a marketing plan, you should anticipate their pain points and how you can fulfill them more effectively than other plumbing contractors.

At this stage, you want to know some of your target markets and develop them into your customer personas. Whether you are starting a new plumbing business or have an established one, these are two of the main ways you can get to understand and know your customers.

By understanding the crucial details of who is attempting to appeal to, you can then begin to figure out how you can go about doing so. This helps make your plumbing marketing more relevant and targeted, increasing your probability of success.

  • Describe Your Plumbing Services

To effectively advertise your services online or offline, you must be able to describe them. You can utilize a well-established tactic at this phase, also referred to as the 4Ps of the marketing matrix. The four points are:

4Ps of the marketing matrix

  1. Product/ Service: Here, you want to understand what it is you offer to clients and what makes you stand out. Consider how it meets your customers’ needs and whether there are any additional features you can include.
  2. Price: As you know, this refers to the amount you charge for the plumbing services and how that compares to other plumbing contractors. Also, consider how you can increase your market share via promotions, etc.
  3. Promotion: Where can you advertise or promote your plumbing services, and what will appeal most to your target audience? These are questions you need to answer, along with how such promotions resonate with your plumbing brand identity.
  4. Place: Lastly, you need to figure out where your plumbing service will be needed most. How easy is it for clients to navigate these?

The 4P’s can give you a firmer understanding of the resources and services you have available when it comes to plumbing marketing.

  • Establish a Plumbing Marketing Budget

Budget financial analyst

For plumbing contractors, especially those just starting out, finding enough money to spend on advertising can be a real hassle. You are already keeping your eyeballs on expenses from trucks, tools, insurance to renting an office space. And unless you have funds set aside-your plumbing business advertising, spend that money is likely to come out of your pocket.

So what is the right amount of money your plumbing company can spend on marketing each month? While the response depends on your particular situation, consistency is crucial. Plumbing marketing is a continuous process, and it can take time to yield desired results.

To help you determine the amount to spend on marketing your plumbing business every month, several factors like company goals, client demographics, and market conditions must be considered.

  • Develop Marketing Strategies

Marketing Strategies

With your plumber marketing budget in place, you can start to define particular marketing strategies that will address your objectives, reach your target market and build your client base.

Plumbing Promotion and Advertising Strategies to Get More Clients

Improving your plumbing marketing can be a challenging task. Some various strategies and tools can help you grow your plumbing company. Thanks to digital technology, there are now more marketing channels plumbers can use to reach potential clients. Generally, all marketing efforts can be classified into two broad categories, either offline or online. Here’s an overview of those two major categories and the major types of campaigns.

Offline Plumbing Advertising

Anywhere your plumbing brand appears-apart from the Internet qualifies to be an offline advertising strategy. Here are various forms of offline advertising you can utilize in your plumbing business:

Word of mouth illustration

  • Word of Mouth: Referrals are an extremely crucial part of any plumbing advertising strategy. Word of mouth incorporates conversations among your clients, influences, and any homeowner interested in using your plumbing services.

Direct Mail campaigns

  • Direct Mail: Use direct mail in a great way. Look at prior client records and identify old homes that had toilets or showers installed by your business some years ago. Create a direct mail campaign focusing on past clients offering repair, installation, or maintenance services.

Television and Radio advertising

  • Television and Radio: Although these forms of conventional media no longer influence people like they once did, they remain effective ways to reach prospects or clients.

Billboards advertising

  • Display Advertising:  Bus stop signage, postcards, billboards, and any other physical locations you need to pay so that your logo shows up in your category.

Online Plumbing Marketing Strategies

A vibrant digital marketing strategy will assist you to boost your plumbing business. These 10 internet marketing strategies have been proven to help plumbers skyrocket their performance. If you use them, you could be on your way to creating a concrete internet marketing strategy that will help you bring in more clients and retain the existing ones:

Marketing strategy for businesses

  • Invest in a professional plumbing website design: Your plumbing website is the first point of contact between your potential clients and business, which implies you need to make a memorable first impression. But if your site isn’t clean, interesting, and easy to read, it will not matter the amount of time you spend crafting other internet marketing strategies, and you will still lose clients. That’s why you need to hire a plumbing website design agency to create a site that’s attention-grabbing, mobile-friendly, and modern.
  • Use Search Engine Optimization to Make Your Plumbing Website Get found by Prospects/clients Online: Search engine optimization and marketing are integral parts of what help your plumbing business rank higher on the search engine results pages. After researching online, this increases your chances of being the plumbing contractor a homeowner selects to hire.
  • Invest in Pay Per Click Advertising to get immediate plumbing leads: Pay Per Click adverts to help your plumbing business instantly be found on the first page of Google, thereby delivering prompt results in the process.
  • Manage Your Online Reputation to Get More Plumbing Contracts: Publicly responding to negative reviews or positive ones helps build trust with your audience, which may help you get plumbing contracts in the long run.
  • Email Marketing: Not every homeowner uses Twitter or Facebook, but you increase your odds if your future and current clients have an email address, which is why this plumbing marketing channel remains very effective.

Figuring out which marketing channels are right for your plumbing company can be challenging, marketing tactics that may work perfectly for one business may backfire on another plumber in the same situation. Select your channels wisely and never risk all your eggs in one basket.

Frequently Asked Questions on plumbing Marketing Plan

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What should be included in the plumbing marketing plan?

Some of the elements that should be included in a plumbing marketing plan include identifying who your ideal client is, unique selling proposition, marketing budget, and advertising strategies (both online and offline) amongst others.

What are the crucial elements of a plumbing marketing plan?

The 4p’s of marketing include price, promotion, product/service, place, and people. Together these elements form a marketing mix that places your plumbing business strategically and can be utilized to varying degrees of force.

How do you attract plumbing clients?

You can use several proven techniques to get homeowners to book plumbing service appointments with your business, including developing a professional website, using SEO services to help people find your business online, social media advertising, retargeting, and online reputation management.

Let Blackstorm Design +Marketing Help You Create and Execute Your Plumbing Marketing Plan

Digital Marketing

If developing and implementing the above tactics seem like a daunting task, that’s because they are! The good news is that you don’t have to do all of them on your own.

Do you want matters most-running your plumbing company and let the Blackstorm Design + Marketing team handle each aspect of your plumbing marketing plan on your behalf?

Schedule a no-obligation discovery call with Blackstorm Design + Marketing to know more about how our team can help you increase qualified leads and revenue.

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