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Plumbing SEO

Why SEO Is Better than PPC for Plumbers

The debate continues: Which is better, SEO or PPC?

More users trust SEO search listings over PPC listings.

PPC vs SEO gif

Studies have shown that more users trust organic search listings over paid advertisements. Research has shown that around 70% of internet users click on organic search results (SEO) as opposed to only 30% clicking on paid search results (PPC). Most internet users distrust paid advertisements, and most of these consumers are well aware that PPC is an advertising tool. This results in a lot of users bypassing paid advertisements and clicking organic, natural results instead. And to make matters worse, some users that have clicked paid ads don’t end up finding the product or service they are looking for. Thus, businesses that use SEO are better able to provide consumers with more interesting and valuable content. 

SEO is very cost-effective and gives greater value for money.

SEO gif

Both SEO and PPC naturally have costs for initial set-up and hiring PPC specialists or an SEO company to come up with a digital campaign exclusively for your business. But if you use an SEO campaign, there is no need to pay for every individual click or visitor, but you will only pay for the services that your SEO team or vendor renders. With PPC, constant investment is required. If you stop paying, your ads will stop, and your lead generation will be discontinued.

SEO can build and keep an advantage over your competitors.

A woman client calling a plumber to fix her kitchen sink.

It isn’t easy to build an advantage and keep it with PPC. If you are already making profits based on clicks you pay a certain amount for, then it will not last if a competitor bids a higher price for the same product. If your competitor has some venture funding and decides to use it on PPC, it can drive the average cost of a click higher, and your profits will be driven downward. An investment in SEO is much more challenging. You strive to make your search engine results higher for relevant keywords. You come up with great content that is of great value to consumers. You generate inbound links. And your links show up on high-quality websites in your industry. Soon, your rankings will start rising, and with this, traffic and leads generated through search will increase. It takes time to accomplish this. You may have a higher initial cost, but the clicks are free. This investment, however, gives you a more sustainable advantage over PPC. Your competitor will find it more difficult to take this advantage away.

SEO gives better ROI than PPC advertising.

Plumber standing near kitchen sink

Based on a four-year study of profit generation for both SEO and PPC, it has been shown that SEO that creates organic traffic generates $2.74 in profit for every dollar spent in that year. In 3 years, SEO’s average profit is $4.58 for every dollar spent in one year. Comparing this with the profits garnered from PPC advertising, it was shown that for every dollar spent on that year, the average profit is -$0.95. While over three years from the dollar spent in one year, the average profit is -$0.85. This means that for every dollar spent on both SEO and PPC, SEO will yield an additional profit of $2.75 but PPC losses -$0.95. Thus, SEO gives better ROI than PPC advertising. 

SEO has more effective promotion results.

SEO gif

Applying SEO to your website may take around three to six months before your website will appear on search engine results. This is because indexing and ranking a website takes time for Google to do. But over a long time, SEO leads to consistent traffic, whereas PPC only gives an initial boost to traffic. PPC can be beneficial if you have a brand new site that has not yet appeared in organic results. However, with a PPC campaign, traffic immediately stops when the budget is withdrawn. Thus SEO continues to shine. It is a more effective way of promoting your website in the long run.

Ranking #1 in search results will not happen overnight with SEO. But SEO has proven long-term benefits. The reasons given above why SEO is better than PPC should prod you to invest more of your time and resources focusing on SEO rather than on PPC.

Categories
Marketing Plumbing

How To Become A Licensed Plumber in 6 Simple Steps

Plumbing is among one of the closely regulated trades in the U.S. This means that to become a licensed plumber, one must train under the supervision of a master plumber and sit for trade exams before they are registered. Almost all states have plumbing licensing or certification requirements for master and journeyman plumbers, but the trade exams and requirements vary from one state to another. Having gone through rigorous years of apprentice training and study, you want to ensure that you abide by the laws in your state to grow your plumbing business.

It is a well-known fact that skilled, licensed plumbers are always in high demand, and their job prospects are expected to be great through 2029 (and beyond!), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, becoming a licensed plumber is a smart career decision. Getting your plumbing license is one of the most crucial steps to becoming a certified and licensed plumber. Most states won’t allow you to operate without a license, and with a reason too – plumbing is a skilled trade that requires education and professional experience.

Do you want to know how to become a licensed and certified plumber in your state? If so, we got you covered. In this post, we will discuss the process of how to become a licensed plumber in detail, outlining the different steps involved depending on the state where you reside. The plumbing licensing requirements can vary greatly from state to state. Therefore, you must identify the right process for your state; this is not a “one-size-fits-all” solution.

Without further ado, let us dive into our post!

How to Become a Qualified Plumbing Contractor

plumber in uniform holds drain pipe in the kitchen

Plumbing is an appealing and lucrative industry, which pays approximately $56000 per year (According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data). Homeowners regularly require plumbing installations or repairs, and there is always a demand for plumbers who can come to the rescue in case of any emergency like a clogged toilet or flooded basement. As such, more and more people are starting their plumbing companies to tap into this profitable market.

But how can you become a qualified plumbing contractor and get the license? What kind of information do you require to know before you launch your career in plumbing? While the requirements of becoming a certified and qualified plumber vary from one state to another, there are simple steps you will probably take no matter where you will be working.

Here are our simple steps to becoming a qualified plumbing contractor that you need to know:

  • Get on-the-job training by completing an apprenticeship program approved by the plumbing licensing board.
  • Obtain your plumber license so that you can book jobs and offer plumbing services without supervision
  • Become a legal plumbing contractor by starting a plumbing firm and subcontract work from other licensed plumbers
  • Make sure that you have the appropriate insurance including surety bond, general liability, and worker’s compensation insurance.
  • Develop your business management skills to keep up with the newest problems and trends to stay ahead of the curve.

What is a Licensed Plumber?

Licensed Plumbers

A licensed plumber is a professional tradesperson who has met all the testing and qualification needed to operate legally in their state or city. Licensing is a very crucial aspect of becoming a journeyman or master plumber. This is because once a plumber is given a license, they are certified as possessing the requisite expertise, experience, and knowledge to perform their work according to recognized plumbing codes and standards.

Licensed plumbers are given a compliance certificate to show to their potential employers. This certificate shows that a plumber will adhere to all relevant plumbing standards, regulations, and codes on the job. They are also insured to assist their clients if their plumbing work is faulty or substandard. Unlicensed plumbers may be penalized for performing work without a valid license.

How to Become a Licensed Plumber in 6 Easy Steps (With Tricks and Tips)

Since plumbing is a skilled trade, people who wish to become licensed plumbers must meet certain requirements. Plumbers handle different kinds of work for commercial and residential buildings. The time it takes to obtain the necessary plumbing licensing, certifications and training vary from state to state. If you want to know how to become a licensed plumbing contractor in your state, read the simple steps below to get started:

Step 1: Obtain Your High School Diploma or its GED Equivalent

you must meet specific minimum educational requirements

To become a licensed journeyman plumber, you must meet specific minimum educational requirements. The very initial and most important step how to become a licensed plumber is obtaining your education. High school diploma graduates have the best opportunity of getting a plumbing apprenticeship because of the math, English, and applied Physics skills gained, which will assist them when taking up their apprentice plumbing aptitude test.

After passing the aptitude test, the next step is to obtain specialized training in plumbing. This is where you learn the theoretical and practical aspects of the job. The common career path options can include going to a trade school or college with approved courses. Vocational training programs are crucial because they prepare you to handle day-to-day tasks and business aspects of your trade. However, a GED certificate will work in most plumbing apprenticeship programs if you don’t have a high school diploma.

Step 2: Join and Complete a Plumbing Apprenticeship Program

Joining an apprenticeship program

Joining an apprenticeship program is the next step toward becoming a licensed plumber. Many states will require you to have 3 to 4 years of experience as an apprentice before you apply for a journeyman plumbing license. You must actively work for a master plumber who will sponsor you in the apprenticeship program. During your apprenticeship, you will be working directly under the supervision of a master plumber, who will teach you additional skills.

To qualify for a plumbing apprenticeship program, you must be at least 18 years old, have a valid driving license, and pass a drug screening test to be accepted into the program. Once you have been accepted as a plumbing apprentice, you will actively work under the guidance/supervision of a master plumber for a set number of years. Normally this is between 4 and 5 years and includes a combination of both plumbing courses and on-the-job training.

Pro tip: Select a master plumber whom you have a good relationship with because you will spend many years under their supervision or guidance.

Step 3: Enroll in a Plumbing Trade School and Complete the Requisite On-the-Job Training/Classroom Hours

plumbing apprenticeship program

Every plumbing apprenticeship program will have its minimum number of classroom and work hours, and a master plumber normally supervises the apprentice to be eligible for the journeyman’s plumbing licensing exam. This varies from state to state, so be sure to check your state’s requirements. On average, most states will require you to complete at least 2000 hours of work each year and an addition to 250 hours of the classroom every year.

You may feel intimidated at first thinking that you are going to take a lot of time for training. But the good news is that you will be paid good wages as an apprentice plumber. You can comfortably earn between $15 to $ 25/hour as an apprentice plumber, depending on your skill set.

Step 4: Apply for a Journeyman Plumber Licensing Exam

plumber licensing examination

After you have completed your apprenticeship and formal education program, you can apply for your plumber licensing examination. You may be required to offer proof of doing an apprenticeship that lasted the set number of years. Inquire with your state’s department of labor to know where and when you can sit on the exam. If you finished your plumber apprenticeship program through a private plumbing contractor, you will be required to get an affidavit that confirms you have met all the state’s plumber licensing requirements and thus are eligible for an examination.

If you have not completed your plumbing apprenticeship classroom hours, along with on-the-job training hours requirements, you cannot sit for a journeyman plumber licensing examination.

Step 5: Obtain Your State Journeyman Plumber’s License

plumbing license

Once you have passed the journeyman licensing examination, you will be given a state plumbing license as well as journeyman plumber certification. This plumbing license will have a fee associated with it, and you will be required to renew it annually. This is a nominal fee but will help to keep your certification valid and current.

Step 6: Continue learning to become a master plumber

consider learning more to become a master plumber

Once you have received your journeyman plumbing license, you may require to renew it once after three years, depending on your state’s law. But you must keep up with any new plumbing codes and regulations your state passes to ensure your work follows all applicable laws.

If you want to perform more advanced plumbing work or train other aspiring plumbers, consider learning more to become a master plumber. You will require five years of experience and passing a master plumber exam to obtain this designation.

How to Become a Licensed Plumber: Licensing Requirements for Every State

Each state has its own plumber licensing requirements as well as different licensure levels. Your plumbing license is as vital as your insurance, so make sure that you have all the details. That’s why we have compiled this comprehensive guide of 50 states and their plumber licensing requirements. But ensure that you confirm with your local licensing body for any new regulations.

Read to find out the plumbing licensing requirements in your state below.

Arizona

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Arizona

Is a license needed to work as a plumber in Arizona? Yes.

The state of Arizona requires all plumbing contractors to sit and pass two exams to obtain their plumber’s license. The first one is a business management theory exam, and the second one is a plumbing trade examination.

To be eligible for licensing, you will need at least two years of experience in plumbing. But you can substitute the experience with any training or education you have obtained.

After passing your licensing exam, you can get your license from the Arizona Registrars for Contractors.

Alabama

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Alabama

Plumbers must obtain a state license to book plumbing jobs in Alabama. To qualify for a journeyman plumber license, you must have a minimum of two years of experience as a plumber apprentice or must complete an apprenticeship program approved by the State of Alabama Plumbers and Gas Fitters Examining Board. The good news is that you need one year of plumbing experience as a journeyman plumber to apply and sit for a master plumber exam.

Alaska

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Alaska

Is a state license required to work as a plumber in Alaska? Yes.

Without a state license or certification, you will not be able to conduct any professional plumbing work in Alaska.

To work as a plumber in Alaska, you will require a state license from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

You need at least 8,000 hours of experience installing residential or commercial plumbing systems to qualify for your journeyman plumber license. Or have finished 1,000 hours of related in-class experience. Besides, you will also be required to pass your plumbing licensing exam.

To get a plumber gas (PG) license in Alaska, you must show proof of over 4000 hours of experience with half of the time used to install gas piping systems.

To qualify for a plumber utility license(PU), you must complete at least 1000 hours of plumbing experience installing storm, water, and sewer lines.

Arkansas

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Arkansas

Plumbers in Arkansas are required by law to have a state license before they can perform any plumbing maintenance or installation work. The license is given by the Arkansas Department of Health, Plumbing, and Natural Gas Division.

To qualify for a journeyman plumber license, you require a minimum of 4 years of experience as a plumbing apprentice. On the flip side, to apply for a master plumber license, you must have five years of experience as a journeyman plumber and pass the licensing exam.

California

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from California

To perform any plumbing installation or maintenance work in the state of California, you will be required to get a plumber license from the California Contractors State License Board.

To become a licensed plumber, you will be required to pass the California plumbers exam which consists of business management and law exam.

To be eligible for these exams, you require four years of experience as a foreman, journeyman, contractor, or supervisor. After you have passed the exam, you will be required to do criminal background checks and file a $10K bond with the licensing board.

Colorado

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Colorado

You need a state license to perform any plumbing work in Colorado. There are various plumbing license classes given by the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies and the State Plumbing Board. However, you must sit and pass an exam to get a plumber license.

  • Journeyman Plumber: You must show proof of 4 years (6,800 hours) of experience.
  • Master Plumber: You must have 5 years of experience as a journeyman plumbing contractor.
  • Residential Plumber: You must show proof of two years of experience (3, 400 hours).

Connecticut

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Connecticut

To perform any plumbing installation or repair work in Connecticut, you must understand the process of how to become a licensed plumber.

There are two types of plumber licenses: unlimited plumbing contractor and unlimited journeyman plumber.

An unlimited journeyman plumber helps plumbers work under the guidance of a licensed master plumber and execute basic plumbing projects. To obtain this license, you will require to apply and complete an apprenticeship program and then pass the licensure exam.

Unlimited plumbing contractor license allows performing plumbing projects unsupervised. Before you apply for this licensing exam, you need at least two years of experience as an unlimited journeyman plumber.

Delaware

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Delaware

The state of Delaware requires a plumber license for any organization or person that is engaged in any kind of plumbing activity- whether as a master or journeyman plumber for a company. To become a licensed plumber in Delaware, applicants must comply with the Delaware Department of Revenue.

To get your journeyman plumber license, you must show proof of two years of work experience and prove that you have finished an apprenticeship program before being allowed to sit for exams.

To qualify for your master plumber license, you will require a minimum of seven years of experience as a journeyman plumber.

Florida

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Florida

All contractors must be licensed to perform any kind of plumbing work in the state of Florida. This license will be issued by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

To work as a licensed and certified Florida plumber, you will have to pass two exams, the first on finance and business management, and the second one will be a plumbing trade exam.

Make sure that before you apply for a plumbing licensing exam, you have met all the additional requirements. These requirements may include a minimum of 4 years of experience, a current credit report, and assets worth at least $2,500.

You can obtain your plumbing license from the Florida Construction Industry Licensing Board.

Georgia

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Georgia

You must be licensed to perform any plumbing installation or maintenance work in the state of Georgia. To get your journeyman-level plumber license, you will be required to show proof of three years of plumbing work experience and obtain approval from the state to sit for the licensing exam.

There are two different classes of master plumbers in Georgia namely:

  • Class one master plumbers: You will require at least five years of experience with two of them working as journeyman plumbers.
  • Class two master plumbers: You will need some years of experience as class one master plumbers, as well as specific experience with industrial or commercial plumbing systems. The main difference is that they are unrestricted and can bid on any plumbing work they choose.

Idaho

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Idaho

To do any plumbing work legally in Idaho, you must be licensed by the state. To become a licensed plumber in Idaho, any business or individual is required to sit and pass the Idaho plumber licensing examination administered by the Division of building safety.

Plumbing apprentices are required to complete a four-year apprenticeship program which consists of at least 8000 hours of relevant work experience and 576 classroom hours to qualify for a journeyman plumber license exam. Idaho also provides some specialty plumbing licenses that need additional training/education.

Illinois

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Illinois

In the state of Illinois, a plumber licensed is needed to perform any plumbing installation or maintenance work. To become a licensed journeyman plumber, you require four years of apprenticeship under a master plumber and pass a licensing exam. To get your license renewed, you must complete a minimum of four hours of continuing education.

Indiana

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Indiana

To work legally as a plumber in Indiana, you must have a license issued by the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency, Plumbing Commission. However, the licensing requirements will vary based on the type of license you want:

  • Plumber Apprentice: You do not need a license, but you must be registered.
  • Journeyman plumber license: You should apply via an approved apprenticeship school or plumbing company. You must have completed at least four years of training and have passed the trade exam.
  • Master Plumbers: To obtain your plumbing contractor license, you must complete a four-year apprenticeship program under a licensed plumber or be a licensed plumber from another state.

Iowa

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Iowa

To qualify to work as a plumber in the state of Iowa, you will be required to get a license from the Iowa Plumbing and Mechanical Systems board.

To get your journeyman plumber license, you must have completed a four-year apprenticeship program and passed the licensing exam.

If you want to graduate to become a licensed master plumber, you will need two years of experience as a journeyman plumber and pass the additional master plumbing licensing exams.

Hawaii

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Hawaii

You will require a state license to work as a plumber in Hawaii. These licenses are issued by the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Professional and Vocational Licensing Board of Electricians and Plumbers. Here are some of the plumber licensing requirements in Hawaii.

  • Journeyman plumber: You should show proof of five years of experience and a minimum of 10000 hours in plumbing work by the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC).
  • Master Plumber License: To get licensed as a master plumber, you must have at least two years of experience working as a journeyman plumber.

Kentucky

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Kentucky

To perform any plumbing work in Kentucky, you must have a state license. There are several licenses issued by the Department of Housing, Buildings, and Construction, Plumbing Division.

  • Journeyman Plumber: Must have completed at least two years of relevant work experience and passed the trade exam.
  • Master plumber: You must have a valid journeyman license and pass the master plumber licensing exam

Louisiana

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Louisiana

You require a state license to do any plumbing work in Louisiana. The State Plumbing Board issues licenses to plumbing contractors. There are two levels of plumber licensing in the state of Louisiana. These kinds of plumbing licenses include:

  • Journeyman plumber: You must have completed an apprenticeship program approved by the licensing board. In addition, you must pass a trade exam.
  • Master Plumber: You must have a current journeyman plumbing license and pass a trade exam. However, if your plumbing work exceeds $10k, you will also be required to get a commercial plumbing license awarded by the State Licensing Board for Contractors. To get this license, you must pass a trade exam as well as a law and business exam.

Maine

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Maine

Plumbing contractors in Maine must have a state license to be allowed to operate. You must meet all the plumber licensing requirements for the particular license that you want. These licenses are issued by the Plumbers’ Examining Board.

  • Journeyman plumber: Minimum two years of experience and 4,000 hours of experience installing plumbing systems.
  • Master Plumber: You will require one year or 2000 hours of experience performing plumbing work as a journeyman plumber under the guidance of a master plumber.

Maryland

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Maryland

To do any plumbing work in Maryland, you need a state license. There are multiple levels of plumber licenses, and each one comes with special licensing requirements. These plumbing licensing requirements include but are not restricted to:

  • Apprentice plumber: You must be at least 16 years old.
  • Journeyman plumber: Minimum four years of experience as an apprentice, 7,500 hours under the supervision of a licensed plumber, 32 hours spent in backflow prevention management, and passing the licensing exam.
  • Master plumber: You must have at least two years of experience as a journeyman plumber, 3750 hours under the guidance of a master plumber, and pass a licensing exam.

Michigan

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Michigan

Plumbers must be licensed before they can be allowed to work in Michigan, and the state’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs awards these licenses. Here is an overview of plumbing licensing requirements in Michigan:

  • Journey plumber license: You must have attained a minimum of 6,000 hours of experience in less than three years as a plumbing apprentice and pass the licensing exam.
  • Master plumber license: You must have at least 4,000 hours of experience as a journeyman plumber in less than two years and pass an exam.

Minnesota

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Minnesota

To do any plumbing work in Minnesota, you must have a state license. These licenses are issued by the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, Construction Codes, and Licensing Division. The plumber licensing requirements here include:

  • Plumber journey worker: You must have 7,000 hours of experience with 2000 hours in waste, vent, and drain installation, 1,000 hours in fixture installation, and 2000 hours in water distribution installation. You will also be required to sit and pass the licensing exam.
  • Master plumber: 1, 750 hours of experience as a journeyman plumber and pass the exam.

Mississippi

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Mississippi

You require a state plumbing contractor license to work legally as a plumber in Mississippi. These licenses ate issued by the State Board of Contractors. Plumbing licenses are needed for residential projects that exceed $10k in value, and it is also required for commercial projects exceeding $50K in value. But you must sit and pass an exam before obtaining a license.

No state license will be needed for plumbing projects that don’t meet these totals. But, there may be other local licensing requirements for plumbers. Check with a reputable plumber in your area to know more.

Montana

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Montana

A state license is needed for all plumbing contractors in Montana. These licenses are awarded by the state’s Department of labor as follows:

  • Journeyman plumber: You must pass through a plumbing apprentice program with five years of experience. You must pass a licensing exam.
  • Master plumber: A minimum of four years of experience as a journeyman level plumber under the guidance of a master plumber. Show proof of nine years of plumbing work-related experience. You must pass the licensing exam.

Missouri

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Missouri

No state license is needed to work as a plumber in Missouri. However, before starting any work, make sure you are aware of any local plumbing codes or requirements that may apply.

Massachusetts

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Massachusetts

To work legally as a plumber in Massachusetts, you must have a state license given by the Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters. There are three classes of plumber licenses offered:

  • Apprentice plumber: You must be 16 years old and show proof of employment under the guidance of a licensed master plumber.
  • Journeyman plumber: 8,500 hours of plumbing work experience under the guidance of a master plumber, 550 hours of plumbing theory, and pass an exam.
  • Master plumber: You must have held your journeyman plumbing license for at least one year, including 1700 hours of plumbing work experience as a journeyman plumber.

Nebraska

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Nebraska

You don’t need a state license to book jobs as a plumber in Nebraska. But you must register with the state’s Department of Labor. But you need to verify any local plumbing regulations or licensing before you start any plumbing work.

Nevada

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Nevada

Plumbing contractors must have a state license to work legally in Nevada, and these licenses are issued by the Nevada Board of Plumbing Examiners.

  • Journeyman plumber: 4 years of experience in a plumbing apprentice program and pass an exam.
  • Master plumber: One-year of experience as a journeyman plumber and then pass an exam.

New York

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from New York

There are no plumbing licensing requirements in New York. But, in many counties and cities, there are strict regulations, so you should check with your local government authorities before you start to work.

New Jersey

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from New Jersey

You must register to work as a journeyman plumber or plumbing apprentice in New Jersey. To operate as a master plumber, you must have a license awarded by the New Jersey State Board of Examiners of Master Plumbers.

  • Journeyman plumber: You should be registered.
  • Master plumber: One year of experience as a journeyman plumber and pass an exam in the business and law section.

North Carolina

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from North Carolina

To work as a plumber in North Carolina, you must have a state license. Available plumber licenses include:

  • Plumbing contractor: 2 years of experience and pass a licensing exam.

Ohio

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Ohio

You don’t need a license to work as a plumber in Ohio. But commercial plumbers may be required to obtain a license from the Construction Industry Licensing Board.

Oklahoma

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Oklahoma

To work as a plumber in Oklahoma, you are required to have a state license issued by the Oklahoma Construction Industries Board. This plumbing license includes:

  • Apprentice plumber: You don’t require a license but must be registered with the relevant authorities.
  • Journeyman plumber: You must have at least three years of experience as an apprentice and pass a licensing exam.
  • Master plumber: Have a minimum of three years working as a journeyman plumber and pass an exam.

Oregon

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Oregon

As a plumbing contractor, you must have a state license to operate legally in Oregon. The license is issued by the Department of Consumer and Business Services, Building Codes Division. To qualify for a journeyman plumber license, you should have at least four years of experience as an apprentice in a registered program, and you must also pass the exam.

Pennsylvania

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Pennsylvania

You don’t require a state license to work as a plumber in Pennsylvania. But, make sure that you check the local plumbing licensing requirements before you start to work.

Rhode Island

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Rhode Island

To work as a plumber in Rhode Island, you must have a state license before you book any plumbing job. The licenses are awarded by the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, Division of Workforce Regulation and Safety, and Professional Regulation Unit under two classes:

  • Journeyman plumber license: Prove that you have four years of experience as an apprentice and pass an exam.
  • Master plumber license: You must be a journeyman plumber for at least one year or more and pass the licensing exam.

South Carolina

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from South Carolina

In the state of South Carolina, you need a license to work as a plumber, and these licenses are given by the Department of Labor after passing an exam.

South Dakota

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from South Dakota

The South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation, Plumbing Commission issues three kinds of licenses which include:

  • Plumbing apprentice license: You must have several years of experience under the guidance of a licensed plumber (mostly for four years)
  • Journeyman plumber license: You must have four years of experience as an apprentice and pass an exam.
  • Master Plumber: You must have at least six years of experience in the plumbing company and pass the licensing examination.

Tennessee

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Tennessee

In Tennessee, plumbing licenses are issued both at the local and state level, and it will also depend on the kind of plumbing projects you want to do. Here are the details about state-issued licenses:

  • Limited license plumber: This is needed for small projects, particularly if you don’t have any local requirements. You must pass an exam.
  • Plumbing contractor: This is needed for projects that exceed $25,000. You require at least three years of plumbing experience and pass an exam.

Texas

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Texas

To work legally as a plumber, you require a state license in Texas. Here are some of the plumbing licenses you need in Texas, plus their licensing requirements:

  • Journeyman plumber: You must have a high school diploma or GED equivalent, registered as a plumbing apprentice, and pass an exam.
  • Master plumber: A journeyman plumber license plus four years of experience and pass an exam.

Utah

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Utah

You need a state license to work as a plumber in Utah, and these licenses are issued by the Department of Commerce in Utah.

  • Journeyman: You must show proof of four years as an apprentice and pass the licensing examination.
  • Master Plumber: A minimum of two years working as an apprentice plumber and pass an exam.

Vermont

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Vermont

To work as a plumber in Vermont, you will need a state license. These are awarded by the Department of Public Safety, and each license requires you to pass an exam.

  • How to become a Journeyman plumber: You must complete a state-approved apprenticeship program before being allowed to sit for the exam.
  • Master plumber: You must have a one-year of experience as a journeyman plumber and pass an exam.

Virginia

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Virginia

Plumbing contractors in Virginia must be licensed by the state. But you must pass the licensing exam.

  • Journeyman plumber license: prove four years of experience as an apprentice
  • Master plumber: Have one year of experience as a journeyman plumber license.

Washington

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Washington

You must be licensed to work as a plumber in Washington. The plumbing licenses you need include but are not limited to:

  • Journeyman: Four years as a plumbing apprentice, with experience in both industrial and commercial installation.
  • Specialty residential plumber: Six years of experience under a certified plumbing contractor.

Wisconsin

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Wisconsin

To do any plumbing work in Wisconsin, you need to be licensed by the state. Understanding the process of how to become a licensed plumber in Wisconsin is crucial. Here are some of the plumber licensing options in Wisconsin:

  • Journeyman plumber: Complete a plumbing apprentice program approved by the state and pass an exam.
  • Master plumber: Get three years of experience in the field as a journeyman plumber and pass the licensing exam.

Wyoming

Plumbing Licensing Requirements from Wyoming

You don’t require a state license to work as a plumber in the state of Wyoming. However, certain municipalities have their local licensing requirements for plumbers, so make sure that you check them out.

Frequently Asked Questions on How to Become a Licensed Plumber

FAQs

How much does a plumber’s license cost?

This is a common question among aspiring plumbers. In most states, you will be required to pay a small application fee to get your plumbing license.

How long to become a licensed plumber?

Plumbing is more than tinkering with pipes and drains. Plumbers also install, maintain and repair cooling, gas, water supply, ventilation, heating systems, and more. In the U.S., licensed plumbers are always in high demand. If you are wondering how long it will take to become a licensed plumber, then we got you covered.

Truth be told. The process of how to become a licensed plumber doesn’t happen overnight. Like in other skilled trades, your journey to becoming a licensed plumber starts with an apprenticeship program (usually four years) under the guidance of a master plumber, along with sitting for written and practical trade exams.

Grow Your Plumbing Service Business

plumbers

Once you have attained all the requirements for a plumbing license in your state, it’s time now to spread the word to prospects of your availability for service jobs and to scale your plumbing company.

By implementing a set of proven plumber marketing strategies, you can make sure that all the efforts you put forward to get a license can be put to profitable and good use. Also, ensure that you keep abreast of all digital marketing for plumber trends to help you stay ahead of the curve.

Schedule a free discovery call with Blackstorm Design + Marketing for more information today.

Categories
Plumbing SEO Septic

How to Pick the Right Plumbing SEO Keywords for Your Business: Tricks and Tips

Plumbing SEO Keyword Research for Plumbers of All Sizes

It was not many decades ago that if you wanted to promote your plumbing business, you placed an advert in the local newspaper and hoped that homeowners would call you to book jobs. Let’s face it. But this conventional marketing was super expensive (unless you provided a coupon) there was no proven process of monitoring its results or return.

In modern online marketing, your small plumbing business can create an internet marketing campaign with measurable results for little or no money. One of the effective ways to lead clients to your website is to choose the right plumbing SEO keywords – which our experts can help you easily do!

A plumber installs a new water tap

When it comes to generating plumbing leads online, you need to know what prospects are searching on Google, Bing, and other search engines first. Picking the right plumbing keywords is one of the crucial steps in creating a successful search engine optimization strategy.

Driving traffic to your plumbing website is a priority, but attracting the right prospects is a necessity. But choosing the right keywords for your plumbing company content is only half the battle when it comes to attracting online traffic to your site. (The other half of the battle is creating killer plumbing SEO content.) But don’t feel intimidated! This post will provide everything you need to know about choosing the right plumbing keywords for your business.

Do you want to know what plumbing keyword list your business should be ranking for? Read on!

First things first.

What is a plumbing SEO keyword?

Plumbing SEO keywords

Keywords are phrases and words that people type into search engines such as Google or Bing to find your plumbing services or products. For example, if they are looking for a plumber to repair their toilet, they may type something like “toilet repair contractor near me.” Although that phrase contains more than one word. It is still a plumbing SEO keyword!

Implementing an intent-based plan for your plumbing SEO and content marketing efforts could be the change you require to differentiate your website from the competition.

To create your plumbing marketing strategy around intent, you will require to begin with keyword research that helps you understand the different types of plumbing keywords.

Most plumbing SEO experts agree that four types of keywords can be used to classify intent:

  • Navigational keywords – here is where people are intending to find a particular page or website.
  • Commercial plumbing keywords – searchers are looking to investigate plumbing services or brands.
  • Transactional plumbing keywords – searchers are intending to hire a plumber to offer services.
  • Informational plumbing keywords – people are looking for an answer to a particular plumbing question or general information.

Why is Plumbing Keyword Research Important?

Plumbing Keyword Research

Keyword research assists you find which phrases and terms are best to target and offers important insight into the queries that your prospects are actually looking at on Google. The insight that you can obtain into these plumbing keywords can assist inform content marketing strategy as well as your larger plumbing marketing strategy.

Prospects utilize plumbing company keywords to find answers when performing research online. So, if your plumbing content is successful in getting in front of your audience as they conduct searches online, you stand to obtain more organic traffic. Therefore, you should be focusing on those keywords. Here are some advantages that you can leverage from doing plumbing keywords properly:

  • Plumbing marketing trends insights: Researching keywords will give you insights into your prospect’s buying behavior and trends. Keep updated on what’s famous and crucial to your target market and utilize that to keep your content relevant.
  • Increase Conversion: If you are creating plumbing content, your potential clients find it helpful and interesting they will want to learn more. But how do you understand if your plumbing content is reaching the right target audience? After you begin ranking for the plumbing SEO keywords, check your Google Analytics.
  • Prioritize your time: When you understand what plumbing keywords to target, you can create content strategically relevant to your objectives. This assists you remain focused on the task with your efforts.
  • Customer Acquisition: If your plumbing business has quality content that people are searching for, you can meet their requirements and offer them a call to action that will direct them into the buyer journey from the awareness stage to the point of booking a job. By researching plumbing keywords for their search volume, popularity, and general intent, you can handle the questions that most prospects or clients want answers to.

Tips on How to Select the Best Plumbing SEO keywords for Your Business

The keywords you select can break or make your plumbing SEO campaign. So how do you pick the right plumbing keywords for your SEO campaign? If you want to know, then read on to get our tips on picking the right keywords for your plumbing business below:

Think Like a Customer

Identify your target market

Identify your target market and put yourself in the shoes of your prospect or client when you develop your first plumbing keywords list. Ask yourself, “if I wanted to find a nearby plumber, what would I type into search engines like Google or Bing?” You can also ask others, such as family members, friends, or even clients to obtain their opinion on terms they would use when looking for your plumbing services.

Analyze User Search Intent

Your plumbing keywords will target different pages

Search intent assists you know what plumbing keywords to pick based on why prospects search. Based on why people search, keywords can be classified into three major categories namely: commercial, navigational, and informational.

To select the right plumbing keywords with the best results you need to put yourself in the shoes of your customer.

Searches like “purchase low-cost water heater’ differ from “water heater repair” queries. One is a commercial plumbing keyword and the other one is informational.

Ideally, you should provide content on all three main areas with the objective of completing your call to action. Your plumbing keywords will target different pages dedicated to those search terms.

Transactional plumbing keywords are easiest to focus on but are also more competitive. That’s why hiring an experienced plumbing SEO agency to write your content to match those search phrases when Google crawls your plumbing website.

Analyze the Competition

Studying your competitor’s plumbing SEO keywords

Another great way to know the best plumbing keywords is by checking at what your competitors are doing. Read the content and see the metatags to assist you to know the keywords they are focusing on.

Studying your competitor’s plumbing SEO keywords will not only assist you to see what you could be missing or forgetting but also help expand your plumbing SEO keyword list. Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz explorer, and more help you analyze traffic on your plumbing website, including for your competitors. But most of these tools are not free. That’s why many plumbers hire an SEO agency to do keyword research for them.

Understand the Long Tail Plumbing SEO Keywords

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail plumbing keywords are a combination of three or more phrases or words. While long-tail keywords tend to have low search volumes, they generally attract relevant traffic, are generally less competitive, and are easy to rank higher on Google. Select long-tail plumbing keywords that assist to specify your service.

Monitor the Results

Track the results

After selecting your plumber keywords never fail to track them and track the results. There are trending plumbing phrases or keywords along with new search terms your competitors may be leveraging.

Don’t forget to use your keywords where possible! Use your plumbing keywords in social media posts, blogs, web content, and meta descriptions. The more you use your keywords within your posts, the easier it will be for prospects to find your plumbing company online.

Let Blackstorm Design + Marketing take a look at your plumbing SEO strategy and give recommendations.

Top SEO Keywords for Plumbers

Targeting and identifying the best keywords

There is no beating around the bush, any SEO campaign you run for your plumbing business, regardless of how brilliantly it is implemented, fails, or succeeds depending on your target keywords. If you have picked the right plumbing keywords, you will obtain more and more organic traffic from search engines as time goes on. Select the wrong search terms, your competitors will snatch your prospects online and leave you begging for mercy. But there is a lot to be happy about! Did you know that more than 300,000 online searches for plumbing contractors in U.S. every month?

By optimizing your website with the best SEO keywords for plumbers, you are rewarding yourself with online leads that will not only complement the ones you generate through conventional advertising strategies and referrals.

Improving SEO strategy for plumbing contractors requires targeting and identifying the best keywords. The keywords that we use throughout our website assist us to rank higher in search engines like Google or Bing and offer us higher online visibility, increased organic traffic, and more leads.

While it may appear simple just to plug in a few keywords and relax, the reality is that your competitors are implementing plumbing SEO keyword research into their marketing strategies. So, you need to invest in comprehensive keyword research to get an advantage over your plumbing business competitors.

At Blackstorm Design + Marketing, our goal is to target various Plumbing SEO elements to rank your website higher in search engines like Google or Bing. We achieve this by focusing on your content, website design, coding, social media, and other search engine optimization strategies to obtain more success for your company. One of the most crucial things we invest in best plumbing keywords for an SEO campaign.

Knowing what keywords are commonly searched by clients looking for plumbing services, will offer you a good understanding of what a client looks for in your company. Below are the 200 frequently searched keywords for plumbers and their monthly search volume:

Plumbing SEO Keywords

  • Plumbing – 70,000
  • Plumbers near me – 368,000
  • Plumber – 65,000
  • Emergency plumber – 18100
  • Toilet repair – 12,100
  • Local plumbers – 14,800
  • Plumbing companies near me – 12,100
  • 24-hour plumber – 13,100
  • Clogged drain – 3, 600
  • Hot water heater repair – 8,100
  • Plumbers in my area – 6,600
  • Plumbing repair – 5,400
  • Plumbing pipe – 5,400
  • Superior plumbing – 4,400
  • Precision plumbing – 5,400
  • Emergency plumber near me – 6,600
  • Pipe repair – 720
  • Leak detection services – 480
  • Septic tank cleaning – 21,000
  • Water heater installation – 16,000
  • Sink drain – 13000
  • Drain cleaning near me – 13,000
  • Water heater replacement cost – 11,000
  • Toilet installation – 7,500
  • Bathroom sink drain – 6,900
  • Running toilet repair – 250
  • Drain company – 200
  • Sewer cleanouts – 150

Location-Based Plumber SEO Keywords

Location-based keywords

Some of the most popular keywords in the commercial and residential plumbing industry revolve around general plumbing terms + adding a state or city locale.

Some of the most popular keywords in the commercial and residential plumbing industry revolve around general plumbing terms + adding a state or city locale. These ate what we would call “money terms” in plumbing SEO. That said, they are going to be the hardest keywords to rank for with plumbing SEO and also the most expensive more often than not when bidding them on PPC networks such as Google AdWords.

Here is a list of common location-based plumbing keywords:

  • Your City + emergency plumber
  • Your City + emergency plumbing
  • Your City + plumbing service
  • Your City + drain cleaning
  • Your City + water heater repair
  • Your City + water heater installation
  • Your City + sewer cleaning
  • Your City + garbage disposal repair
  • Your City + leak detection
  • Your City + bathroom remodeling
  • Your City + shower installation
  • Your City + repiping
  • Your City + clogged toilet
  • Your City + clogged toilet repair
  • Your City + leak detection
  • Your City + sewer repair
  • Your City + rooter service
  • Your City + boiler replacement
  • Your City + boiler repair
  • Your City + backflow testing
  • Your City + septic pumping
  • Your City + septic cleaning
  • Your City + commercial plumber
  • Your City + water filtration system installation
  • Your City + water softener systems

Using the Best Plumbing SEO keywords in your Business

Making sure that your plumbing website is fast, secure, and mobile-friendly.

Since search engines utilize keywords when filtering results, it is incredibly crucial to ensure that you understand the terms in your content correctly so that your posts have a higher chance of getting found, ranked, and indexed.

The secret to ranking higher when it comes to the best SEO keywords for plumbing contractors falls into 7 major components:

  • Making sure that your plumbing website is fast, secure, and mobile-friendly.
  • Including your SEO keyword in the major search results related to plumbers
  • Claiming, verifying, and optimizing your Google Business Profile completely.
  • Filling and claiming your local business directory listing with the same consistent NAP citations.
  • Optimizing your blog posts/web content, headings, title tags, and meta descriptions for your plumbing keyword.
  • Utilizing videos and photos in your content that have been optimized properly with top SEO keywords for plumbers.

What do you need to do to rank your plumber website #1 on Google?

Rank your plumber website #1 on Google

Ranking your plumbing company website as the coveted #1 on Google or Bing in your service area involves a combination of basic components, and implementing those tactics correctly every time. As plumbers, we understand that our sites need to be indexed and optimized properly, but here are a few factors to consider:

Local SEO – Your plumbing website should be optimized for local Google searches. Local SEO for plumbers helps you to target prospects or clients within a particular geographical area. This is crucial because more than 30% of clicks, go to the top 3 search engine results on the first page of Google. So, if you have optimized your plumber website for local searches, you will be able to get a fair share of that 33% of searches for plumbing keywords related to your business.

Here at Blackstorm Design + Marketing, we will do all the heavy lifting to improve your organic rankings in 4 steps:

  1. Find high-ranking keywords your target audience is using to find your plumbing services.
  2. Create high-quality SEO content that will attract visitors to your plumbing website.
  3. Optimize your Google Business Profile to leverage local searches.
  4. Optimize your plumbing SEO strategy using your Google Analytics.

On-Page SEO – A huge part of our SEO services for plumbers revolves around on-page SEO. On-page SEO is the process of optimizing every page of your plumbing website to rank higher in search results and get more relevant traffic in search engines.

This implies optimizing every service you provide so that you can rank higher not only for your business name but for crucial searches related to the plumbing services you provide as well. We will also go ahead to optimize your meta tag titles and meta descriptions so that you can accurately describe what your business offers.

Off-Page SEO – Our off-page SEO services for plumbers focus on identifying high-quality sites to help link back to your website. This strategy of building links helps to make sure that regardless of where you are looking geographically, your plumbing website can be found in the top spots on Google or Bing.

Frequently Asked Questions About Plumbing Keywords

FAQ gif

How can I find long-tail plumbing SEO keywords?

Identifying your primary plumbing keywords and long tail search terms can be super easy, there are some tools that are available to help you out including SEMrush, SEOmoz, Google Adwords, and more.

How can my plumbing business rank for high-volume SEO keywords?

You require a professional plumbing website that is optimized for the high volume SEO keyword and quality content that discusses the subject in depth. In addition, you will have to prove the legitimacy of your plumbing business with an About Us page and display client reviews online. Lastly, increase the authority of your plumbing website by linking it to NAP citations.

What are good SEO keywords for plumbers?

The best keywords for your plumbing SEO strategy will be ones that will be authoritative, relevant, and have a higher search volume. Also, you can use the keywords to create content that surpasses the quality of what is currently ranking.

What are generic keywords?

Generic plumbing keywords are search terms that broadly describe your services or products. Typically, they have a wider reach and they can help a prospect who is searching for services without any plumbing brand in mind.

Ready to start ranking #1 on Google for plumbing SEO keywords?

Follow that plan from start to finish and monitor the results over the next months.

After compiling your plumbing keyword search data, you have to develop a plan of attack and rank for keywords that are crucial for your plumbing business. Follow that plan from start to finish and monitor the results over the next months. Plumbing SEO is time-consuming but with the right plan and patience, you will have qualified leads calling your company requesting quotes.

If you need help with plumbing an SEO battle plan or keyword research, schedule a free profit session with Blackstorm Design + Marketing to learn how our services can help your business grow today.

Categories
Marketing Plumbing

Why Should You Invest in Digital Marketing for Plumbers?

Digital marketing for plumbers provides your company with a variety of strategies for driving sales, attracting leads, and generating leads online.

If you are searching for innovative ways to attract more clients to your plumbing business, then you cannot understate the essence of digital marketing strategies for plumbers. According to plumbing marketing experts, digital marketing is one of the most important assets for your business in the modern world.

Digital marketing for plumbers

When you own a business in the competitive plumbing industry landscape, there are countless opportunities to generate more qualified leads and scale your business growth. But to achieve this, you need to reach the most important leads while making the most out of your return on investment with digital marketing for plumbers. Without further ado, let us dive into our post.

What is Digital Marketing for Plumbers?

Digital marketing for plumbers

Digital marketing for plumbers is the promotion of plumbing service companies through online platforms, including mobile applications and the Internet. Examples of online platforms include search engines, text, emails, social media apps, and websites.

A few decades ago, marketing your plumbing services was achieved through word-of-mouth referrals or advertising. If you got a call to repair a flooded basement and did an awesome job, chances are that clients would call you back if their drain was clogged and recommend you to their family or friends when they experienced the same problem.

But nowadays, the most effective place to begin marketing your plumbing services is online. It is very simple to scale as your plumbing company grows, and you can reach a wider audience with less effort and cost than with offline plumbing marketing (billboards, print advertisements or door-to-door canvassing).

As a plumber, digital marketing is one of the cost-effective ways of marketing your plumbing services online, as most of your prospects or clients are already online.

9 Digital Marketing Strategies for Plumbing Companies

The world is moving towards technology and innovation in all segments. As a result, many services and products you get nowadays could be because of online platforms.

The basic concept is the theory of marketing. While plumbing marketing has been with us for some time, you may have begun more and more plumbing contractors transitioning to digital marketing.

More plumbers reinvest in digital marketing because they understand that they must go where their target audience is to book jobs online. As such, the right plumbing digital marketing strategies normally focus on one important element, the aspect of attention and attraction.

Digital marketing for plumbers is a formidable force and has impacted how people make purchasing decisions. You can market your plumbing company digitally to persuade more people and help them to leverage the benefits your plumbing services have to offer.

The marketing tactics and digital strategy for a plumbing company will differ from those of other types of companies. The following are some strategies you can better use in digital marketing for your plumbing company.

  1. It All Starts with Your Plumbing Brand

Plumbing service logo

When you thought about creating a successful plumbing company from scratch, you did not anticipate that you will be spending much of your time repairing a sweating copper pipe and all night analyzing your ad traffic and plumbing website traffic.

But you understand way more about internet marketing for plumbers than you think. You have created a company name and plumbing logo. You have spread the word about your new business to your family and friends. You have requested all your existing clients for referrals.

Guess what? These are all regarded as standard plumbing marketing practices.

Now, let’s go back to your plumbing brand.

To make the most out of your marketing efforts, we recommend that you start with your branding activities.

Related: The Ultimate 5-Step Plumbing Branding Strategy For Your Business

Your brand is the promise you make to clients. It is what distinguishes you from the competition and the reason that clients will hire you from dozens of other plumbers when they type in “plumber near me” on Google search.

Here are some questions that will guide you to establish your plumbing business brand:

  • What unique offering or service do you bring to the market? What makes your business unique?
  • Who is the ideal client you are attempting to reach?
  • What are your company’s values and beliefs, and how do they reflect in your day-to-day operations?

Use your answers to the questions above as the basis for coming up with your plumbing company tagline.

For instance, if your plumbing business is committed to offering superior customer services and top-notch craftsmanship, you could create a tagline such as “Once a client, always a client.”

  1. Create and Optimize Your Plumbing Website

Plumbing Website

A plumbing website is your 24/7 sales representative, which offers information to prospects or clients round the clock and helps them to schedule service appointments from anywhere, anytime. Your plumbing website is an important part of digital marketing for plumbers. It is essential to make sure that your plumbing website as those who know your business will look for it online and expect to get accurate information. Furthermore, prospects who are not aware of your plumbing company will be able to learn about your business if it has a properly optimized plumbing website.

A plumber’s most potent digital marketing arsenal is their plumbing company website. Your business claims some digital real estate on the web by buying a domain name and creating a quality plumbing website.

Prospects will want to know more about your plumbing professionals, experience, overall knowledge, and values in the plumbing industry.

However, having a plumbing website is not enough.

Your plumbing website should be updated and remain competitive with other new plumbing websites. Simply put, you want to ensure that your internet marketing partner or agency can continue updating your website to load faster, is visible, and aligns with the best search engine optimization practices.

Your digital plumbing marketing partner should know how to update your website, optimize it and make sure that simple details such as your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number) and plumbing services are easy to find.

At Blackstorm Design + Marketing, we understand that building a website is both a science and an art. Therefore, we use our skills, expertise, and knowledge to create a website that helps you achieve your goals.

  1. Optimize Your Plumbing Website for Local Search

Ranking your plumbing website

One of the most effective digital plumbing marketing strategies to increase your organic traffic is search engine optimization (popularly known as SEO). It is the process of ranking your plumbing website at the top of internet searches. This process is attained by creating a well-structured and optimized website for the target keywords relevant to your company.

The idea here is to make your plumbing business visible online so that more will discover and explore your services. When doing so, clients will be able to discover you more quickly when they specifically look for the name of your company or search for plumbing services within their neighborhood.

For example, let’s say you are a plumbing business in Murfreesboro, TN and you want to obtain qualified leads. Your plumbing search engine optimization strategy should revolve around targeting keywords to this specific area and performing website optimizations to increase your organic rankings.

If your digital marketing strategy contributes to local search, you account for those homeowners searching for your plumbing services in your area. Putting your plumbing business on a local search feature like Google Business Profile for plumbers or a similar feature for Bing will consequently lead to more online visitors.

Related: The Ultimate Plumbing SEO Guide: Best Practices And Tips To Get Clients Online

It can assist you to start a great flywheel that encompasses clicks, sales, and visibility. However, kindly note that these results cannot be achieved overnight. You must partner with a plumbing marketing expert who can apply the right digital marketing strategies for your business.

Remember that marketing for plumbers does not have to be challenging, but it does require the right activities done in a consistent manner so that you can achieve your goals. Work with an agency that understands search engine optimization for plumbers and has experience applying the appropriate plumbing marketing strategies to increase opportunities for their customers.

  1. Publish High-Quality Content

Premium content is essential to digital marketing for plumbing companies.

70% of customers prefer to obtain information about your business through an article or blog post instead of an ad. As a result, premium content is essential to digital marketing for plumbing companies.

Content marketing for plumbers is another excellent SEO tactic that can scale the growth of your local business. It is the process of sharing and creating important digital content to help drum-up interest in your plumbing company.

There is no steadfast rule as to the kind of content you must create. If you want more plumbing leads, you need to create content that your prospects or clients are interested in (tip: keyword research helps) and publish it on the platforms they use.

Content marketing solidifies your plumbing company as not only a service but as a valuable resource that helps with all plumbing-related topics. The greater amount of quality content you offer to the public, the more you appear as an expert.

Related: Plumbing SEO content

And naturally, clients always want to hire professionals to solve their plumbing problems, which leads us to our next point. Your digital plumbing marketing strategies must have measurable and clear goals.

For instance, let’s say you want to invest heavily in blogging. Publishing and creating content is not actually sufficient to generate exclusive plumbing leads. You need to understand who your target market is and tailor content to their search intent and interests.

Once you identify who your ideal client is, you will want to request, “How does this content relate to my plumbing company?” “Does this offer value” “Am I utilizing plumbing keywords effectively?” “Does this resonate with the user intent” and more.

  1. Manage Your Online Reputation

Online Reputation

Online reviews are the new digital word of mouth. Favorable online plumbing reviews can break or make your business in the digital age. Not only do they impact your reputation as a business, they also generate qualified leads.

Managing your online reviews is crucial for all kinds of businesses. You can partner with a reputation management expert at a digital marketing business to maintain its reputation online.

Besides this, it is important to approach the aspect of feedback differently. Remember that local plumbing businesses that can engage with their customers will help to enhance experiences and help prospects see that your company is transparent and honest.

See how your customers feel about your plumbing services and make sure that they see what went wrong in your service delivery.

It is advisable that you interact with your potential and current clients to make sure that you clear up any misunderstandings on review websites. This is where internet marketing services will play a critical role; the right online marketing agency can provide reputation management services and help you to enhance your internet marketing performance.

  1. Supplement SEO Traffic with Pay-Per-Click Ads

Pay-Per-Click advertising

Pay-Per-Click advertising is one of the effective methods to advertise your plumbing service company online. It is very popular among local plumbers because it can assist to generate plumbing leads fast. This is because pay-per-click advertising targets relevant market groups suited for your plumbing business.

Google Ads allows plumbing companies to rank their landing pages above organic search results via paid ads. Paying for a plumbing website early in your digital marketing campaign makes sense for plumbers. Furthermore, because plumbing SEO can take up to six months to adequately index, pay-per-click ad clicks can supplement organic traffic and generate leads.

Ideally, your plumbing marketing incorporates both.

But make sure that you perform A/B testing regularly. A/B testing is a great way to tweak your plumbing PPC ads to be more effective and guarantee a higher conversion rate for lower CPC.

  1. Use Social Media Marketing to Promote Your Plumbing Services Online

Social Media Marketing

In today’s era, marketing through social media has become one of the key ways to promote any kind of business. Many plumbers have taken their business to a whole new level via social media marketing. Thus, you can utilize social media to improve your plumbing business reach.

Partner with a digital marketing agency for plumbers to create customized messages and profiles for every social media platform to market your business. Remember that social is all about being engaging and active. Respond to your clients who contact or message you about your plumbing company details.

  1. Claim all Plumbing Business Citations Online

Host of directories online

Local plumbing companies will have a host of directories online to submit their citations, creating no follow backlinks to your plumbing website. NAP citations can also distribute your contact details throughout the internet, making it easier for Google to identify your company as a specific entity.

Most plumbing contractors know important directories like Better Business Bearue, Angie List, and Home Advisor. Still, thousands of more exist for plumbing companies. Investing in a citation service can help you instantly submit citations to a wide range of directories.

  1. Build a Strong Customer Base with Email Marketing

Email Marketing

Email marketing offers the highest returns compared to others forms of digital marketing for plumbers. What makes email marketing for plumbers so effective is your message is delivered directly to your prospects in their inboxes. However, for email marketing to be effective, you need a list of email addresses. Rather than paying for these, we highly recommend that you implement a lead capture form on your site to create a mailing list of web browsers already interested in your services.

From there, you send quality content regularly just to ensure that you are not overwhelming them to a point that they hit the unsubscribe button.

Some email marketing campaigns include promotional emails, crucial company announcements, and newsletters. Email marketing offers amazing marketing opportunities to personalize messaging, build relationships and reshare content with loyal clients.

Measuring Digital Marketing Results for Plumbers

Every internet marketing campaign for your plumbing business should have a goal, and you should track the results. Using tools such as the Google Search Console, you can monitor your digital growth and appropriately attribute certain campaigns to the leads. But before you can track anything, you must identify your objectives as a plumbing business. For instance, you wish to generate X amount of leads each month while spending Y dollars on marketing or advertising. The ROI will be Z, and the quarterly income will be Y. Also, the best digital marketing agency for plumbers will offer these reports on demand.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console website

Search Console is a free tool by Google that can help you track technical errors with your website and search engine performance. Through GSC, plumbers can be able to visualize queries that attract the most traffic to their website and which pages are popular for search engine users. Based on this data, plumbers can tweak their site content to satisfy user intent better. For instance, if a search query has many impressions but fewer clicks, you may wish to change your page titles to gain more clicks.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics website

Google Analytics is a tool that helps plumbing contractors to track site visitors, engagement, and behaviors. If you don’t know how to set up a Google Analytics account, click here to learn more. Once you create your GA account, you can start creating goals and monitor your success over time. For plumbing SEO in particular, it is crucial to wait for about two months before analyzing the accumulated data.

Google Business Profile Insights

Google Business Profile

GBP offers plumbing contractors an in-depth portrait of how Google Maps users locate their company. For instance, it shows which queries (such as plumber near me) cause users to click on your Google Business Profile listing and how regularly the user contacts the business through the GBP listing. Based on your results, you want to improve your GBP with more Google posts, Q&A’s, and photos.

Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights

Facebook audience insights offer plumbers detailed information about general Facebook users and followers. Based on the statistics, plumbers can create content for their Facebook page, boosting engagement and contributing to sustainable plumbing business growth.

Work with Blackstorm Design + Marketing to Obtain More Plumbing Clients Through Digital Marketing

Digital marketing agency

Conclusively, you can utilize numerous strategies when marketing your plumbing business. The right digital marketing agency for plumbers will present a comprehensive strategy that will assist you to gain online visibility and obtain leads. Whether you are searching for plumbing leads or want more from your current marketing efforts, our plumbing marketing team can assist.

We have assisted many plumbers to improve their online presence, use social media platforms to meet goals, and increase search engine rankings while optimizing their marketing costs.

If you are searching for help with taking your plumbing business online through effective digital marketing strategies, schedule a free profit session with Blackstorm Design + Marketing to help you optimize your inbound marketing, social media channels, and the lead generation today.

Categories
Plumbing Social Media Advertising

Plumbing Facebook Ads to Get Ahead of the Competition

Plumbing Facebook ads is an extremely powerful tool to promote your services or business online.

The plumbing industry has experienced unprecedented demand in recent years. In turn, this has caused the industry to experience a surge in growth for plumbers.

This high demand, coupled with the changes in weather patterns, only increases the urge for reliable plumbing companies.

Plumbing Facebook ads

While it may seem like this is an ordinary scenario for plumbing contractors, there is cutthroat competition for this kind of business. This is where plumbing Facebook ads come in.

When the housing market hits up, or a storm hits, a plumbing company requires to differentiate itself from its rivals. But what do Facebook ads for plumbers look like? Is it possible such ads can assist you in differentiating yourself in the crowded market?

Why Do Facebook Ads for Plumbers Work?

Facebook Ads

Facebook is now one of the most famous plumbing marketing platforms under the sun. With more than 2 Billion active monthly users, Facebook has become a critical tool to advertise plumbing businesses across the globe. Plumbers see it as a basic social media platform to interact with their clients and market their services to a vast marketplace. If you normally use Facebook to complain about politics and share memorable family photos and random thoughts, then your plumbing business may be missing out.

First, let’s discuss why plumbing Facebook ads are an effective marketing strategy for anyone who markets or owns a plumbing company. Facebook ads have several benefits, and these features make them a good choice for the plumbing industry. Of course, there is the undeniable power of Facebook.

So, it still pays off to advertise your plumbing services on Facebook, but let us discuss what precisely makes it a great platform to market your company. Here are reasons why you should invest in Facebook ads for plumbers:

  • Plumbing Facebook ads provide robust analytics: Facebook has no limits when offering you analytics and reports about your ads performance. You are given metrics about your post engagement, weekly reach, page likes, and which posts have the best performance. Best of all, you also gain insights on things such as conversions, sales, and even clicks. By seeing such information, you can tweak your ads based on what is required.
  • Ability to Micro-target your exact target audience: Facebook’s targeting abilities are super amazing. This means you can target based on behaviors, age ranges, languages, location, and demographics. This is what sets Facebook apart from other advertising platforms.
  • Facebook ads for plumbers are easy to set up and generate fast results.

Types of Plumbing Facebook Ads

Plumbers have tons of campaigns and targeting options to select from.

Plumbers have tons of campaigns and targeting options to select from. It is no wonder plumbers of all sizes, use Facebook ads.

While having access to numerous advertising options is a plumber’s dream come true, it is also makes getting started a daunting task. If you are feeling overwhelmed, look at the following types of plumbing Facebook ads to see how you can use them in your Facebook ad strategies.

Image Ads

Image ads also known as photo ads feature a still image and an accompanying text and a compelling call to action. You can utilize boosted posts or create new ads for your plumbing company. Plumbers can use image ads in their newsfeed section to showcase their services online. Branded images showcasing your staff and team create the most clicks and engagements.

Video Ads

Plumbing Facebook ads are much similar to image ads, the difference being the content format. They feature motion or video graphics, while image ads are graphics or still photos. You can create video ads on Facebook or boost organic posts that incorporate video. Plumbers can use video ads in their newsfeeds to showcase their services online. The most encouraging videos include your staff at work accompanied by subtitles and audio.

Instant Experience

Instant experience ads, formerly known as canvas ads offer mobile ads that can grab the attention of your target audience. They are multimedia, full-screen ad types that deliver quality content to your target audience. Prospects or clients can engage with photos, videos, or carousel in one ad.

Carousel Ads

Plumbers can go with carousel ads for several images in the News Feed. You can include up to 1o videos or photos for your ad, and each possesses a separate link. They are ideal for promoting several plumbing service types in one ad.

Collection Ads

Plumbers may not require collection ads because they mainly focus on product-based sales, which most plumbing contractors avoid.

How to Get Started with Plumbing Facebook Ads in 8 Steps

Before we jump in, it is crucial for plumbers to think about why you are advertising and the goals they want to achieve. By understanding your measurement of success ahead of going live with plumbing ads, you will be able to know which ad objective is suitable for your requirements.

1. Set a Clearly-Defined Goal

A plumbing contractor must set a goal.

Before creating a Facebook ad, a plumbing contractor must set a goal. Your goal should reflect how you want prospects or clients to do after seeing your promotion. For example, if your objective is to showcase your new plumbing website, you can launch and that generates traffic to your URL. Read on to understand the list of goals below:

a. Awareness

Awareness goals help to create an interest in your plumbing services among prospects. Creating more awareness showcases your plumbing brand and the value it offers. One instance is a plumbing contractor looking to expand its service area to a nearby neighborhood. By utilizing the brand awareness objective, you can launch a Facebook ad campaign that inspires local homeowners to select your plumbing business.

b. Consideration

Consideration goals get prospects or clients about your overall plumbing brand. One example might be a local plumbing contractor with a new site who utilizes a traffic goal to streamline new browsers to the site and help you with on-site conversion optimization to achieve the rest.

c. Conversions

Conversion goals are more aligned with a storefront business. A conversion goal generally generates store traffic, but plumbing contractors can still use them to obtain more online sign-ups and other amazing engagements.

When it comes to plumbing ads, there are numerous ads you could be working on, so you need to scale down to one per campaign.

Examples of plumbing Facebook ads may be:

  • Introduce your company to new homeowners in the neighborhood
  • Educate property owners on the dangers of an aging plumbing system
  • Show photos of hail damage after a major storm has hit the area

The objective becomes especially crucial when you begin to select your campaign awareness goal as you set up your plumbing Facebook ads. If you understand your goal beforehand, it assists guide you as you make decisions regarding targeting and awareness.

2. Choose Your Target Market or Audience

Target audience

Finding the right target audience is the most important part of creating quality Facebook ads for plumbers. To research your target audience, there are crucial questions to remember before knowing who your target audience is for your plumbing Facebook advertising strategy. The responses to these questions are not necessarily complex, but it takes time to collect and verify the responses. Remember, the right target audience plays a vital role in determining the success of your plumbing Facebook ads.

Since it determines who Facebook will show your plumbing ad to, a strategically defined target audience is important for the success of advertising campaigns. As stated earlier, the target audience for your ad can be customized based on all the following demographics:

  • Age
  • Location
  • Gender
  • Behaviors
  • Interests

3. Address Your Prospect’s or Client’s Pain Points

To effectively target your client’s problem, research your target audience.

Most of your potential clients don’t care about the materials you use or the process. They care more about the benefits of your plumbing services and they want to know how your company will add value to their lives.

You might think that clients can deduce the advantages of selecting your company just by hearing about your plumbing services, but most of your potential clients aren’t plumbers. As a plumbing company owner, your role is to help homeowners understand the benefits of your services.

So, how do you show the benefits of your plumbing services? Begin by assisting homeowners to understand the “pain” of ignoring their current problem. As a plumber, you want to leverage the emotional part of their pain points. This way, you are creating an urgent need that your plumbing services will solve all while encouraging leads to invest in their home.

To effectively target your client’s problem, research your target audience. Remember that problems will vary depending on your target market and not all plumbers will target the same pain points.

Related: Top 6 Social Media Marketing Strategies For Plumbers

Once you have identified some common plumbing problems, create a unique Facebook ad copy around them. Using your ads to address your prospects’ pain points is an effective way to showcase the value of your plumbing services and distinguish yourself apart from the competition. Best of all, you highlight the value of your services, the actual expense becomes less of a concern for homeowners when booking a job. Ultimately, you are showing homeowners that investment is crucial to resolve their problems.

4. Create a Quality Plumbing Ad on Facebook

Design your Facebook ad.

This is where plumbing Facebook ads get really fun! Now it is time to design your Facebook ad. There are two ways to design your ad: by using an existing post that will be published on your page or from scratch.

Utilizing an existing post

For specific kinds of ads, like boosted posts you can design your ad using a post that had already been published on your Facebook page.

To do this, choose the “use existing post” option. From here, you can select your page from your linked accounts and choose the post you want to use as your ad.

Creating a new ad

If you want to create a new ad from a blank canvas, the initial task is to choose a format. You have probably come across numerous Facebook ad formats on your news feed, but your options vary depending on the goal you set for your ad during the third step. Facebook has about eight ad formats and it will recommend one or more to you based on your plumbing marketing goal.

5. Consider Your Facebook Ad Placement

You cannot get into the specifics about where your Facebook ads will be displayed. For example, you will not be able to request them only to appear on your Facebook groups. But, that doesn’t imply you have no control whatsoever. There are numerous options for plumbing Facebook ad placements.

Stories

Facebook stories

Because Facebook has recently acquired Instagram, users can now show temporary pictures in their “stories” section. Story plumbing ads occupy the whole screen and appear momentarily between images.

Feed

Facebook feed

Whenever you scroll through your Facebook feed and realize a sponsored post you are viewing a plumbing feed ad. These ads can be effective when they are focused on the right audience. These Facebook ads will appear on both desktop computers and mobile apps.

Messenger

One of the numerous options for plumbing Facebook ad placements.

If you have ever connected with a prospect or client on messenger, then you can send them a sponsored message on Facebook. Perhaps a prospect reached out to your business requesting your available services and you want to follow up a month afterward with an offer.

Right Column

You can also publish ads on the right-hand column of your Facebook page.

You can also publish ads on the right-hand column of your Facebook page. Such ads will not interfere with your user’s news feed so they will be less irritating. They are restricted to desktop computer users, so you will not be able to reach prospects who are on mobile devices.

6. Create the Right Offer

Give people a good reason to pay attention to your ad.

When Facebook users are viewing their posts and news feed, you have to do everything possible to grab their attention.

This doesn’t imply adding some random picture or video for shock value. It does imply offering prospects a reason to stop and look at your plumbing Facebook ad.

One way to achieve this is via an offer. Give people a good reason to pay attention to your ad. Make a unique value proposition that outranks the competition, whether it is an offer for more details, financing or perhaps obtaining a free quote.

Make your target audience understand right away what your plumbing company is providing and what they require to do in the next steps.

7. Set Your Facebook Ad Campaign Budget

Now it is time to decide how much you want to spend on your Facebook ad.

Now it is time to decide how much you want to spend on your Facebook ad. When you allocate a budget, it is crucial to remember that this cost represents the amount of money you want to spend on your ad. You can allocate your budget daily or as a total amount for the whole campaign.

Daily: A daily budget gives you a limit on what you spend daily on your ads. Facebook will utilize the criteria you set to identify the right time and place to show your ad to your target market. Once your set budget has been depleted, the ads will stop running for the day. The cycle will repeat the next day.

Lifetime: A lifetime ad budget is the maximum amount of money you want to spend during the whole period of your whole ad campaign. You give Facebook a specific number and the date you want to end the campaign, and it will utilize the money based on your ad performance. Once your budget is depleted, the ad campaign ends.

8. Track Your Facebook Ads Performance Metrics

Facebook Ads Performance Metrics

Once your plumbing Facebook Ads are running, you will want to keep a keen eye on how they are performing. To see these results, you will want to monitor their performance in two major places: your plumbing marketing software and the Facebook Ad Manager.

Some of the primary metrics to look for include the level of engagement, videos, and performance. Clicks, settings, and events.

No matter the kind of metrics you use to assess the success of your plumbing advertising efforts, you can get all that data in the Facebook Ads Manager.

Need Help with Plumbing Facebook Ads Management?

Schedule a free profit session with one of our Facebook Ads experts to get started today.

If you are like most plumbing contractors, you probably don’t have the resources to hire an expert full-time and time to mess around with Facebook ads. Do your bottom line, your family, and yourself a favor and get a free social media analysis from Blackstorm Design + Marketing.

Schedule a free profit session with one of our Facebook Ads experts to get started today.

Categories
Marketing Plumbing

The A-Z Guide of Plumbing Marketing: Ideas, Strategies, Slogans, and Tips to Grow Your Business

Get the best plumbing marketing strategies that will help you generate more qualified leads, booked jobs, revenue, and more from industry experts.

Did you know that the plumbing industry is expected to grow by 15% between 2020 and 2030 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics? This presents a great opportunity for your plumbing company to optimize its marketing and generate more qualified leads.

Why should a homeowner hire you to repair or replace their clogged drain? That’s the major question if you want to create a successful plumbing business. And the answer lies in plumbing marketing. But where do you start marketing your plumbing business?

plumber marketing strategies

The way a plumbing company works to market its services has changed entirely in the past few years. A few decades ago, people normally used to go to their local directories or phone books to find a local plumber, but nowadays, prospects depend on Google search results to hire a nearby plumber.

Why should plumbers be on top of marketing?

As the industry continues growing, your company needs to remain competitive and relevant to generate more plumbing leads. Developing comprehensive plumbing marketing ideas can help you achieve just that.

This guide is designed to remove the guesswork and give you successful plumber marketing strategies that will help you get a higher return on investment (ROI). Without further ado, let us dive into our post.

The Benefits of Marketing your Plumbing Business You Need to Know

Marketing strategy

Most plumbing contractors are always busy servicing clients and operating their businesses to think about marketing. Marketing is one of those things that you don’t know you require until your phone stops ringing. But here are some reasons why you need to market your plumbing business even when your calendar is fully booked:

  • Solidify Your Brand

Excellent brand

An effective plumber marketing plan strengthens and solidifies your brand’s voice. Suppose you develop a marketing strategy that includes elements of social proof (for instance, online reviews and client testimonials). This is how your company communicates its trustworthiness and authenticity to homeowners. With such an excellent brand and voice, it will be difficult for existing and new clients to turn away.

  • Reach More Clients and Grow Your Company

More prospects will become aware of your plumbing services

Marketing provides an excellent way for plumbers to increase their exposure in their target market and generate more leads. More prospects will become aware of your plumbing services, which can help to generate more qualified leads into your sales funnel.

  • Obtain Data and Insight Into Your Company Operations and Its Clients

Enhance your business operations and client retention tactics.

Plumbing marketing is not just an effective way to create your database of client contact details, but it can also offer important client insights that help you enhance your business operations and client retention tactics. For instance, if your company targets homeowners, you can obtain relevant data on the type of promotions they love, their ever-changing demands, and a lot more.

  • Understand the Plumbing Industry Trends

Plumbing Industry Trends

To stay ahead of the curve, you should always remain updated on the latest plumbing industry trends. Through plumber marketing, you can understand more about current plumbing demand trends, what your rivals are doing, and clients’ needs. By learning more about the industry, you stand a good chance of building a sustainable plumbing company.

  • Boost Salesboost your sales

Your plumbing business stands to gain a lot by creating innovative plumbing marketing ideas and implementing them. The return on investment for effective plumber marketing can be significant.

What is the Target Market for Plumbers?

Identifying your ideal customer

Identifying your ideal customer helps you to focus your advertising or marketing efforts on a specific segment of the market that needs your plumbing services. Otherwise, you may spend thousands of your hard-earned dollars marketing to a large group of prospects that rarely require your services when you could have spent far less and target property owners you know need new plumbing systems.

A target market for your plumbing company refers to a group of people labeled as clients of your business. The target market normally shares similar demographic traits including but not restricted to:

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Education
  • Socioeconomic status
  • Location

Determining your target market can assist you to define your ideal clients and develop effective plumbing marketing strategies.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars trying to reach every prospect, knowing your plumbing target market helps you to develop a more intentional and personal outreach, particularly to those who are ready to book your plumbing services.

 “When you combine the Buyer Persona/ Profile with Buying Insights, you will have clear guidance for the decisions you need to make to win their business.” -Adele Revella

Here are the different kinds of clients you are likely to encounter in your plumbing company:

1. Homeowners

different kinds of clients

One of the apparent plumbing company personas is the homeowner. However, it is important to note that this persona varies based on geographical areas. Some homeowners may be too sensitive to cost and prefer to repair their plumbing systems themselves. For other homeowners, their priority is to get the repair done right for the first time.

Homeowners have beliefs and mentality that are contrary to the suggestions of professional plumbers. For example, repairing plumbing problems themselves becomes their major priority. As a consequence, they opt to do DIY plumbing instead.

2. Real Estate Agents

different kinds of clients

Realtors typically perceive plumbers as their partners. Why? It is because the goal of a real estate agent is to help clients in selling/buying properties or houses. Generally, many homes require plumbing repairs before they are put on sale.

Such repairs need to be done faster, more efficiently, and within your budget. If they find a professional plumber like you, they can rest assured that their problems will be resolved promptly. Plumbers utilize specialized tools that assist them in monitoring tasks, projects, and even the plumbing services they offer to customers.

3. Small Business Owners

different kinds of clients

Like restaurant entrepreneurs, small company owners need plumbing services that are responsive and quick. They care more about elements such as the capability and actual size of your plumbing company since they wanted to look for a reliable partner with whom they can have a business relationship in the long term.

4. Facility and Property Managers

Property Managers

This buyer persona wants your plumbing services to be available round the clock. Property managers are always on the lookout for affordable rates. They work in the commercial sector. They may need services such as bathroom and kitchen repairs, flood restoration, and pump truck services, based on the situation.

Digital Marketing for Plumbers-Where to Start?

Different types of digital marketing strategies.

The internet provides numerous opportunities for your plumbing business to reach potential clients or leads. How do you get valuable plumbing leads, though, and increase your return on investment (ROI) from plumbing marketing?

By learning about internet marketing for plumbers and using digital marketing services.

Keep reading to know about marketing for plumbing companies, from the tactics that provide the most value to the online marketing services available for plumbers.

Without further ado, here are different types of digital marketing strategies you can use to grow your plumbing business.

First things first.

1. Set, Adjust and Manage Your Plumbing Marketing Budget

Plumbing Marketing Budget

Allocating a plumbing marketing budget implies committing a specific percentage of your revenue to advertise your services in whatever combination works best for your business to reach more clients.

Plumbing industry experts recommend that you allocate at least 10 percent of sales towards marketing your service if you want to grow your business. Set your plumber marketing budget, then look at your plumbing marketing expenses and where you should spend those advertising dollars to obtain maximum return on investment. Options may include conventional advertising on newspapers, billboards, TV or sending and printing direct mail fliers.

Mastering digital plumbing advertising strategies – from Google local service ads, paid social media posts to targeted email marketing campaigns-boosts your brand awareness for your plumbing business and helps to improve your online reputation.

Test a combination of digital and traditional plumbing marketing ideas for optimal results or concentrate on one before going to another. Once you have allocated your marketing budget, adjust and manage it regularly by monitoring results for every campaign.

2. Make Your Plumbing Website Your 24/7 Sales Representative

Your website should be optimized for mobile devices

Many home service contractors, especially plumbers, wrongly think a cell phone is all that is required to connect with people in their neighborhood. But nowadays, people turn to Google to find information about plumbing services near them. To stay ahead of the curve, your plumbing company needs its website.

Your plumbing website should be your 24/7 sales representative and should generate massive amounts of new leads. If you want your plumbing website to work while you sleep, it should have these features:

  • It needs to load fast: The average client expects your plumber website to load in less than three seconds.
  • It Should be optimized for mobile devices: More than 50% of all online traffic comes from tablets and smartphones.
  • It should be secure: Over 40% of the plumbing websites on the first page of Google are HTTPS, which should not be a surprise because Google has already confirmed that they favor HTTPS sites.
  • Frictionless: Clients should be able to obtain what they require from your plumbing website within one or two seconds. That implies helpful shortcuts, seamless navigation, and quality content that resolves their issues.
  • Quality, helpful content: A major ranking factor in Google or Bing search results is the quality of your plumbing content.
  • Functional: Your plumbing website should be coded properly for SEO, which implies adding structure to your website with metadata like optimized images, meta, and title tags.

If your plumbing website is missing any of these features, you need to redesign it ASAP or else lose new leads to the competition.

3. Optimize Your Plumbing Website for Local SEO to Get Found by Prospects Online

Implementing good SEO strategies into your plumbing marketing plan.

Think about a modern busy homeowner as your brainstorm about plumbing advertising ideas to enhance your business’s search engine optimization (SEO) rankings. SEO is a plumbing marketing term used to describe the steps required to make sure that Google and other search engines find your business website when people search for your plumbing services.

Here are some tips you can use to optimize your plumbing company website for search engines:

  • Select location-specific keywords: For instance, plumbing contractors Manchester, TN or Murfreesboro plumbers.
  • Use a consistent name, address, and phone number.
  • Create and optimize your plumbing Google business profile.
  • Add your plumbing company to local online business directories.
  • Create high-quality plumbing SEO content.
  • Integrate plumbing keywords throughout your website.
  • Get backlinks from authorities in the plumbing industry.

If you are a plumbing business in Nashville, for example, make sure that you use “Nashville toilet repair” as one of your primary keywords. Use variations of the plumbing keywords on your landing pages, subheads, blog contents, meta descriptions, and meta tags to enhance the SEO health of your plumbing website.

Implementing good SEO strategies into your plumbing marketing plan ensures your site can be found on Google for phrases and words your prospect is actively looking for.

If you boost your plumbing website’s visibility, that can drive more visitors to your website, which converts your site into a lead generation machine that can work for your business 24/7/365.

4. Claim Your Free Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile

Your plumbing business must have an online presence to reach the right prospects or clients. The initial step for so doing starts with claiming and verifying a Google Business Profile listing. It is a part of local SEO and helps prospects discover your plumbing business easily online.

Google Business Profile is a free service by Google that helps you to create a listing on the web. Here, you can include all the important information related to your plumbing business, such as contact information, address, and hours of operation.

You can also add posts and images related to your business on GBP. Customers can also leave reviews about your plumbing business and share videos/images on this profile. With an updated Google Business Profile, there is a high chance of your company appearing for Google’s 3-pack and local searches too.

5. Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising to Reach People Looking for Plumbers

PPC ads

If you are searching for paid plumbing marketing solutions, Pay-per-click advertising is a perfect option. PPC ads are paid ads that show up in search engine results above organic listings.

PPC ads are one of the tested and proven ways to get valuable leads for your plumbing company. You only pay when prospects click on your ad. Because PPC ad targets prospects who are already looking for plumbing businesses like yours, it will assist you to get more qualified leads.

Like plumbing SEO, you will perform keyword research to identify the appropriate keywords for your campaign. Once you have picked your keywords, you will be required to bid for the placement of your ad.

You will also require to set your maximum bid, which is the amount of money you are willing to spend every time a prospect clicks on your ad. This amount should be flexible and can be altered at any time. Keyword research will assist you to know the value of plumbing keywords so that you can set the right bid.

Your quality score and the maximum bid will affect your ad’s placement. Once your ad is placed, you will launch your PPC ad.

This technique helps you to set a budget that works for your plumbing company. Whether you invest $100 or $1000, you are the one to choose. However, you need to know that the amount of money you invest will affect your plumbing marketing campaign’s success.

PPC also gives you total control over your Google or Bing ad campaign. This means that you not only choose your budget but also select the time to run your ad and for how long. This helps you to build a campaign that works for your target audience and your plumbing company.

6. Social Media Marketing for Plumbers

Choose the social media platforms that your prospects or clients are utilizing.

Among the cost-effective plumbing marketing ideas, developing a social media presence to maximize your reach is actually near the top. It is low-cost (free if don’t use paid ads), and there is no question that plumbing contractors that don’t have a social media presence in the modern market lose their marketing potential. A social media platform provides you with better credibility, accessibility, and visibility to find your plumbing services. Plus, you can use posts to show off previously completed projects and satisfied clients.

When posting on social media, it is crucial to have a variety of content, like videos. Uploading videos can be helpful for prompt DIY plumbing problems, and the viewer may then call you for other plumbing service needs. For an unsought service such as plumbing, the visibility and shareability of posts can help your company to be more present in local clients’ minds.

Marketing experts for plumbers typically recommend that you focus on one of these social media platforms including:

From here, you will be required to access most of the online social media users. Another social media marketing tool for plumbers you may consider leveraging is Facebook ads.

We highly recommend that you choose the social media platforms that your prospects or clients are utilizing instead of using a single one.

7. Manage Your Online Reputation

Online Reputation

It’s frustrating when a client goes online and writes a bad review about your plumbing business, particularly when you have done your best to offer the best service possible. But prospects care about online reviews, and that’s why it is crucial for plumbing business owners to manage their online reputation.

To achieve this, you should claim your plumbing business on online directories like Google Business Profile and Yelp. This will allow you to reply to online reviews and confirm that all the business details listed are accurate.

Homeowners want excellent client service and constant communication with their plumbing contractor, and you can show your service by promptly and professionally responding to each review:

  • Appreciate customers who leave stellar reviews.
  • Respond professionally to negative and neutral reviews. Acknowledge the reviewer’s concerns and if possible, request them to contact you and offer you a second chance to make things right.

Once you have completed your work, ask clients to leave a review on your online profiles. Here are some strategies that can help you to leverage the power of online reviews in plumbing marketing:

  • Engage with clients whenever they leave online reviews- this helps people to know that you are a serious plumber who values clients.
  • Use testimonials in content marketing campaigns to attract similar clients.
  • Make sure that your contact details are visible readily on all profiles.
  • Ask for reviews and referrals from clients when a project is completed.
  • Help people to leave reviews on your Facebook business page.
  • Engage and monitor authentically!

8. Email Marketing for Plumbers

Create high-quality email marketing content.

If you are a plumbing business owner, you understand that idle trucks and silent phones mean a high overhead cost and upset crews. If you want to attract new clients while retaining existing ones (and keep your calendar filled with booked jobs), then consider incorporating email marketing into your advertising strategy.

There are several factors that you need to consider when creating a plumbing email marketing plan, like making sure that your email is responsive and also looks great on both mobile phones and computers, ensuring it is CAN-SPAM compliant, and writing persuasive calls to action to generate more plumbing leads online.

Here are some tips that can help you get started with email marketing for plumbers:

  • Set your plumber email marketing goals to help you evaluate the effectiveness of your plumbing marketing campaigns so that you can refine future email advertising campaigns.
  • Build your email list.
  • Create high-quality email marketing content.
  • Test, track, and optimize.

9. Invest in Video Plumbing Marketing

Video Plumbing Marketing

Businesses and homeowners want to know precisely the benefits they are likely once they hire you as their plumber.

Specifically, they want to know what projects each plumber has completed previously and how they were done. You can write about these amazing projects on your plumbing website, but videos and photos are much more convincing.

Include videos or photos of previous projects throughout your website, and think of dedicating one page or two to a gallery portfolio. You can also create unique videos to show prospects how you have completed particular projects, specifically ones that presented issues or were complex along the way.

As part of your plumbing marketing strategy, you might also opt to include interactive tools on your estimate or contact page. This makes your website more compelling and also helps customers visualize your work, which might be the final motivation they require to contact your plumbing business.

10. Content Marketing

You must have a blog on your plumbing website.

One of the goals of digital marketing for plumbers is to generate more qualified leads. However, you can obtain those leads without providing information. Your prospects or clients turn to Google to research their options, as well as general details about hiring plumbers, and your plumbing website should offer everything they require.

The best content type for a plumbing business may be blog posts in form of answers and questions. Create a blog post title with questions that most people ask you as a plumbing business owner, and write a blog by answering the question as comprehensively as possible.

Create pages that answer particular questions and address common problems. These pages should mention your specialties, services, and any other details that may attract a customer. Be sure to do plumbing SEO so that your posts can be found in search engines like Google or Bing. Then, add a compelling call to action requesting readers to submit a contact form. It should help visitors to leave their name, email, and address, along with other important information.

By offering valuable information, you show site browsers that your plumbing business is a reputable resource for resolving their questions. And as you establish that trust, they are likely to contact your plumbing company.

Categories
Plumbing SEO

What You Should Know About Plumbing Pay Per Lead Generation Sites

For many plumbing contractors, having a good system to get qualified plumbing leads is crucial to ensuring a consistent stream of customers and a steady revenue flow.

As more property owners are looking online for plumbers, you must be where your potential clients are to obtain more plumbing leads.

There are many plumbing pay lead service providers that help plumbers get leads using internet marketing strategies. Just like not all plumbers are created equal, not all plumbing pay-per-lead generation services companies are the same.

All sales start with generating leads, and plumbing contractors are always searching for strategies that will convert plumbing leads into sales. One of the effective ways can be via pay-per-lead services for plumbers such as Porch, Thumbtack, and Angie’s List.

While these providers offer short-term assistance, they are ultimately not a crucial part of lead generation for your plumbing company. This post will explore everything about pay-per-lead services and the cons and pros of each.

Why Do Plumbers Require Effective Lead Generation Strategies?

Plumbing lead generation is crucial.

In some industries, such as retail, transactions are simple and quick and don’t need a lot of lead nurturing. That’s not the case for skilled trades, like plumbing and roofing. Homeowners require to understand that plumbers can get your job done right and reliably and won’t surpass their budget. And with so many plumbers competing for the attention of the same prospects or leads, local homeowners require to research the available options before selecting a plumbing company.

To be considered, you will need to get found by those prospects and prove to them you are worth hiring. That implies you must strike a good balance between personalized marketing messages and sales pitches.

Here is where plumbing lead generation is crucial. Lead generation for plumbers can help you focus on qualified leads so that you are not wasting energy, time, or advertising dollars who will not hire your company.

While countless plumbers rely on plumbing pay lead generation service providers to find new customers, a great lead generation plan requires more ingredients. You need to optimize your plumbing website, develop social media pages, and begin implementing SEO so clients can find your business when they require it online. When combined with a great lead generation strategy, pay-per-lead generation websites can take your plumbing business to new heights, but only if you use them properly.

What are Plumbing Pay Per Lead Services?

Plumbing Pay Per Lead Services

A pay-per-lead service for plumbers is close to what it sounds like. There are tons of sites and directories online that target specific plumbing industries or geographic areas. These directories are not there just to offer a public service, there are numerous ways of gathering data that can be sold to a target audience. If you want to access these target audiences, you will be required to pay to be listed in those directories, which can be one way to generate plumbing leads.

There are also companies that specialize in plumbing pay lead services. Instead of you paying them for a listing, as some of those directories do, they will offer you a free listing with a tracked web form and phone number to know how many leads they send your way. You are then charged per plumbing lead.

Benefits of Plumbing Pay Per Lead Services

Pay-per-lead websites for plumbers can help you get started with a lead generation strategy.

Plumbing lead generation can be expensive and time-consuming, and most plumbers don’t have the time to sacrifice getting new leads.

If your company required new plumbing leads yesterday, you need a lead generation strategy that makes the most of your ROI, stretches your advertising budget, and saves the frustration and time of getting new clients. Pay-per-lead websites for plumbers can help you get started with a lead generation strategy, sell your plumbing services and boost your online presence.

If you are still on the fence about using a lead generation website to connect with local homeowners, here are some key advantages to consider:

Improve Brand Awareness

Signing up for pay-per-call plumbing leads.

Building brand awareness and increasing your visibility online are vital ingredients for your success. You can achieve this by signing up for pay-per-call plumbing leads and creating compelling, strong profiles that put your plumbing business in front of wallet-out leads. This way, more homeowners will learn about your plumbing business and the services you provide. Then, when they are ready to make a hiring decision, you will be there when they require you.

If you don’t have the budget to hire a professional website designer or a reputable plumbing SEO agency, plumbing pay-per-lead generation websites can assist you to hit the ground running with a short-term project.

Get More Client Reviews

Customer reviews

When it comes to converting plumbing leads into appointments, social proof is all you need. Online reviews show potential clients why your plumbing service company is better than your competitors. Reviews show clients exactly what they can expect from hiring your plumbing company, from the materials used to the quality of your plumbing services.

Of course, you won’t obtain online reviews automatically, even when your plumbing services surpass expectations. Especially for new plumbing businesses, lead generation websites for plumbers provide quick access to short-term projects, which makes it super easy to get client reviews.

After completing a job and asking for a review, you can utilize these reviews to fuel your internet marketing strategy. You may post them on your plumbing website, create infographics or social media pages.

Expand Your Market

Lead generation websites can help you know about your clients.

If you require plumbing leads instantly, listing your company with an established, large traffic base is one of your top options. When you begin creating your plumbing lead generation plan, you need to focus on a specific group of people. Lead generation websites can help you know about your clients, show you who is interested in your plumbing services, and connect with a large demographic.

Maybe you are obtaining engagement from first-time homeowners and other demographics that you have not incorporated in your plumbing marketing campaigns. With plumbing lead generation websites, you will be able to understand the trends and tweak your plumber marketing campaigns properly.

Plumbing Pay Per Lead Generation Websites – How do they work?

Lead Generation gif

A lot of lead generation sites have a plumbing pay-per-call strategy, implying you will be required to pay for every call made by a potential client for your services. The awesome thing about this is it does not involve any shared plumbing leads, which normally end up in bidding pricing and wars much lower than they are worth. With a plumbing pay-per-call plan, all you will be required is only to pick up your call.

If you pick plumbing pay-per-call as your marketing strategy, there will be a campaign built with your special tracking number. Based on your plumbing lead generation partner, you could end up paying for anything from resold to spam leads from the previous months. So, asking about the money you will be charged per lead is a crucial question for any lead-generating sites you are searching into. With Blackstorm Design + Marketing, our services revolve around only paying for qualified plumbing leads so you will never have to pay again for an irrelevant plumber lead.

Crucial Factors to Consider When Hiring Plumbing pay per lead generation service providers

When looking for a plumbing lead generation provider, there are tons of factors to evaluate and consider. But what qualities should you look for when a pay-per-lead service provider to partner with? Here are some factors that can make a difference between a complete disaster vs. successful partnership.

Transparency

Business transparency

If the lead generation service providers you opt to work with is going to be great partner, they will be adequately honest and open with you, whether the news they bear is ugly, bad, or good. There should be no surprises, and you should understand their plans, how they expect to attain your business goals, and how to measure the failure or success of their work.

Professionalism, Integrity, and Respect

The way a plumbing pay-per-call service goes about its daily business is also very crucial.

The way a plumbing pay-per-call service goes about its daily business is also very crucial. If your account manager told you your Twitter followers had increased by 325%, would you be thrilled and ecstatic with your choice of lead generation for plumbers providers? The lead generation service you work with will be acting on your behalf, so it is important that they do so with class.

Enthusiasm

The plumbing pay-per-lead service provider you will partner with should be enthusiastic.

The plumbing pay-per-lead service provider you will partner with should be enthusiastic about your success and partnership. If you shoot your account manager an email, you don’t want to wait for days before it is finally answered.

Signing up with a plumbing lead generation service company is not a decision that you should take lightly. Ideally, this will be the starting point of a reliable and positive partnership that leads to growing your plumbing company.

If a marketing agency wants to charge you by the states and lead that you are required to sign a long-term contract before moving forward. This helps the plumbing business to take your money before they have offered any leads for your company, and whether or not the leads turn out bad or good, you have locked in.

Another thing to watch out for is plumbing pay-per-lead service providers that have a low cost per lead. If the deal sounds too good to be true, particularly with brand new sites that are just attempting to get their foot in the door, whether it is a good fit or not.

How Much Do Plumbing Leads Cost?

Plumbing Leads Cost

The costs of leads vary based on the type of plumbing work requested and the market. Although qualified plumbing leads may be more expensive, they will prove valuable in the long run. Paying for thousands of leads with little or no potential of converting into real clients is a waste of money and time. Paying for one plumbing lead that converts into a real client is much more crucial than paying for 10 cheap leads that don’t result in a paying client. Plumbing leads can range anywhere between $25 to $125 per call, while the average ticket price reported by our clients is $600.

Another reason why qualified plumbing leads are more expensive is since the higher cost per lead allows your marketing agency to spend more to keep your results at the top of Google search results.

Most Common Pay Per Lead Services for Plumbers

Plumbing is a competitive industry, so that is why we decided to focus on the four major plumbing pay-per-lead service providers:

HomeAdvisorHomeAdvisor website

HomeAdvisor is a major directory in the home improvement space. The service is absolutely free for property owners, but plumbing contractors who want to be listed here have to pay a yearly fee to advertise and pay for each lead generated by HomeAdvisor.

The only downside is that plumbing contractors are charged for each lead they talk to, regardless of whether it turns out to be a qualified client.

Angie’s List

Angie’s List website

Angie’s List was bought by its main competitor, HomeAdvisor in May 2017. If you can’t beat them, join them. Angie’s List can be described as a plumbing pay lead service that is free to register, but you have to pay to play. If you opt to use the paid version of the platform, you will be required to pay a consistent amount every month, whether you get 200 or zero leads.

Porch

Porch website

Just like Thumbtack, Porch places the power of contacting in the hands of plumbing contractors. Plumbing contractors can see the leads before they decide to call the lead, for which they are going to be charged.

Why we don’t recommend you to use plumbing pay lead services?

Plumber assembling pipe.

After analyzing some of the advantages and disadvantages of each of the major pay-per-lead services for plumbers, there are three primary reasons to avoid them altogether:

  • Race to the phone: As stated, most of these plumbing pay lead services send out leads to multiple plumbers, such as chum to sharks. Very often the initial plumbing business to contact the lead closes it, and not every plumber has the time and resources to stay on their phone around the clock.
  • No Tracking:  These lead generation sites are not actually working for you, you are working for them, thus, they are not invested in offering you powerful and smart tools to monitor where plumbing leads are coming from and where they go.
  • You have to pay for the lead regardless: As their name suggests, these platforms don’t care whether the lead they offer you ends up closing (many plumbers receive numerous leads at the same time).

Replace Plumbing Pay Per Lead with Plumber Internet Marketing

Plumber Internet Marketing

Everything we have been elaborating on so far revolves around what happens when other people regulate the audience and your plumbing marketing collaterals or assets.

This places you in a position of renting your advertising instead of owning it. When it comes to lead generation service for plumbers, owning is always highly recommended than better renting. Here’s why:

Qualified leads: Instead of dealing with anyone who wants to give out their contact details, you can educate them using assets such as:

  • Quality content and blogs
  • Clearly messaged and strong plumber websites
  • A consistent email newsletter
  • Client service as a marketing strategy
  • Customize: You can decide what your brand message will look like and can alter it whenever you want to or the challenges dictate. You can also decide how much you want to spend on advertising instead of being downtrodden by whatever you are offered.
  • Target: Plumbing pay lead websites were built for scale, and as such, they are not concerned with the particulars of your local marketplace.

Here are some digital marketing strategies that you can use to increase sales and leads more effectively than plumbing pay-per-lead services:

  • Build an SEO-friendly plumbing website that tells your prospects what services you provide, what areas you serve, and why they should trust your business for your plumbing needs.
  • Create a plumbing SEO strategy that may help your business rank higher on search engine results pages, get more traffic, and obtain more leads that are likely to become clients.
  • Manage your plumbing company reputation to help in establishing trust with prospects and bring in a steady flow of qualified leads.
  • Invest in Pay-per-Click advertising to help you obtain plumbing leads fast by putting your business on top of the organic search results.

Own your Plumbing Leads instead of Buying Them with Blackstorm Design + Marketing

Qualified leads are what constitute plumbing sales.

Qualified leads are what constitute plumbing sales. But if your leads are not ready to convert, the sales won’t happen.

If you are tired of using plumbing pay lead services and want to develop a comprehensive plumbing marketing strategy to help you increase sales and leads, schedule a free profit session with Blackstorm Design + Marketing to get started today.

Categories
Plumbing SEO

14 Plumbing Local SEO Strategies to Rank Higher on Google and Get More Customers

Get 14 plumbing local SEO tips to increase your visibility on Google, convert searchers into paying clients, and grow your business online!

Did you know that more than 70% of people who look for a nearby plumber on their phones using Google call them within a day’s time?

Or 28% of these nearby plumber searches result in booked jobs?

That’s the power of plumbing local SEO – and doing local keyword research.

Plumbers and other home service contractors are crucial in our modern society, yet they face one major challenge in venturing into new markets: Snatching away clients from their competitors.

Many property managers and homeowners have built strong relationships with home service contractors like roofers or plumbers, thus making entering into new markets hard.

Businesspeople meeting plan analysis graph

Fortunately, there are several ways that plumbers can succeed in an entirely new market, especially when getting new homeowners or offering emergency services where other plumbing contractors are unavailable.

The best sources for leveraging these opportunities are through Google search, and you can increase your visibility there using local SEO best practices for plumbers.

So, how do you ensure that your plumbing business gets a top listing when local clients are searching for a plumber to go to their business or home as promptly as possible?

In this post, you will find the hidden tactics and tips to help your plumbing company rank #1 on Google for local searches, build a client base, and grow your brand.

Without further ado, let us dive into our post.

What is Plumbing Local SEO?

Plumbing Local SEO

Before giving out our proven local SEO tactics for plumbers, let us first know what local SEO is and how it can help plumbing contractors book more jobs online.

Plumbing local SEO is the same as conventional SEO, but only that it comes with a geographical element. It is a process that involves optimizing your plumbing website for local city-specific search terms. It is the new ‘yellow pages’ for local plumbing contractors these days.

Local SEO is more powerful when localized since there is less competition, which makes it easier for your plumbing company to rank on the coveted spot on the first page of Bing, Google, and other search engine result pages (SERP).

Local SEO is the practice of grabbing local search territory to better connect with potential customers nearby. This strategy works best for plumbing businesses that have a local client base. How local SEO for plumbers works is by concentrating on the main factors below:

  • Relevance: This refers to how well your listed plumbing business matches the local search query. The more detailed it is, the easier it will be for a search engine to identify your listing.
  • Distance: This measures how far the physical location of your company is from the search location.
  • Prominence: This refers to how well your plumbing business plays into the SEO results. Factors such as average star rating and Google review count matter a lot here.

Through conventional SEO, plumbers try to rank for generic keywords such as:

  • Drain Repair
  • Hot water heater
  • Plumber and more.

On the flip side, local SEO connects your plumbing business with potential clients and neighboring homeowners who show local buying intent in their searches, such as the examples below:

  • Plumbing services in [City, State)
  • Plumbers near me
  • Plumber in [City]
  • Emergency plumbing repair [City, State]
  • Emergency plumber near me

Selecting the right local SEO keywords for your plumbing company can help you rank higher on Google when prospects search for your services on Google.

While local plumbing searches may have low search volumes, it is more about driving relevant traffic that is ready to book jobs with your business.

As a plumber, you need to make it easier for clients to find your local business on Google and other search engines like Yahoo or Bing.

First things first; why is it crucial for your plumbing company to rank higher on Google for local searches?

Keep reading to find out.

Why Do You Need Plumbing Local SEO?

Plumber fixing kitchen sink

As the owner of a plumbing business, you are not essentially worried about your site rankings on a day-to-day basis. You have more things on your plate to fret about like attracting new clients and getting projects completed on time. However, you can obtain new leads and clients through your plumbing website and by boosting your online presence. Plumbing local SEO can be crucial to gaining a competitive edge in the market, particularly if you operate in an area that is saturated with competition.

Related: Is Plumbing SEO Worth It For Small Businesses?

There are several reasons why local SEO is crucial for plumbing contractors. Consider the following benefits of investing in local SEO services and incorporating it into your internet marketing campaign.

Local SEO Boosts Your Business Visibility on Search Engines

Local SEO makes your plumbing business easily discoverable by new clients.

If you have not optimized your plumbing website for local searches, then you better start now. Research has shown that plumbing contractors who prioritize investing in SEO services experience first-page rankings on Google and the advantages that come included.

There are numerous methods to optimize your plumbing website for local plumbing searches. You can add location-specific keywords to your website. Combining such keywords with your services will improve your site’s visibility on Google and other search engines.

Other optimization tactics include off-page plumbing SEO. You can improve search engine visibility by listing your business on Google Business Profile and backlinking best practices such as Guest posting or blogging. Local SEO makes your plumbing business easily discoverable by new clients.

Plumbing Local SEO Offers More Qualified Search Traffic

Wrench search string

The promise of getting more traffic won’t be of any help if the traffic is of low quality. It is crucial to attract clients who are likely to hire your company for plumbing services and those clients should be within your service area.

Local SEO for plumbers helps to weed out visitors who are not likely to contact your plumbing company. This is not because Google and other search engines have made a joint effort to prevent businesses from clients, but because they want to offer relevant local results based on intent and proximity. So a client who is 50 miles or more away won’t see your plumbing business show up in search, but one who is just five miles away would.

Local SEO Helps You Reach More Customers

Plumber and its customer

Maybe your plumbing business has a physical office that clients can walk into to inquire about your services. However, not all clients will use this strategy to learn more about your company. In the modern world, many homeowners will utilize the internet to conduct any preliminary research on their plumbing business beforehand.

So while you may have some foot traffic to your office, you must also consider those who will turn to the internet and search engines like Google or Bing to find your business. Local SEO for plumbers will assist you to reach this subset of customers who are not physically coming to your office.

Local SEO Makes Your Plumbing Business More Competitive

Put your plumbing business niche into Google alongside your local service area

Even if you are not investing in local SEO services, you can be sure that other plumbers in your niche are doing it. This implies that they are a step ahead by default, and they are snatching all your potential customers.

It doesn’t help to be the most innovative and best plumbing business in your area if no prospect or client can find you. When all these other plumbers are showing up on the first page of Google local search results, they control the market.

To test this, put your plumbing business niche into Google alongside your local service area and see what happens. For instance, if you run a Los Angeles plumbing company, search for “plumber in Los Angele” or “Los Angeles plumber.”

What shows up?

It is likely that you are not even on the first page if you have not invested in your local SEO strategy. This implies that most people won’t see your plumbing business unless they want to view more results on the subsequent pages of Google. Many people click on the initial links (if not the very first link they come across).

By investing in your local SEO services for plumbers, your rankings will rise up and compete with other local plumbers within your niche.

Local SEO Increases Customer Retention

Plumber and customer in the kitchen

It goes without saying that if local clients find your plumbing business via an online search and have a positive experience, they are likely to come again and become repeat clients. Such customers are easier to sell services to and often refer your business to other homeowners in the same locality, bringing in more customers.

Establish More Trust Through Higher Local Organic Rankings

Plumbing local SEO can lead to higher rankings

Among the advantages of local SEO is that this internet marketing strategy can help you build more trust with clients because of your higher organic rankings. When conducting Google searches, most people are likely to contact plumbing businesses that are listed higher in the local search results. Even if they may end up looking at the plumbers listed lower or on the second or third page, they might not trust these plumbing contractors as much.

The thing is, they have not committed any offense-service wise-when compared to plumbers with high search rankings. However, just because their search ranking is low, customers are hesitant to book jobs with them. Plumbing local SEO can lead to higher rankings, which can make your plumbing brand more trustworthy and visible in the eyes of potential customers.

Local SEO for plumbers is a Cost-Effective Marketing Solution

Marketing research

Comparatively speaking, SEO for plumbers is an expensive way to market your plumbing business. Considering the fact that more than 80% of smartphone users conduct “near me” searches. This implies that if your plumbing company is appearing high in the relevant local search results, you are already targeting local prospects well. Thus, you can reduce your plumbing advertising costs. There will be no need to place ads in the local newspapers, send out flyers or perform localized social media campaigns when locals find your plumbing business online.

14 Local SEO for Plumbers You Can Implement Right Now and Get More Clients

The right plumbing local SEO strategy can assist you to reach your ideal customers through organic searches locally on Google, Bing, and more. Traditional SEO tactics perform well, but if your focus is on a local market, you will want to follow SEO tips for plumbers like the ones we are going to discuss in this post.

If you operate a small plumbing company with a brick-and-mortar office or all your clients are based in a specific area, you may think this facet of internet marketing is crucial to you. But using certain local SEO tactics could actually increase your footfall dramatically.

Local SEO can assist you to grab the attention of prospects living nearby who haven’t come across your plumbing company before.

Here, we are going to outline our top plumbing local SEO tips which will ensure that your plumbing business pops up when a homeowner nearby is looking for a business like yours online.

Plumbing Local SEO #1: Claim and Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile website

Your Google Business Profile appears in local search pack results and is showcased in Google Map searches as well.

Google Business Profile is a platform built by Google where local service businesses like roofers or plumbers can list their contact details, offer, address, and any other information that might attract potential clients. Plus, these Business Profiles appear in Google Maps in local results of Google search when a prospect looks for relevant businesses in the area.

Simply put, the Google Business Profile is the Yellow Pages of our modern digital world. This means that if you don’t have a Google Business Profile listing, now it is time to get one.

As a result, optimizing your Google Business Profile helps customers to call your plumbing company, drive to its location or visit its plumber website with just one click.

To claim your Google Business profile, follow these simple tactics:

  1. Create a Google Business Profile: This will generally include creating a Gmail for your plumbing business.
  2. Check whether your plumbing company is already listed on Google: The easiest trick to achieve this is by typing your business name on Google Maps and its pops up, then your business is listed.
  3. Click “Claim this business” or “Own this business” on your Google Business Profile. Sign in to your Google Business Profile and follow the steps to control your profile.

Next, to optimize your Google Business Profile listing properly, use these tips and dive deeper into our ultimate guide.

  • Make sure that you use a consistent NAP citation (i.e., Name, address, and phone number).
  • Verify your plumbing business on Google Maps.
  • Respond to client reviews on your profile with kind responses or helpful advice.
  • Write a clear description of your plumbing business and its services.
  • Use high-resolution photos to showcase your business and brand.

Not only is an updated plumbing Google Business profile a convenient tool for assisting local customers to find your business, but you can also get and respond to client reviews there. This can be incredibly powerful, as prospects will normally search for positive reviews when they are deciding whether to contact a local plumbing business that they have never encountered before.

2. Focus on Your Plumbing Company Website

Plumbing service website

After completing the task on your Google Business Profile, you can begin optimizing your plumbing website for local search. You should begin with the service pages and homepage on your plumbing website. These are the main pages of your plumbing website where the user intent keywords that you identified in your keyword research will play a critical role. Here are some crucial things you need to do in order to optimize your plumbing website for local search:

Title Tag

The title tag, which is also known as the “page title” is displayed on the web browsers after your website domain name. The title tag is also displayed as part of the blue headlines when pages are listed on Google’s search results.

The page title of your homepage should include the location, primary category, and the name of your plumbing business. Here is an example to guide you through:

Plumber in {Your City} | {Business Name}. For instance, if your plumbing company is in Murfreesboro and the is “Geo plumbing”, your title tag might be Plumber in Murfreesboro|Geo Plumbing.

Optimize Your Meta Description

A meta description is a text that shows below your URL. It should offer information that will persuade potential clients to click on the link and visit your plumbing website. Here is an example of a meta description:

Name of Business offers professional {list of plumbing services) in {Your City}. Call {phone number} instantly and we will send a plumber out to your property within 1 hour!

Here is what a meta description might appear like for Geo plumbing:

Geo plumbing provides professional drain cleaning and plumbing repair in Murfreesboro, TN. Call 888-XXXX-XXXX now and we will get a plumber out to your home within one hour!

Optimize Your Plumbing Website Service Pages

Allocating a separate page for every service you offer helps for a great deal of information to be presented, which will offer the best plumbing SEO results.

For instance, if you offer HVAC repairs and maintenance services, and drain cleaning, creating a dedicated separate page for each one will work better than consolidating all your putting all your service pages on one page.

3. Make Sure That Your Plumbing Website Is Mobile Friendly

Mobile Friendly Website

The first thing is to ensure that you have a professional website for your plumbing company. The site should be easy to use and must be mobile-friendly.

About 60% of online searches come from mobile devices. When your client gets stuck in a plumbing problem, they utilize their mobile phones to search for local service providers such as roofers or plumbers. Your plumbing local SEO strategy must include optimization of your website for mobile devices.

4. Add Location Pages to Your Plumbing Website

An embedded Google Map

If your business has more than one brick-and-mortar location, consider creating multiple location pages. Location pages offer readers your name, address, hours of operation, unique business description, and testimonials from happy clients.

It is also crucial that you don’t duplicate content across numerous location pages. For single-location plumbing businesses, create a descriptive About us page. You can even obtain bonus points if you embed Google Maps on your plumbing website.

But remember that because we are focusing on plumbing local SEO tactics here, these need to incorporate more than just a contact number and email address.

Here is some other information you should add:

  • An embedded Google Map
  • Where to find parking, if required
  • Exterior and interior photos of your office.
  • An optimized description and title
  • Local news or other crucial information
  • Compelling calls-to-action that allows your clients to understand what to do next.

It is crucial that your location plumbing service pages are not just photocopies of each other with a few tweaks here and there. Customize them with particular descriptions, explanations of differences in plumbing services, and other details that reflect the unique character of every location.

5. Create Local Plumbing Content

Consider top-of-the-funnel content that goes beyond what your company offers.

Another way to make sure that search engine algorithms and people understand exactly where you are based is by crafting unique content with a local focus.

Sharing about your connections with the surrounding area shows that you are an active member of the community and have a lot of local knowledge. This will appeal to those trying to book jobs with you, and assist you to increase your local search engine rankings.

Be the local authority for your plumbing industry by promoting local industry news, employees, and other educational stuff on your blog. Consider top-of-the-funnel content that goes beyond what your company offers.

The right type of plumbing SEO content can draw many people into your office, as long as it is engaging and well-targeted.

6. Target Local Plumbing Keywords

Plumbing Keywords

Do you know that more than 80% of prospects/customers utilize Google, Bing, and other search engines to find a local plumbing company like yours?

Homeowners/property managers turn to Google to help them in connecting businesses in their neighborhood that provide the plumbing services they require. To appear in these organic search results, you need to include local keywords in your plumbing website to assist you in ranking.

Related: “Plumber Near Me” Searches: How To Rank Your Plumbing Business Higher On Google

Local plumbing keywords are search terms that contain location-specific keywords that offer results related to the service area. Such search terms help drive wallet out potential clients to your business and play a vital role in optimizing your local search engine optimization strategy.

Put yourself in the shoes of a homeowner who requires your plumbing services. What keywords would you use to find a plumbing contractor? Create a list of keywords that come to your mind such as plumbing repair, plumbers and plumbing contractors, and so on.

Then combine those search terms with local keywords a homeowner or business may use to find your plumbing services. Now you have an expanded list:

  • (Your search area) plumbers

Example: Murfreesboro plumbers

  • Plumbing contractors (your search or residential area)

Example: Plumbing Contractors Murfreesboro

  • Plumbing repair(your search area)

Example: Plumbing repair Murfreesboro

Go ahead and write down all other services you provide such as drain cleaning, toilet repair, and more.

7. Obtain Regular Reviews from Satisfied Clients

Reviews from customer

Another crucial factor while implementing local SEO for plumbers is the positive online reviews. Google prefers online reviews while ranking your plumbing business locally. If your profile has numerous positive online reviews, it implies your service is trustable and legit by the clients.

Asking your customers to leave glowing reviews online for your plumbing business doesn’t just optimize your GBP presence; it also encourages local clients to book jobs with your business. According to a survey conducted by Bright Local, over 85% of customers believe in online reviews as much as they do with recommendations from friends and family members.

So, if your plumbing business is getting tons of positive reviews from high authority sites like BBB or Yelp, it stands a good opportunity getting found in the local organic search results. If you want to skyrocket your company’s online reviews, start by requesting your existing customers. Next, make it hassle-free for clients to review your plumbing business. You can email your current customers with a link that directs them to your Google reviews.

Here are some strategies to encourage clients to review your plumbing company online:

  • Request for a review after closing a plumbing sale.
  • Send a text or email asking your clients to review your plumbing business.
  • Respond to the existing online reviews promptly and professionally, addressing issues from negative reviews and thanking reviewers.

8. Optimize Your Plumbing Website for Voice Search

Voice Search

With the high use of digital assistants like Siri or Amazon Echo, voice search SEO has altered how prospects look for plumbing services online. So, if you have not included voice search into your plumbing SEO strategy, you need to fix that ASAP and stop losing prospects to the competition.

Therefore, it is important to optimize how potential customers ask questions on these devices in the local plumbing SEO instead of how they would type their queries. Furthermore, your customers will utilize long-tail plumbing SEO keywords when performing voice searches compared with normal searches. That said, you will have to adjust the SEO of your plumbing content to suit the more conversational tone of the customer speaking. For example, you will want to pay attention to conventional question starters (When, who, why, how, where, and what).

Read also: How To Win More Plumbing Clients Using Voice Search Optimization

It is also important to figure out the searcher’s intent when optimizing your plumbing website for voice search since these searches are performed when a searcher needs particular information. If they are doing their household chores and ask Alexa to find a plumber near them, they expect a helpful and quick response. If a prospect uses voice search to request for your business hours, this response should be readily available.

9. Get Inbound Links with Authority and Relevance

Link building

With the optimization of your Google Business Profile and plumbing website completed (at least for now), it is time to widen your scope and begin skyrocketing your organic search rankings. Inbound links offer your business compelling opportunities to boost your plumbing local SEO, each of these links tell Google that you are a legit company, and they can also improve your domain authority. Here are a few tactics you can use to get local backlinks to your plumbing website:

  • Contact local bloggers who have interviewed local plumbers in your area to contribute an interview or quote.
  • Write guest posts on sites with local influencers to share some DIY plumbing repair tips and other associated content.
  • Contact newspapers in your town that list local plumbing contractors and request for a link to your website.
  • Sponsor a local team, host an event or volunteer that forces bloggers and journalists to write about your plumbing company.

These strategies will help give your plumbing brand exposure, which in turn, will drive more clients to your company over time.

10. Conduct Local Plumbing SEO Keywords Research

Google Keyword Planner

Keywords related to your plumbing business are vital for your local SEO strategy to be successful. Google Keyword planner is a great tool to utilize when conducting keyword research. It is an efficient tool that assists you to obtain fresh and new keywords for your plumbing local SEO campaign.

If you are struggling to get search terms to use for your campaign, there are various tools available online to help you get keyword ideas, such as Moz, Ahrefs, and more. You can plug those keywords to obtain your monthly client traffic volumes.

Examples of plumbing SEO keywords could include:

  • Emergency Plumbing service
  • Toilet clog and repair plumbing service.

11. Be Social to Improve Your Plumbing Local SEO Strategy

Social media platforms

Social media is not just for big plumbing brands and industry influencers. Your local plumbing business page can leverage social media usage benefits too.

More specifically, your local plumbing business page can be a perfect place to keep clients up-to-date on the latest events, sales, and changes (like the hours of operation). That’s because even with a plumbing website, a social media profile is synonymous with a living version of your plumbing business.

Related: Top 6 Social Media Marketing Strategies For Plumbers

Perhaps users of Facebook benefit more from local plumbing business pages. A few examples of the advantages of maintaining social media profiles for your plumbing business include trend tracking and building great relationships with your clients.

Here is how your small plumbing business can stay active on social media:

  • Choose which platforms are right for your plumbing business based on the target audience and features.
  • Post quality plumbing content regularly.
  • Use automation and scheduling tools to test and enhance engagement.
  • Participate in local roundups and events.

12. Fix all Technical Plumbing SEO Issues to Rank Higher on Google

Fixing all technical SEO issues should be on top of your list.

If you are serious about optimizing your website for local search, then fixing all technical SEO issues should be on top of your list.

Simply put, technical or off-page plumbing SEO is the process of ensuring that search engines like Google or Bing can parse, discover and understand the content on your website. The better you are at technical SEO, the more likely you will rank higher in local search.

Here are some of the ways you can fix your technical plumber SEO issues and rank higher on the search engines:

Optimize Your Plumbing Website for Mobile Devices

Considering that more than 80% of prospects use their smartphones to perform “plumber near me” searches, you cannot afford not to be mobile-friendly.

Google nowadays uses mobile-first indexing when ranking and indexing plumbing content. That implies that Google favors mobile-friendly sites over desktop.

Optimize your plumber website for mobile users using Google’s Mobile-friendly Test to boost your rankings on both desktop and mobile.

Improve the Loading Speed of Your Plumbing Website

The speed of your plumbing website has a major impact on your SERP ranking. Since a website that loads fast offers a great user experience, while slower sites are penalized causing a decline in their search rankings.

To increase the page loading speeds of your plumbing website, consider using the following tactics:

  • Minify CSS
  • Use browser caching
  • Optimize all images on your page
  • Clean up redirects
  • Enable file compression

You can also spot page loading speed problems using Google’s Page Speed Insights for more detailed information.

Read also: Slow Plumbing Websites Doesn’t Work: Tips On How To Speed Up Your Plumbing Website

 Get Your Business Listed in Plumbing-Related Citations

There are several local plumbing-related citations where you can have your company name and contact details listed.

Once you have finally launched your plumbing website and listed your business on Google Business profile, then you need to list it on online plumbing business directories. Get a listing for free on plumbing industry-specific directories both internationally and locally first.

Examples of famous plumbing-related directories include:

  • Yelp.com
  • Homeblue.com
  • Plumbingweb.com
  • Fixr.com
  • Bestplumbers.com
  • Plumbingnet.com

Establish Relationships in the Plumbing Industry

A great opportunity to obtain clients is to associate your plumbing business with other related businesses such as your plumbing materials suppliers.

Building mutually beneficial relationships can assist in cross-referrals. Local community events in your area and charities can request your plumbing company website to be linked to theirs.

It assists in creating business opportunities for your plumbing services.

13. Spy on Your Competition

Moz Link Explorer website

We highly recommend that you check what your competitors are doing in implementing their plumbing local SEO strategy. There are tons of tools online that you can use, such as Moz Link Explorer, SEMrush, and Majestic.

You can utilize these tools to find the links on your competitor’s site and get your plumbing business the same. These tools help to find new local business directories. They also allow you to be associated with authentic plumbing-related websites and news.

14. Track Your Plumbing Local SEO Results

RankRanger website

Once you have done the first plumbing SEO campaign, you will want to monitor your results, which can help to improve the performance of your marketing campaigns. Here are the three core performance metrics that you need to track:

Rankings

Monitoring your page rankings can reveal insights into your marketing campaign, including impressions, keyword performance, and the number of prospects that clicked throughout your site. To track your organic rankings, you need to install the Google Search Console or use paid tracking tools such as RankRanger.

Traffic

The next aspect of your SEO campaign that should be monitored is the traffic that is generated to your plumbing website and the pages that drive it. So, you need to install Google Analytics to track your page traffic.

Conversion Rates

Conversions are specific actions you want potential clients to take while they land on your plumbing website. For plumbers, the common action is a quick phone call for booking a service, so you need to monitor how many calls you receive and the number which ends up booking your plumbing services.

Related: 6 Reasons Why Your Plumbing Business Should Use A Call Tracking System

Top 4 Questions Plumbers Ask About Local SEOFAQ

What is plumbing SEO?

At its core, plumbing SEO focuses on improving your plumbing website’s visibility in organic search results. It is the process of creating and editing the website content and code of your plumbing website so that your web pages can rank #1 on Google or Bing search results.

What is the difference between plumbing SEO and Plumbing local SEO?

Here is the main difference: While conventional plumbing SEO focuses on boosting your website’s visibility on a global or national scale, local SEO helps you to grab local search territory to connect with potential clients in your area. But SEO and plumbing Local SEO use similar tactics.

Why is local SEO so important to plumbers?

Increased online visibility: plumbing local SEO activities, such as link building and citations, boosts your business visibility online. That makes your company drive more qualified traffic to your website or office.

How much does it cost to rank your plumbing website #1 on Google?

Contrary to what many plumbers believe, ranking your website on the first page of Google is absolutely FREE. But we highly recommend that you partner with a reputable plumbing SEO agency to help you get the results faster without spending too much time trying to learn the ins and outs of SEO on your own.

Ready to Get Started?

Committing to implementing a great local SEO campaign can be one of the great investments you can make in your plumbing company. But we realize that it can be challenging to try and implement these tips on your own, but you don’t have to implement them all at once.

Implementing these tips will make your plumbing local SEO campaign successful. You can build on this foundation to obtain higher rankings for your plumbing web pages, more traffic to your site, and more clients for your plumbing company!

Need Help with Your Plumbing Local SEO Campaigns?

Local SEO

Are you feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to start with plumbing SEO?

At Blackstorm Design + Marketing, we specialize in assisting plumbers like you to attract local clients who are looking for plumbing services online.

If you need assistance in implementing the plumbing SEO tactics discussed above, schedule a free profit session with Blackstorm Design +Marketing to learn how our local SEO services can help you connect with more clients and grow your company!

Categories
Marketing Plumbing

The Ultimate Guide of How to Start a Plumbing Business in 12 Steps

Becoming a self-employed plumber has many benefits. Starting your own plumbing business, calling all the shots, and being the boss are all very great aspirations for any plumber with an entrepreneurial urge.

If you are reading this post for the first time, you have probably been figuring out how to start your plumbing business for a while but haven’t yet made up your mind. Or, you may have been working for another plumbing contractor and feel that it’s time to become your own boss.

The plumbing industry is growing rapidly, and there is a high demand for licensed and experienced plumbers in the US is high, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the current plumbing industry pegged at $124 billion (and constantly growing everyday), there has never been a great time to start a plumbing business than now. Furthermore, many plumbing business owners currently in the field are attaining retirement age, leaving great opportunities for more plumbers to break into this lucrative industry.

For many home service contractors like roofers or plumbers, the prospect of starting their own companies provides a way out of the grind, offering great freedom and income than working for a private plumbing company.

We have you covered if you are among the many experienced and licensed plumbers who want to know how to start a plumbing business. But launching a successful business will take more than your plumbing know-how and experience. Read on to learn everything you require to know from registering your business, general advice, and marketing tips to managing your cash flow.

Without further ado, let us dive into our post!

Benefits of Starting a Plumbing Business

there are multiple benefits to charting your own path in the plumbing industry

Working for other plumbing contractors can sometimes get exhausting, particularly if there’s little room for growth. If you are not making ends meet despite getting burnt out from working overtime for a company, starting your own plumbing company may be the solution.

While creating a new plumbing business from the ground up can feel overwhelming initially, there are multiple benefits to charting your own path in the plumbing industry that make the challenge worth your time and effort. Here are some of the advantages that you can enjoy when you decide to start your plumbing business.

Great Earning Potential

A plumber

One of the major benefits of starting your own plumbing business is the possibility of higher income potential. As a self-employed plumber, you will have full control of your business’s revenues. This implies that you can go out and book as much work as necessary to raise the higher income as possible without being restricted to jobs that your former boss would assign. It also means that you have full control of how much you charge for every job and how income is to be split between new supplies, paychecks, and other important costs.

The average salary for self-employed plumbers in the US is approximately $38 per hour or just under $80,000 annually. Although these salary scales vary from one state to another, experienced and established plumbers who start a plumbing company stand to earn more than those who work as employees. If you plan to do a fair share of work on your own, you will have fewer labor expenses, benefits, and insurance to distribute as well, offering you even a greater share of the income.

Independent Work Schedule

you have full control over who your customers are and when you partner with them

A good reason to start a plumbing business is the independent job schedule that comes with it. When you start a plumbing company, you have full control over who your customers are and when you partner with them. Self-employed plumbers are only bound by the plumbing projects they have already accepted. This flexibility helps you to select and pick the jobs you want to book instead of just responding to work orders offered by the dispatcher.

If you want to schedule residential plumbing jobs, you can concentrate on partnering with homeowners or property managers in your service area or create a strong customer base among households in nearby communities. When it comes to contractual work and plumbing repair jobs, you need to complete jobs in a timely manner as part of superior customer service. But, when scheduling future jobs, you have full flexibility when it comes to selecting the hours and days that you will work.

Room for Growth

skilled tradespersons

The scarcity of skilled tradespersons, including plumbing contractors, continues to increase the demand for plumbers across the U.S, particularly in the current market. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been a major shortage of licensed and experienced plumbers across the US. With demand for skilled and licensed plumbers exceeding supply, you have an opportunity to bargain for higher pay, particularly for those starting their own plumbing business.

Customer Interaction

a plumber and a client

A self-employed plumber is typically able to meet with every client individually. Whether these customers are homeowners that require a pipe to be repaired or general contractors who would like to start a new project, a self-employed plumber will accurately represent his business and offer appropriate customer service for the situation at hand. This can translate to higher earnings through client loyalty and excellent services.

Choose a Specialty You Enjoy

Starting your plumbing business helps you to handpick jobs that you have specialized in

Starting your plumbing business helps you to handpick jobs that you have specialized in –such as steam fitting, installing sprinkler systems, or pipe fitting. Becoming an expert on a specific type of plumbing work will set you apart from the competition and potentially earn a higher revenue in the process. Finding a high-value niche within the plumbing industry can also lead to huge contracts with large companies that wish to outsource the very best to meet their specific plumbing needs.

Starting a reputable plumbing business involves a lot of things more than knowing how to repair or install pipes. A successful plumbing company needs patience, knowledge, people management skills, and perseverance, among other traits. In this post, we will discuss the whole process of how to start a plumbing business. So, wear your entrepreneurial hat, and let’s dive in!

How much Money Do You Need to Start a Plumbing Services Business?

you will need set money aside for website setup, marketing, and advertising expenses

Are you wondering about the amount of money you require in order to start a plumbing business? Well, there are a lot of factors that are involved to help you determine the actual cost of starting a plumbing company. Some of the startup expenses may include staff uniforms, business registration requirements like licenses and insurance, vans, and trucks amongst others. Furthermore, you will need set money aside for website setup, marketing, and advertising expenses. But if you want to start a plumbing company with no money will no doubt cost you everything that you treasure.

Is Starting a Plumbing Business Hard?

Starting a new plumbing business is not easy

Starting a new plumbing business is not easy as there are other established plumbers already operating in this field. Furthermore, you will be competing with the same clients, and your small plumbing business will have to aggressively advertise or market its services. But there are many other important aspects that you need to figure out when making a solid dive into starting a plumbing business.

12 Steps to Starting a Plumbing Business From Scratch

Starting a Plumbing Business

As earlier stated, there is more to starting a plumbing business than just registering it with the state. Launching a successful plumbing business takes energy, commitment, and time. While it may seem challenging at first, the process becomes much simpler to navigate once you understand the basics. If you are still on the fence about how to start a plumbing business but don’t know where to start, our simple eleven-step guide will help you get started!

1. To Start a Plumbing Company, Save Money

Save Money

Just like any other investment, to start a plumbing business, you will require money to fund your dream project. Your savings should be sufficient to support your unique business requirements, and it should include your working capital which will depend on your business model and needs. As a beginner, most plumbing contractors recommend a slow growth rate initially. In this case, you should aim to recover the initial cost of machinery before purchasing more.

2. Define your Plumbing Business Before You Start

a) Select a Name for Your Plumbing Business

Plumbing business name

The initial step to starting a plumbing company is to select your business’s name.

This is a very crucial decision because your business name is your brand and will last for the lifespan of your company. Ideally, you should pick a name that is memorable and meaningful. Here are our top tips for selecting a name for your plumbing business:

  • Keep it simple. The best plumbing business names are normally easy to spell, pronounce and remember.
  • Ensure that it’s available. Check your preferred name against trademark databases and a list of the registered business name to see if it’s available.
  • Think about marketing. Choose a plumbing business name that reflects the focus of your company or desired brand.

b) Choose What Plumbing Services You Will Provide

plumbing niche

Choosing to focus on a specialty with the plumbing niche will make your plumbing company stand out from other plumbers in your region. This will not only bring repeat clients but also tons of referrals. Niches in the plumbing business include:

  • Plumbing repair, installation, or both: Your plumbing company can also provide loads of installation and repair services. These can include clogged drains, leakages, installation of pipes, and repair of flooded basements.
  • Commercial or residential plumbing: You may opt to specialize in providing residential or commercial m plumbing services.
  • Emergency plumbing
  • Backflow testing and repair

c) Understand Your Ideal Target Market

Target Market

Knowing your ideal target clients can assist you to define your policies to suit their interests and preferences. For instance, because you are starting a plumbing business, your potential clients would include homeowners and business owners in the area where your plumbing business is situated.

3. Create a Plumbing Business Plan

Business Plan

A business plan is synonymous with a plumbing diagram for your company’s sales strategy. It describes the routes to your business success and how elements like cash flow and marketing can contribute to a healthy plan. A plumbing business plan can help to persuade suppliers, plumbers, and lenders to support your company.

A good plumbing business plan should include the following:

company overview

  • Executive summary – This section should summarize your whole business plan so readers can instantly understand the main details of your plumbing business.
  • Company overview – This section tells the reader about the history of your plumbing business and what kind of services you offer.
  • Industry Analysis – Here you will point out the key details about the plumbing business. Perform marketing research and document how large the plumbing industry is and what trends are influencing it.
  • Customer Analysis – Here you will document who your ideal or target market is plus their demographics.
  • Financial projections
  • Marketing strategies
  • Growth opportunities
  • Long-term/short-term goals
  • Financing options

A clear plumbing business plan is important for success as a plumber, and it will assist you to map out the specifics of your company and discover the unknowns.

4. Form a Legal Entity: Select a Plumbing Business Structure, Register Your Company and Obtain Appropriate Licenses

Legal Entity

The most common plumbing business types are sole proprietorship, limited liability company (LLC), partnership, and corporation.

Starting a plumbing business such as a corporation or LLC safeguards you from being personally responsible if your plumbing company is sued.

You will need to have a plumbing company legally set up before you begin taking on your initial customers.

Use our checklist below to get started:

Select Your Legal Business Structure

Choose between a sole proprietorship, partnership, or limited liability company.

Choose between a sole proprietorship, partnership, or limited liability company. Choosing a great legal entity will assist you to maximize your operational success and financial opportunities. The main kinds of legal business structures include:

  • Sole Proprietorship: In this type of structure, you run your own plumbing business without a specific structure. Your personal liabilities, business, or assets are not separated.
  • LLC (Highly recommended): This plumbing business structure will safeguard your assets from your plumbing business liabilities. All the losses and profits in this kind of entity are typically taxed as loss or income loss to the plumbing business owner. This is the most preferred legal structure for a plumbing business.
  • S-Corp: These corporations are also preferred, but they have a limit on the maximum number of members. S-Corps offer small plumbing businesses a tax benefit by getting waivers on Corporate taxes.

Register Your Plumbing Business Name

ensure that no other plumber is using your plumbing company name

If you want to start a plumbing business in the US, perform a quick search to ensure that no other plumber is using your plumbing company name, and then register your business name with the local state authorities.

Register Your Plumbing Business with IRS

egister your plumbing business with Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Next, you require to register your plumbing business with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which will prompt the IRS to offer you an Employer Identification Number (EIN).

Most banks will require you to have an EIN so that you can open an account with them. Furthermore, to hire technicians, you will need an EIN because it helps the IRS to track your Payroll tax payments.

But if you are a self-employed plumber without employees, you don’t need to have an EIN. Instead, you would use your Social Security Number(SSN) as your taxpayer identification number.

Open a Plumbing Business Bank Account

It is crucial to open a bank account in your plumbing business name. This is the initial step towards legitimizing your plumbing company idea. A bank account in your plumbing business name will assist you when filing taxes. It will also help you in tracking down your expenses, managing salaries, receiving or deposit payments, and planning your plumbing business budget more accurately. Here are some crucial things that you need to do after opening a bank account for your plumbing business:

  • Get a business credit card: This will help you separate business from personal expenses.
  • Obtain checks: Most clients still prefer to write checks, and that’s why you should write checks. You may also realize the need for accepting client checks instead of the bustle and hustles of processing credit card payments.
  • A credit line (possibly):  A credit line can be likened to a financial safety net, and it helps you have extra funds whenever you require them. You won’t require to finish cumbersome applications or vet potential lenders to obtain extra funds.

Get the Right Insurance

your plumbing company requires appropriate insurance

From the first day you start your plumbing business, you expose yourself to various risks. Your plumbing business is at risk even before beginning your first project. That’s why your plumbing company requires appropriate insurance. One lawsuit could threaten to close your business even before it starts. There are different kinds of insurance you will require to start a plumbing business. The most common plumbing company insurances include:

1. Professional liability insurance – This is also known as omissions and errors insurance; this will assist to pay for the expenses of a lawsuit over a plumbing defect. Professional liability insurance is appropriate for your plumbing business since your niche involves interacting with clients and recommending specific plumbing products and services. It safeguards your plumbing business from the cost of lawsuits if your advice or recommendations results in a loss to your client.

2. General Liability Insurance – This insurance is strongly recommended for plumbing business owners. It covers everything from customer injuries, client property damages, and other related lawsuits that may arise. If your plumbing business is sued as a result of property damage or injury, you may be required to pay a lump sum amount in terms of compensation. General liability insurance will assist you to cover this kind of eventuality.

3. Workers Compensation – Most states require plumbing contractors and businesses-even without employees –to have workers’ compensation insurance to cater for the cost of injured employees and medical expenses and compensate them for lost wages.

4. Commercial auto insurance – if your plumbing business is using vehicles to ferry equipment and employees to and fro job sites, you will require vehicle insurance to cover any damages in case of an accident.

5. Umbrella Insurance While general liability insurance caters for most claims, you may obtain accidents or lawsuits that may be so tragic that they can threaten to deplete your primary cover. In this case, the umbrella insurance will protect you from paying out-of-pocket fees to cater for damages that exceed your primary policy.

Pro tip: Find an insurance broker, tell them about your plumbing business and its unique requirements, and they will recommend policies and prices that match those needs.

Apply for the Required Permits and Licenses

In order to start a plumbing business, you will be required to obtain the necessary licenses and permits. The requirements for licensing vary from state to state. Permits and licenses help you operate a legal plumbing business. You can get plumbing business from your town hall or city. A plumbing company may require the following permits and licenses:

A General Plumbing Business License: A general plumber license helps you to hire subcontractors and get respect among prospects and fellow workers. But, getting a state plumbing license is a cumbersome and involving process, which requires you to meet particular qualifications along the way.

Local plumbing business permit: You can get a local plumbing business permit from your town or city hall. The government may be needed to do zoning, planning, and safety inspection approvals before offering you the permit.

Hire an Accounting Firm and Bookkeeper

Bookkeeping will assist you to keep accurate financial records. Moreover, the law stipulates also plumbing companies maintain accurate books and records.

Do try to do accounting or bookkeeping on your own unless you are professionally trained and experienced in this field. Trying to micromanage everything on your own will make you lose focus and grit, which can affect the growth of your plumbing business. Hiring a professional accountant and bookkeeper will assist you to avoid these errors.

5. Establish Your Pricing

set your pricing

After you have completed your research on the demand for plumbing services in your area, it’s time to set your pricing. Yes, you will want to provide competitive pricing to attract new clients, but you should consider your overhead and pay your bills.

Come up with a budget that includes all your expenses such as labor, insurance, materials, marketing, rent, and other recurring, outgoing costs. Once you have an overview of your yearly and monthly overheads, you will have a clear grasp of pricing and the number of customers you will require to maintain a consistent cash flow.

6. When You Start a Plumbing Business, you will require to Nurture/Form Relationships

Establishing your plumbing business as a credible entity

When starting a plumbing business, it is important that you form and nurture relationships with suppliers, employees, and subcontractors. Establishing your plumbing business as a credible entity is crucial to helping you dominate your local service area.

Outsource or Hire the Plumbing Work

Outsourcing some plumbing jobs

Outsourcing some plumbing jobs can ease the stress and time constraints that may be caused by working alone. Although you may prefer these services yourself, outsourcing some tasks to plumbers that specialize in a specific aspect of your plumbing business will offer relief, especially when working on fixed timelines.

Hire Professionals

Professionals succeed because they have diverse suggestions or ideas of how best to attain desired results on a particular project. When starting a plumbing company, you should leverage this diversity and hire professionals to bring fresh perspectives and unique ideas to your plumbing business. True professionals will actually save you money by offering expert opinions on matters.

7. Acquire the Right Plumbing Tools, Equipment, and Financing

Plumbing Tools

With your plumbing business plan ready, it’s time to start seeking financial aid from venture capital firms, banks, and other sources of funds. Schedule meetings with financial or credit managers and table your business plan for consideration. Make sure that you open a checking account beforehand to make sure that your company income and private assets remain separate entirely. By so doing, you will give your plumbing business more credibility and safeguard you from potential liabilities in the future.

Once you identify an interested partner to invest in your new plumbing business, you can figure out the best way how you will utilize the funds. Buying a few important plumbing tools and equipment will save you from going to the hardware store for each job service.

But don’t risk all your working capital into buying new shiny plumbing equipment. Begin with the fundamentals, purchased used if you can, and only buy or rent equipment for specialized jobs if you have the skills, license, and customer demand.

Here are some inventory, safety equipment, and tools that you will need to keep in your toolbox.

Inventory and Supplies

Pipes (both copper and plastic)

  • Inlet valves
  • Pipes (both copper and plastic)
  • Fittings
  • Thermostats
  • Elements

Safety Equipment

Plumbing water pipe and safety gloves

  • Heat shields
  • Plumbing gloves
  • Knee pads
  • Safety goggles

Plumbing tools

Plumbing tools

  • Pipe cutters
  • Grips
  • Hacksaws
  • Hand tool set
  • Cordless battery toolset

Besides, you may also want to purchase a reliable van or truck strictly for your plumbing business purposes.

8. Market Your Plumbing Business Locally

Promote plumbing business

Once everything is set, it’s now time to market your small plumbing business and generate qualified leads. By now, you have identified who your ideal client is, and you just require to be strategic to get in front of them.

Spending time on digital marketing strategies is a necessity that few plumbing businesses can afford to ignore today. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on marketing or advertising agencies, especially when starting out a plumbing business. Instead, try to focus on simple plumbing marketing strategies to generate exclusive leads for your business.

Define Your Brand

Creating a strong brand helps to differentiate your plumbing business from the competition. It is a representation of what your plumbing company stands for, goals, and values for business and client success. Depending on the type of plumbing business you want to start, defining and developing your brand involves the following steps:

Create a Good Plumbing Logo

Plumbing Logo

Your plumbing logo is one of your best marketing materials since it is what prospects or clients see when they think about your business. It can represent value for money, reliability, and quality. Your company logo is essential because it will be plastered across all advertising mediums or formats. It often represents your first impression to prospects or clients, so make it count! To make it happen, you can choose to hire a professional logo design agency with a large portfolio of successful designs.

Market and Promote Your Brand

Advertise Your Brand

Now that you have established your brand, it’s time to market or promote it. Outrank your competitors by assisting people to remember your brand while also showcasing professionalism.

Informational/ Promotional Posts can be an effective way of drumming up support for your plumbing business and getting your brand name out there. Printing high-quality fliers and brochures describing your plumbing services and distributing them to local plumbing businesses is a great method for improving local brand awareness.

Professional and well-designed business cards are a tried and proven way of building brand awareness for any plumbing business owner. The good thing with business cards is that they are easy to carry because you never can tell when a marketing opportunity can present itself. A savvy plumber is always on the lookout for a new source of prospects or clients.

Email Marketing is an easy yet effective way to offer a huge ROI on a small budget. It provides a great way of putting your plumbing business in front of thousands of prospects at once or promoting a new plumbing service or offer.

9. Establish a Vibrant Online Presence Before You Start a Plumbing Business

A professional plumbing website is an invaluable marketing tool for any plumber.

Since most of your clients will be searching for your plumbing services online, make it hassle-free for them to find your business with a few internet marketing strategies for plumbers.

A professional plumbing website is an invaluable marketing tool for any plumber. It offers a great way of gathering information from prospects or clients, sharing more information about your offerings, and reaching out to learn more.

For many new plumbing businesses, the prospect of creating a professional website can seem expensive and overwhelming, and this couldn’t be further from reality. In fact, there are tons of affordable and easy ways to obtain a custom website for your plumbing company without hiring expensive freelance web developers or web design agencies.

10. Create a Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile

Since most clients turn to the internet to find new plumbing businesses like yours, it is important to claim your Google Business Profile as soon as possible. This profile provides a lot of helpful information for clients at glance-including closing and opening hours, location, and your company’s telephone number. From your profile page, prospects or clients can navigate straight to your plumbing website for more specific details about your business and the services you offer.

Related: The Ultimate Guide for Google Business Profile for Plumbers

With time, clients will start to leave pleasant reviews of their experiences on Google Business Profile- something that will distinguish your plumbing company from low-rated plumbers online.

11. You Will Need to Obtain Leads After You Start a Plumbing Business

generate leads

Generating leads is one of the main challenges faced by new plumbing businesses. But, obtaining high-value qualified leads is key to any new plumbing business. Here are some tips on how to generate leads for your new plumbing company.

  • Invest in plumbing SEO: SEO provides a great platform to offer valuable plumbing content to your potential customers and generate leads for your business. Plumbing SEO has a lot of benefits for your company; it brings in the highest volume of leads in your service area, and it’s a long-term investment that will pay off in the long run.
  • Take out PPC search Ads: Although expensive, PPC is among the most effective and fastest ways to generate leads for your plumbing business. Your ads will begin to run in less than a week if you do it properly. Plumbing PPC ads have the following advantages; they will help you get hot leads that are actively searching for a plumber in the area, and although it’s expensive, it has immediate results.

12. Focus on Scheduling Service Appointments When You First Start a Plumbing Business

After setting up your plumbing business and all the marketing strategies in place, you will begin to schedule service appointments with existing and potential customers. When scheduling an appointment, always remember the following:

Politely and Promptly Answer the Phone

answering the phone call

Always answer your business phone call instantly since such calls are the lifeblood of any plumbing business (so treat them with utmost importance).

Gather Information

Record all the information regarding a specific project properly. Avoid errors of omission, which lead to underpricing or overpricing of a particular project.

Customer Satisfaction

Make sure that your customers are satisfied by being empathetic and helpful. Work with client’s schedules to avoid any inconveniences that may cause clients to be dissatisfied.

13. After You Start a Plumbing Business: You Need to Build Systems

With time, your plumbing business will require systems that resonate with the current technology. There are several kinds of technologies developed to help plumbing businesses complete tasks and function effectively. A properly established system helps technical or service teams, salespeople, and office staff to manage all plumbing projects easily.

14. Once You Get Started: Improve on Everything

proper planning

Plumbing is a service-based industry, and the revenues can fluctuate from time to time. Factors such as weather patterns and natural calamities will significantly affect your profits. That’s why plumbing business owners require a lot of proper planning to increase their profits. Growing your plumbing business depends on new customers and ideas, which can be attained by:

  • Regularly updating your plumbing website
  • Improving your plumbing advertising strategies
  • Improving your customer satisfaction
  • Broadening your selling skills and increasing the closing rate

Final Advice and Tips About How to Start a Plumbing Business

While it takes a lot of hard work and time to start a plumbing business, it doesn’t have to be a daunting task every step of the way. Having access to the right knowledge and resources can make the process less overwhelming. Here are a few tips that will assist your new plumbing business to thrive in an increasingly competitive market landscape.

Don’t Try to Micromanage Everything On Your Own

consider hiring additional plumbing technicians

Gone are the days when plumbers felt compelled to take on a huge share of daily responsibilities alone. As a plumbing business owner, you can make life easier by hiring administrative staff to deal with incoming calls, contact clients concerning overdue invoices, and schedule meetings with potential employees. You may also consider hiring additional plumbing technicians if you are currently struggling to keep up with work orders.

Plan to Take Time Off

take some time off work for family trips or weekend vacations

Whenever possible, take some time off work for family trips or weekend vacations. Working more than 10 hours daily can make you feel exhausted quickly, so try to execute delegation as much as possible to minimize the workload. While there is still an urge to micromanage everything to keep your business operating smoothly, it is highly recommended that you rely on the support of your staff when you require it.

Always Develop Ways to Reduce Overhead Costs

Reduce Overhead Costs

Finding ways to cut unnecessary costs will help you to keep your company profitable and offer the much-needed buffer for times when there are no jobs.

If fuel expenses on your company vehicles are too high, think of investing in more efficient renewable energy sources like electric or natural gas.

Another money-saving tip is to only buy plumbing supplies as they are required instead of stocking them up in advance. Purchasing in bulk may appear like a great idea, but your space may end up getting full that you don’t have space for storing crucial equipment.

Always Reward Yourself and Your Team for a Project Well Done

After completing an important milestone or project, show your appreciation by taking your team out for dinner or giving them a gift card to a local hardware store. You can also share a portion of your yearly profits with employees, admins, and supervisors.

Giving back to people who make your plumbing business successful will motivate them to strive even harder for the prospect of getting a huge bonus next year.

Frequently Asked Questions on How to Start a Plumbing Business

FAQs

How do I start a plumbing business from the ground up?

To start a successful plumbing company, you should:

  1. Select a name for your plumbing business
  2. Write a business plan
  3. Select your preferred business structure
  4. Register your plumbing business legally
  5. Decide on the kind of plumbing services you will provide to clients
  6. Hire additional plumbing technicians and other administrative staff.
  7. Develop a cutthroat plumbing marketing strategy
  8. Offer a good experience to your clients and establish loyalty

Is a plumbing business profitable?

Yes, a plumbing business is a lucrative business idea since every home or business required clean water and a functional sewerage system.

What do you require to start a plumbing business?

To start a plumbing company, you need:

  • Business Registration
  • Skilled plumbers and labors
  • Professional with sales and marketing skills
  • Plumbing materials
  • Business Insurance
  •  Plumbing work training

How do you price plumbing jobs?

While pricing your plumbing services, you should:

  • First, understand the scope of work
  • Estimate labor costs and material costs
  • Calculate overhead costs
  • Add your preferred profit margin to the breakeven of the plumbing job
  • Create and share your plumbing bid.

Are you ready to start a plumbing business?

start a plumbing business

Starting a plumbing business isn’t the easiest process, but multiple generations of plumbers know how lucrative it can be. Plumbing contractors are naturally hardworking and resourceful and continue to make their companies work.

At the same time, home service contracting businesses like plumbing or roofing have the highest rate of closure in the initial first five years. So the huge challenge is beginning on a strong foundation and remaining successful.

That’s why the best advice we can offer you if you are searching for information about how to start a plumbing business is this: Don t go it all alone. Partner with people that will offer you resources and support your efforts translate into real business success.

Do you have any questions or inquiries about starting a plumbing business?

Schedule a free discovery call with Blackstorm Design + Marketing, and our experts will be happy to help you launch your plumbing marketing campaign today.

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