Categories
Marketing Plumbing

Top 10 Plumber Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

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

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

Biggest Plumber Marketing  Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Plumber Marketing Mistakes

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

1. Putting all their eggs in one basket

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

2. Improper Ad Spending

Not all ads should be focused on improving brand awareness

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

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

3. No Tracking or Monitoring System in Place

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

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

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

4. Targeting the Wrong Plumbing Keywords

Wrong Plumbing Keywords

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

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

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

5. Lack of Consistency

Inconsistency can cause confusion.

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

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

6. Being Anti-Social

Anti-Social gif

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

7. Not Understanding Customer Behavior and User Intent

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

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

What a waste!

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

8. Poorly Targeted or Written Ad Copy

copying ad content from other advertisers

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

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

Create a compelling ad copy by:

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

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

9. Not Targeting Paid Search Ads

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

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

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

10. Broken Plumbing Website Pages

Broken site pages cause frustration to your prospects.

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

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

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

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

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

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

plumbing SEO

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

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

PPC

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

Website Design and Development

web development and design

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

Social Media Marketing

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

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

Online Reputation Management

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

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

SEO Content Writing

SEO content

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

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

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

Categories
Plumbing Public Relations

Effectively Managing Your Company’s Reputation Online Can Establish Consumer Trust, Attract Better Talent And Increase Your Profits

Plumbing Reputation Management: What It Is And Why It Matters To Your Plumbing Business

Today, most businesses and consumers scour the internet to find a trustworthy, reliable plumber reputed for offering superior services. According to research, more than 80% of consumers believe in online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends.

Online Reputation Management

As you know, when a kitchen pipe or a bathroom bursts, the homeowner needs to find a reliable plumbing contractor stat. And where do you think that they turn to find a plumber in their neighborhood that can come and fix it quickly? The search engines like Google or Bing.

There are over 50K searches online performed every month on Google by users typing in the keyword “plumber” into the search bars and an extra 14k consumers searching “plumber near me” (and more searches looking for “emergency plumber”) keyword. So, as a local plumbing business in the area, you must do everything possible to show up on top of the search engine result pages.

As a plumber, the internet should assist you to generate new leads easily, but if you aren’t vigilant, it can instantly ruin your business. This is why it’s so crucial for plumbers to know why online reputation management matters and how to engage with prospects or clients online.

Without further ado, let us dive in!

What is Online Reputation Management for Plumbers?

Online Reputation Management for Plumbers

Reputation management is the process of monitoring and improving what prospects or clients are saying about your plumbing business online. It is a strategy that involves molding and monitoring your plumbing business’s internet reputation.

Multiple strategies are used to improve your company’s reputation, including content development, search engine optimization, social media management, monitoring, review management and acquisition, and competitor monitoring to maintain a positive brand image.

Why is Plumbing Reputation Management Important?

Reputation Management

Maintaining a positive online reputation is necessary for your plumbing business with the increasing popularity of third-party reviews sites, social media, blogs, and other online platforms.

Your plumbing business needs to identify with what is said about it online and how they can improve clients perceive them negatively.

The importance of reputation management cannot be overemphasized for plumbing contractors. Here are some reasons that would clearly show why a plumbing company owner should take online reputation seriously.

  • Most Businesses and Homeowners Care About Online Reviews

Customer feedback

A huge percentage of business owners and homeowners are concerned about online reviews. In fact, most of them regard online reviews highly when looking for plumbers as they do with recommendations from family and friends. Most homeowners considering starting a home remodeling project go from searching ideas online to look for a plumbing contractor online. So, does a plumbing business have a way to manage online reviews that your potential customers see?

Do you have a process or strategy in place? What if you find bad reviews connected to your plumbing company unjustified? If so, you urgently need a reputation repair for your plumbing company because almost 80% of potential customers who see less-than-stellar reviews about your business will click off to another plumbing website within a blink of an eye.

  • Higher Search Engine Results Rankings

SEO

Online reviews can have a huge impact on your plumbing SEO strategy. This is because search engine algorithms know that clients place a lot of emphasis on online reviews of the plumbing company when making a hiring decision. Hence, a plumber who invests time and effort to handle their online reputation gets rewarded with higher SEO visibility.

  • Online Reputation Management Helps to Build Trust and Credibility

Trust and Credibility

Online reviews are not all about pleasing the Google or Bing algorithm, and it revolves around the way people perceive your plumbing business. With many consumers trusting online reviews (just like they do with personal recommendations from friends and family), getting clients’ trust is essential. Every plumber understands that a company’s reputation is important to its survival. Once the trust of the clients is obtained, the existing client would speak about your plumbing company to others.

A lot of emphasis is put on online reviews for homeowners or business owners to decide whether to trust your plumbing company or not. A good plumbing reputation implies that your company is deemed more credible than other plumbers in the area.

  • Higher Revenues and Sales

Golden coins stack and green growth arrow up

Before making a decision to use your plumbing services, homeowners tend to search on Google for a reliable plumber near them. And before they hire a specific plumber, they go through online reviews to see what other people say about them and their services.

Plumbers with tons of positive reviews always attract more clients. Plumbing companies that are perceived negatively or have a lot of lousy reviews miss out on huge opportunities and profits. That’s why your plumbing business should strive to have a lot of positive reviews.

  • Plumbing Reputation Management Helps You Build a Professional Image

Build a a Professional Image

Having a successful plumbing brand image is a very essential marketing tool for a business because it will be used to convince prospects or clients to use your plumbing services.

Potential and existing clients would attempt to learn a plumbing business differentiation by searching the name on Google. Since prospects don’t have a good idea about your business, they will search for the information available online and help them make a hiring decision. Hence, if a prospect finds a negative reputation, they won’t hire you for plumbing services. So, it would be advisable for your plumbing business to eliminate negative online reputation, if any.

  • Shows Customers That You Care

Online Review Management

Monitoring what people say about your plumbing business online and responding to positive and negative reviews shows them that you care. Naturally, all plumbers would expect to get positive reviews only, which are easier to handle. However, negative reviews can prove beneficial to your plumbing company in the long term. They are a source of invaluable response-consider what people say and repair the issues. Never ignore negative reviews as they may cause a social media crisis. Responding to negative and positive reviews will help you build good relationships with clients.

What are the Key Elements of Online Reputation Management for Plumbers?

We live in a digital world where people constantly communicate through the internet, blogs, forums, wikis, and telecommunications in general.

Online Reputation Management firm

In fact, we perceive online reviews as the fundamental building blocks of your plumbing company. Many businesses and homeowners first consult with trusted online review platforms such as Google or Yelp before making a hiring decision.

Knowing, monitoring, and attempting to control how people perceive your plumbing business on the internet is referred to as Online Reputation Management (ORM).

Here are some important elements to managing the online reputation of your plumbing business:

1. Online Reviews Acquisition and Monitoring

Nowadays, online reviews have become a reliable source of information that displays your plumbing brand, authority, and integrity. Reading online reviews is now an important part that informs their hiring behavior for many homeowners. Although plumbing contractors traditionally advertised through word-of-mouth, online review management is an important (and now unavoidable) aspect of internet marketing for plumbers.

If your business isn’t getting quality reviews from your satisfied clients, you are missing a lot of opportunities. Plumbing company reviews are a great addition to your plumbing website and appeal to potential customers and search engines alike.

The Major plumbing business review sites-platforms-such as Yelp, Facebook, Angie’s List, and Google My Business Listing –are full of consumer activity. Monitoring these online review websites is an important element of maintaining and managing your plumbing business’s online reputation.

But how do you get online reviews for your plumbing company? Here are our proven strategies:

Ask for a review for your company, product or services

  • Simply request (the right way): more than 70% of satisfied clients will give a review if asked. Most people will have a great positive impression of a plumbing business that cares about the quality of plumbing services they offer. So simply requesting feedback can instantly enhance the overall sentiment toward a plumber.

Providing symbolic, small bonuses for leaving an online review

  • Offer Incentives: Providing symbolic, small bonuses for leaving an online review can go a long way. Even as crucial as client incentives are staff incentives. Offering a reward or bonus to every service crew whose client leaves a pleasant review is not only an awesome way to motivate your employees to offer excellent client service but also make sure your employees never forget to remind clients to leave reviews online.

Customer pressing on smartphone screen with five star rating feedback

  • Make it easy for clients to review your business: Unless you have offered an amazing service or worked with a great client, clients don’t always seek out ways to leave positive online reviews. To encourage them to review your business, you must make it easy for them to complete this crucial step.

2. Monitor and Respond to Online Plumbing Reviews

Customer review satisfaction feedback survey

Every plumbing contractor loves tons of positive reviews on their business website or a review platform such as Angie’s List or Yelp. But the presence of a well-written positive review still needs your action. Following up with positive reviews builds customer loyalty and improves client satisfaction rates. Any plumber who has been in the industry for long knows that occasional negative reviews are inevitable. What differentiates those plumbing businesses is how they monitor and respond to them. Your responses to online plumbing reviews should be:

  • Professional: Polite in tone, grammatically correct, and establishing a customer-first attitude.
  • Solution-Oriented: Focus on resolving the problems at hand, that doesn’t imply automatic reimbursement to please the review but can involve some offers or discounts based on the issue.
  • Transparent: if mistakes were committed on your end, take responsibility, it will assist to humanize your plumbing brand and earn other clients’ trust.

As a plumbing company owner, negative online reviews are an integral part of your reputation management process. Instead of perceiving them like a death sentence for your plumbing business, change your thinking and see them as opportunities to resolve the current problem and to establish a positive reputation online.

3. Social Media Monitoring

Social media dashboard

Social media is a great tool that you can use to manage your plumbing company’s online reputation. Social media platforms can help you establish credibility, trust and puts your business in good standing within the plumbing industry.

They provide one of the most effective ways to connect or communicate with your potential clients. If prospects comment on your post, make sure that you respond to them with helpful information. Satisfied clients will typically share your posts to a larger audience and thus boosting your reputation online.

Social media monitoring offers a look at what your target audience has to say about you, your competitors, and the plumbing market, in general, there is a lot of activity on social media nowadays.

Monitoring this activity can help you understand your clients better and gives you details to enhance your plumbing marketing strategy, stay on top of competitors, build relationships and generate plumbing leads.

4. Deleting Negative Reviews

complain concept

Sometimes you need to request your web host provider to remove a nasty review on your plumbing website. Normally, they will comply if the review is malicious.

Shout out and let your concerns be heard. Write a post to explain what happened, post it on your blog, send it to a review site, and let your concerns known publicly.

Make Your Plumbing Reputation Management Easy with Blackstorm Design +Marketing Today

Plumbing contractors who have been in the industry for long will typically have a long list of customers who have possibly reviews on various platforms, such as Yelp, Angie’s List, Google, and Facebook. Blackstorm Design + Marketing can assist you to keep track of where your plumbing reputation is by combining them all in a centralized place.

Keep business at the top with our online reputation management services

Leverage our online plumbing reputation management solutions to grow your customer base. Regarding your online reputation, our experts will work to:

Get Your Plumbing Company Noticed

With all the stiff competition in the plumbing industry out there, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the competition. Our online reputation management specialists will analyze what makes your plumbing company unique to others by showcasing your credentials, success stories, and board certifications. Then, our team will do whatever it takes to obtain those 5-star reviews and ranking #1 on the search engine result pages.

Emphasize Online Reviews

Homeowners want to find a plumber that will fix their problems efficiently and quickly, so they regularly turn to friends, family, and online reviews for recommendations and advice to identify which plumber is suitable for them. So, ensure that most of your positive reviews are boosted to the top of search engine results pages to help your prospects decide which plumber they are likely to work with and trust.

Highlight Your Unique Selling Proposition

Through content creation, PPC ad campaigns, social media advertising, and retargeting, we promote what makes your plumbing business stand out while maintaining consistent messaging across all platforms so that your clients can rest easy knowing that they have made the right choice in outsourcing your plumbing services.

Establish Trust

Along with identifying the appropriate review websites to promote your plumbing services and create consistent brand messaging for your website and search engines, our online reputation management specialists examine your social media platforms to see where we can position you as an expert in the plumbing industry.

Want to find out more about our online reputation management services for plumbers?

Contact us

As part of a comprehensive internet marketing strategy, online review management can help to improve your company’s authority and awareness. It has never been simple to take charge of your company’s online reputation, and with some assistance from Blackstorm Design + Marketing, you can instantly get the positive reputation you have always wanted.

For more information, please schedule a free discovery call with Blackstorm Design + Marketing. Our experts will be happy to offer any information you require about online reputation management services and discuss your unique needs.

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