How to Choose a Plumbing Marketing Agency in 7 Steps

Key Takeaway

Picking the right plumbing marketing agency will help you earn a competitive edge and keep you booked and busy.

Did you know that over 130,000 plumbing companies are operational in the U.S. today? That’s a huge number, meaning you need a strategic digital marketing plan to help you stand out in such a crowded industry.

While you can draft a plan and a strategy yourself, I recommend honing your key skills to provide satisfactory plumbing services to your customers. Then, leave the marketing to an experienced, reliable plumbing digital marketing agency that understands the challenges and opportunities in your industry. 

Picking the right marketing agency will help you earn a competitive edge and keep you booked and busy. Below, we share invaluable tips on how to choose a plumbing marketing agency that’ll help you book more jobs.

What are the signs you need a plumbing marketing agency?

Do you have a website that’s not attracting traffic or booking jobs? If that’s a yes, then it may be time to get help from a plumbing marketing agency that spares you the stress and time spent working on digital marketing without any tangible results. 

It may also be time to outsource your marketing needs to an experienced agency if any of the following situations apply to your business:

• You’re experiencing an inconsistent flow of qualified leads and new service calls
• You have an outdated and slow website with an interface that’s not user-friendly or mobile-friendly 
• You’re not ranking for the most relevant or location-specific keywords
• You have no marketing experience or skills
• You have high ad spend and low return on investment (ROI)
• You’re solely relying on referrals and word-of-mouth marketing

What should I look for in a plumber marketing agency?

Outsourcing your marketing needs to an agency with plumbing experience has many advantages for your business. For starters, it ensures you’re aligned and working toward the same end goal, which increases the likelihood of running successful marketing campaigns.

The right plumbing digital marketing agency should help you navigate the industry’s specific challenges, like stiff competition and seasonality, making you a top choice for homeowners and other clients. Ideally, they have the skills, experience, and tools to help you achieve your marketing goals, be it lead generation, traffic growth, or increased online visibility. 

But how do you choose a plumbing marketing agency that has the experience and expertise to help you book more jobs? Below are some factors you must consider when sifting through your list of potential plumbing marketing agencies.

1. Local market knowledge

Success for your plumbing business relies on your ability to dominate the local market, since your customers are concentrated in your geographic area. People searching for plumbing services need quick and convenient help, so they prefer to work with a local, trusted plumber. 

So, you need a marketing agency with local market knowledge to implement the most relevant strategies for your local audience. They must understand the customer behaviors based on your neighborhood and competitive landscape in your service area. 

With local market knowledge, your plumbing digital marketing partner will be able to do the following:

• Optimize for local SEO to get your business ranked in Google’s local map pack.
• Run targeted Google local service ads that reference local events, neighborhoods, and landmarks. 
• Understand competitors and run marketing campaigns that outperform them.
• Target local service areas with regional keywords and traffic patterns.

2. Plumbing industry experience

Plumbing businesses face unique challenges, such as high competition, urgent customer needs, short decision windows, and seasonal demand fluctuations. Your marketers must understand these challenges to deliver measurable results.

When your marketer doesn’t understand the strengths and weaknesses of your industry, you may miss out on some promising opportunities. A digital marketing agency with industry-specific experience can create successful marketing strategies and run high ROI campaigns because:

• They can craft action-focused ads and content that speak to customers in need of urgent plumbing services, like clogged drains and burst pipes.
• They plan relevant campaigns around seasonal service priorities, like pipe insulation in the winter and sewer line inspections in the summer.
• They can optimize for relevant industry-specific keywords, like “24-hour plumber,” “drain cleaning service,” or “water heater repair.”
• They are able to address content and target ads to the right audiences for your area, whether commercial or residential clients.

3. Omnichannel marketing expertise

Your plumbing business can’t rely on a single marketing channel to keep your phones ringing all year long. Instead, you need an omnichannel marketing strategy that incorporates different marketing channels and strategies, like: 

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
• Social media marketing

When your marketer has omnichannel marketing experience, they maximize your visibility online by ensuring potential customers can find your business on different platforms, including social media, Google, and ChatGPT.

A plumbing marketing agency with omnichannel expertise will help you build a full marketing ecosystem that builds stronger brand recognition and trust, more revenue, and more resilience to market changes. 

So, be sure to ask where their expertise lies and what marketing services they can run concurrently for your business. Working with an agency specializing in only some essential services will limit your customer touchpoints and minimize your ROI.

At WebFX, we’ve mastered the art of omnichannel marketing and even gone a step further to trademark our search visibility everywhere solution — OmniSEO^TM. With OmniSEO^TM, we help our clients rank on all major search engines, including social media, AI-powered, and traditional search engines.

🎥Video: What is OmniSEO™? A Modern SEO Strategy for the Age of AI and Social Search

4. Sustainable lead generation strategies 

If you want your plumbing business to stay competitive, you need a steady stream of work month after month. Therefore, it helps if your marketing has a good grasp of sustainable lead generation strategies that don’t involve buying leads. 

Sustainable lead generation strategies unlock sustainable revenue, lower customer acquisition costs, and stronger business resilience. Here are some lead generation strategies you should confirm your shortlisted marketers offer before committing:

• Optimizing your Google Business Profile and enhancing local SEO visibility
• Collecting and managing customer reviews consistently to build trust and credibility
• Optimizing your website content and social media pages to improve search rankings and attract qualified leads
• Running targeted PPC campaigns on Google and social media platforms to capture ready-to-book plumbing leads
• Leveraging content marketing to build trust and establish your reputation as a reliable service provider

5. Proven track record

Take out the guesswork of whether your plumbing marketing agency will deliver results by checking their track record. To confirm whether they’ve delivered satisfactory results to businesses before, you can check for the following:

• Case studies: Reputable marketing agencies showcase their successful projects as case studies on their website or social media. Check for before-and-after metrics like website traffic, call volume, lead quality, and job booking.
• Client testimonials: Strong, positive reviews from real plumbing companies show the agency’s reliability and results.
• Industry experience: Agencies with at least a few years of plumbing marketing experience help you gain a competitive advantage. 
• Awards and certifications: Marketing awards and certifications, like Clutch Awards, are used to prove excellence in their craft and boost trust and credibility.

Working with an agency with a proven track record of success minimizes the risk of wasting marketing spend on ineffective strategies. It may also deliver faster results because they’ve established tried-and-true methods over time.

6. Transparent pricing

You want to balance your marketing budget with your overall expenses to attract customers while running a successful plumbing business sustainably. Working with an agency with a transparent pricing model protects your business and ensures you get real value for every dollar you invest in marketing.

Speaking of pricing, start by setting aside 7-10% of your revenue for marketing. At this rate, you have enough left for your essential business operations and enough to grow your plumbing business steadily. How can you tell an agency is not being transparent with their pricing? Here are some signs:

• They advertise extremely low starting prices for their marketing services
• They offer long-term contracts without clear terms, deliverables, and cancellation policies
• They don’t provide clear metrics or measurements of success
• They don’t give you time to review pricing details or make quote comparisons

Be sure to check what different agencies offer at different prices to prevent misunderstandings about what should be included in your marketing plan. A trustworthy plumbing marketing agency will break down every cost, explain every deliverable, and answer your pricing questions without hesitation.

7. Clear results tracking and reporting

When diverting part of your hard-earned revenue to digital marketing, you deserve to know what’s working and the value your investment is driving. Therefore, consistent results tracking and reporting are a non-negotiable for any plumber looking to drive measurable results in the long run. 

At WebFX, our plumbing digital marketing clients get access to our smart marketing proprietary software, RevenueCloudFX. With this tool, we are able to track, measure, and activate marketing data, enabling us and our clients to make more informed decisions about the direction of their campaigns.

Steer clear of marketing companies that don’t offer clear result tracking and reporting because you’ll be missing out on all the following benefits:

• Access to real-time results, like the number of calls, website visits, and booked jobs
• Clear view of which campaigns are working and the ones that are lagging behind
• Opportunities to fix performance issues before they snowball into bigger problems
• Visibility into your ROI to see whether your marketing dollars are driving booked jobs
• Spot potential issues like rising ad costs or call volumes 

Red flags when choosing a plumbing marketing agency

When discussing how to choose a plumbing marketing agency, we must also cover some red flags because the wrong one will cost you time, money, and valuable leads. Here are some signs that an agency at the top of your list may not be the right one for you:

• Vague or unrealistic guarantees, like “We guarantee thousands of leads immediately”
• Locked-in, long-term contracts without trial periods or clear deliverables
• One-size-fits-all packages unfit for your local service area, marketing goals, and services
• No clear results tracking and reporting plan, meaning you won’t know how your marketing budget is being spent
• Negative reviews online that report missed deadlines and poor communication

Partner with WebFX for sustainable plumbing business growth

The right plumbing marketing agency isn’t just a vendor — they’re your business’s growth partner. So, ensure that while you want to stick to your marketing budget, your partner meets the above criteria. WebFX is one such plumbing digital marketing agency that meets the above criteria.

We have over 29 in digital marketing, and out of these, we’ve spent [stat hrs-xp-home-repair] working with home repair experts like plumbers. You can count on us to help you achieve your plumbing marketing needs, whether that’s generating qualified leads or boosting online visibility.

To overhaul your plumbing business’s online presence, request a free custom quote today or call us at 888-601-5359 to speak to a digital marketing strategist about your needs.