12 Plumbing Marketing Ideas, Ranked by What a Call Costs

What is the best way to advertise as a plumber?

For most plumbing companies, the best way is to show up where people already look when the water is on the floor: the Google map results, the first few search results, and your reviews. That is why the list starts there. People with a burst pipe do not browse. They call one of the first plumbers they see who looks trustworthy and answers the phone.

A quick note on the ranking. It goes by rough cost per call, from free or nearly free at the top to paying for every lead at the bottom. It is our judgement from building and marketing home service sites, not a price list, so treat it as a starting order.

Free or almost free

1. Fill out your Google Business Profile completely. Pick "Plumber" as your primary category, add every service you offer, set your service area, add real photos of your vans, crew and jobs, and keep your hours correct, including emergency hours if you take night calls. This is the single biggest thing that decides who shows in the map results.

2. Ask for a Google review after every job. Send the link by text before you leave the driveway. Fresh, steady reviews matter more than a big old total, and reply to every one, good or bad. Here is how to respond to a bad Google review without making it worse.

3. Post your jobs on your Google profile. A photo of a finished water heater install with one line about the neighborhood keeps the profile active and gives searchers something real to look at.

4. Ask for referrals, and make it easy. Leave a magnet or card on the water heater with your number. When something breaks again, nobody searches. They call the number on the tank.

5. Get listed in the right places. Make sure your business name, address and phone number match exactly on Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp, the BBB and your local chamber. Our page on local citations explains why the details have to match.

Low cost, pays off over time

6. Build a page for every service you want more of. One "Services" page cannot rank for water heater repair, drain cleaning, sewer line replacement and emergency plumbing at the same time. A separate page for each one can. This is the idea with the best long-term return on the list, because a page that ranks keeps bringing calls without paying per click.

7. Make your website easy to call from a phone. Click-to-call in the header, your service area on the first screen, real photos, reviews and your license number. Most emergency plumbing searches happen on a phone, and a slow or confusing site sends that caller straight back to Google. If yours is not doing that, here is how we approach plumber website design.

8. Add pages for the towns you actually serve. Only for places you really work, and only with real detail about jobs there. Copying one page twenty times with the town name swapped can hurt you. Our answer on whether you need a page for every city covers where the line is.

Paid: you pay again for every call

9. Google Local Services Ads. These are the ads at the very top of the page that show a Google badge next to the business name. You pay per lead instead of per click (Google Local Services Ads). They can bring calls quickly for plumbers, but the cost per lead depends heavily on your market and the job type.

10. Google search ads. You choose the searches and pay per click. They are fast and controllable, and they stop the moment you stop paying. If you are weighing the two, our answer on SEO or Google Ads for contractors compares them honestly.

11. Facebook and Nextdoor. Better for staying known in neighborhoods than for emergency calls, because nobody opens Facebook when a pipe bursts. They work for maintenance offers and water heater replacements people can plan. More in Facebook or Google for home service leads.

12. Lead sites like Angi and Thumbtack. You pay for leads that are often sent to several plumbers at once. They can fill a slow week, but you are renting customers rather than building your own source of calls. See whether lead generation sites are worth it.

What are some good promotional items for plumbers?

The ones that stay where the next problem happens. A sticker or magnet on the water heater or under the kitchen sink, a fridge magnet with your emergency number, and a clean, branded van that gets seen around town every day. Pens and koozies get thrown in a drawer. A sticker on the tank gets read exactly when someone needs a plumber.

How much should a plumbing company spend on marketing?

There is no single right number, but it should be planned, not whatever is left at the end of the month. Our answer on how much a home service business should spend on marketing walks through how to set a budget. The bigger point is where the money goes. Spending on the free and low-cost ideas first means every dollar you later put into ads is backed by a profile and a site that convert.

Where to start this week

Do ideas 1 and 2 today. They cost nothing and they decide the map results. Then look at your website: does it have a page for each service you want more of, and can someone call you in one tap? If you would rather hand the whole thing off, that is what our local SEO for plumbers work does, one profile and one page at a time.

Frequently asked questions