The pipeline to success: 14 plumbing lead generation ideas

What’s the best thing for a plumbing business? A steady stream of clients and a phone that does not stop ringing. It sounds perfect, but it can be hard to achieve, especially in a competitive market. 

Home service businesses like plumbing companies must constantly be on the lookout to increase their lead generation channels and acquire new customers. To do that, all they need is a set of robust and reliable plumbing lead generation strategies. 

In this blog post, we bring you the top fourteen plumbing lead generation ideas to help you scale your business faster than competitors. 

How to generate plumbing leads: 14 strategies to follow in 2024 

The best plumbing lead generation strategies ensure the business reaches the ideal target market across multiple channels. This improves their chance of connecting with the right audience base and converting them into customers. 

Here are the top plumbing lead generation ideas that businesses must invest in: 

1. Optimize your presence on Google 
2. Manage your business listing across various contractor listing websites
3. Invest to grow in local search marketing 
4. Optimize your website for the best customer experience 
5. Work on direct marketing ideas 
6. Capture leads with Birdeye Webchat 
7. Establish a strong presence on social media
8. Run Google paid campaigns 
9. Leverage the power of reviews
10. Build a referral strategy 
11. Advertise with vehicle wraps 
12. Improve customer experience with feedback management 
13. Run seasonal campaigns 
14. Enable appointments

Now, let’s look at each of these in detail for your plumbing business. 

1. Optimize your presence on Google 

With most business searches starting on Google, it’s crucial for your business to appear in the top search results for your service location. A Birdeye survey shows that the three most influential factors for customers in making purchase decisions are word-of-mouth recommendations from family and friends, review sites, and search engine results. 

Your plumbing business can boost your presence on Google and attract customers with a Google Business Profile. 

Here are the simple steps you can take to capture the attention of homeowners looking for plumbing services on Google: 

• Add or claim your business on Google Business Profile.
• Make sure that your Google listing is complete and accurate in all aspects: Business name, Address, phone number, website, service locations, photos, and important updates about the business. 
• Ensure your business details are consistent with those on your website and other niche-specific listing websites. 
• Request all customers to leave Google reviews for your business as soon as a transaction is over. Use an automated review request system such as Birdeye Reviews for best results. 
• Respond to all Google reviews and Questions from customers on your profile. 

As you can see, businesses with more information on their Profiles rank higher over those with more reviews or ratings. The more active and complete your profile is, the higher your chances are for ranking in the top three results on local searches. 

2. Manage your business listing across various contractor listing websites

Most home service businesses and service professionals list on location-specific and industry-specific listing websites to generate leads. This is a crucial step to improve the impact of your digital marketing strategies. 

Building a presence on these listing websites helps Google verify your profile for local search ranking and builds credibility for your business with customers. 

While having a profile on plumbing listing websites is essential, it’s even more important to manage these listings. You must track all listings to check for customer reviews, update any operational hour changes, and add new products/services. 

Some plumber-specific lead generation platforms are Angi, Houzz,  Porch, Better Business Bureau, Thumbtack, Facebook, and TrustedPros. 

With Birdeye Listings, you can update information, manage listings, and track clicks/overall performance from a centralized dashboard. 

3. Invest to grow in local search marketing

If your business serves multiple locations within a city or state, you must ensure that all these locations get equal attention from customers and Google to run a successful plumbing service.

You can make that happen by investing in local search marketing. 

Some steps that can help plumbing businesses rank higher in local search results and generate leads are: 

• Create individual location pages on your website with local-specific content that shows customers and Google that you know your target customers. 
• Specify service locations in your Google Business Profile. 
• Encourage customers to mention their location when they leave reviews on Google and other customer review sites. 

These steps build authority and help you grow your business across locations. 

4. Optimize your website for the best customer experience 

The website acts as a digital office and storefront for service businesses like plumbing. This is the first interaction a potential customer has with your business. When you lead them here from ads, Google Business Profile, or social media, ensure they get the best experience. 

Your plumbing business website must:

• Be optimized for mobile searches and visits. This is crucial because 50% of all searches come from mobile devices, and a good experience can persuade them to stay longer and engage. 
• Contain consistent information as other marketing channels.
• Feature Google reviews with a widget to showcase social proof. 
• Showcase previous projects and your team to build confidence in the brand.

Optimizing your website can instantly help you convince a website visitor to become a customer. 

5. Work on direct marketing ideas

Most marketing strategies use third-party mediums like search engines, social media platforms, and similar platforms. They own the customer data and make you dependent on them to reach customers. 

Direct marketing strategies like email marketing, SMS marketing, and direct mail eliminate the middleman and allow you to connect with customers directly. 

Some of the best ways to grow your plumbing business with direct marketing are:

• Sharing important information on plumbing maintenance, new material updates, etc. 
• Sending discount codes and promotional offers on plumbing deals. 
• Sharing seasonal greetings to boost brand awareness. 
• Sending referral coupons. 

6. Capture leads with Birdeye Webchat 

All marketing campaigns direct customers to your business website. But the fight doesn’t end there. How well you capture customer attention and turn visitors into leads defines your success. 

An automated web chat solution like Birdeye Webchat that interacts with your web page/ mobile app visitors can help them stay longer, get answers to their questions faster, and convert into a lead by sharing personal information. 

Specifically, AI chatbot solutions like Birdeye Webchat help you provide 24/7 service to your customers. 

AI-driven web chat solutions are more successful in capturing, converting leads, and boosting your business marketing efforts because: 

• They instantly answer customer queries from a knowledge base of FAQs and their training on GPT, Natural language processing, and machine learning. 
• Webchats are better at engaging customers, providing personalized recommendations, and directing them to the right resources. 
• They engage customers right at the time of highest purchase intent, and a human-like conversation is more likely to impress the customer than a static landing page. 

7. Establish a strong presence on social media 

Choosing the right plumbing business takes time and consideration. As it often involves a substantial financial commitment, customers like to prefer brands that are well-known and highly recommended by their peers. 

Plumbing businesses can significantly boost brand recognition, awareness, and online reputation by building a solid presence on social media. 

For best results, plumbing businesses should:

• Start location-specific pages for their plumbing business
• Repost customer reviews, video testimonials, and feedback regularly to show potential customers that they do a good job.
• Share informational content on the plumbing industry, home maintenance, home improvement, and the latest technologies. 
• Update before/after project photos wherever possible.
• Post video content to attract new audiences to their social media profile. 

Recommended read: Top 20 social media post ideas for your business 

8. Run paid campaigns on Google 

People running Google searches around “plumbing service in <location>” or “plumbing contractor near me” have the highest purchase intent. They have a need and are looking for the best match for it.

By investing in Google PPC ads or Google local service ads, you can make sure that the customers see your business before any other competitor. With paid campaigns on Google, you can significantly increase your click-through rates and generate higher web traffic for your business. 

While this can be expensive, look for low-bid keywords and strategically target the right location for the best results. 

With Birdeye Listings, you can analyze your listings and Google Business Profile for the keywords that generate the maximum clicks and web traffic. Leverage this knowledge to bid for the best keywords for your Google paid campaigns. 

Recommend read: Top 16 free advertising sites for your business 

9. Leverage the power of reviews 

Reviews are a powerful source of social proof. Reading the authentic experiences of other customers helps potential customers trust your business more. 

A higher volume of reviews on your Google Business Profile and other home service review sites also helps you rank higher on local search results. 

But just collecting reviews is not enough to grow your plumbing business successfully. Your reviews can do so much more. 

To fully unleash the power of reviews:

• Embed a Google reviews widget on your plumbing website to showcase the average star rating and popular reviews. 
• Set up automated review sharing on social media so your followers can see how well you do your job. 
• Include positive reviews in email newsletters. 
• Enable Google seller rating on Google ads to showcase your reviews and improve the CTR of your Google ads by 17%. 

10. Build a referral strategy 

Most plumbing businesses run on word-of-mouth recommendations and customer referrals. It is one of the most potent lead-generation channels. But you can strengthen it further by focusing on and building a solid referral marketing strategy for your plumbing business.

• Approach your business transactions to generate referrals out of every customer. 
• Systematically send referral requests to customers who have written positive reviews for your business across channels. 
• Incentivize referrals by sharing unique referral codes with customers. 
• Manage and follow up on referral leads regularly to improve conversion rate. 

Birdeye Referrals helps you run a successful referral program with automated requests, easy-to-use templates, and robust reporting metrics. 

11. Advertise with vehicle wraps

The higher the brand awareness for your business, the higher your chance of getting a phone call when a customer needs a plumbing service. Home services businesses like plumbing can gain much traction by targeting specific localities and improving brand recognition. 

One of the most effective ways of doing so is to invest in branded vehicle wraps that can promote your business with impact. 

You can use vehicle wraps on your office vans, and cars, and even work with taxi unions to have cabs get them for their cars. 

The more people see it, the better. Ensure you display the phone number and business name prominently on the vehicle wraps. 

12. Improve customer experience with feedback management 

Maintaining a strong, positive online reputation can go a long way in generating leads for your plumbing business. And the key to that is providing an exemplary customer experience to anyone interacting with your business. 

Your plumbing business must actively collect customer feedback, analyze it to understand the positive and negative factors, and act accordingly. 

You can do this by:

• Running pulse surveys with customers as soon as a project is completed. 
• Using a customer feedback management tool like Birdeye to analyze keywords repeated in surveys, overall CSAT, NPS scores, and assigning tickets for customer concerns. 
• Sharing periodic reports with the management on customer feedback to incorporate any necessary changes at the ground level. 

13. Run seasonal campaigns 

As a plumbing business, you know the peak seasons when homeowners face a lot of plumbing maintenance and other plumbing issues. It could be during the winters when they use the heating system after a while or during the rains when things get clogged. 

Proactively running specific campaigns during this season can help you gain traction with your target market. 

• Advertise on social media to remind homeowners about plumbing maintenance. 
• Over discount codes for early booking and appointment confirmation. 
• Tie up with other contractors who do home maintenance to include your plumbing business. 

Anticipating demand before it even comes can take your plumbing business a long way.  

14. Enable appointments 

Birdeye’s appointment scheduling study shows that 59% of home service contractors say that they handle ten or more appointments per day, contributing to 86% of their overall business revenue. 

People who visit your website or Google listing look for convenience over everything else. Adding a “Book online” button to your Google Business Profile, website, and social media profiles can help you generate higher leads.

You can avoid wait times on phone calls, back and forth on messages to find the right time, and instantly confirm a customer. This ensures they don’t contact another business; you get the first crack at servicing their plumbing needs. 

With Birdeye Appointments, you can instantly book appointments from your website and Google Business Profile, send reminders, and significantly boost your revenue. 

Frequently asked questions on plumbing lead generation 

Supercharge your plumbing marketing strategy with Birdeye 

To generate leads for your plumbing needs, you must focus on your online reputation, consistently ask customers for reviews, maintain a consistent presence on listing websites, and ensure that you provide the best experience to customers on your website and social media profiles. 

You can also invest in offline marketing techniques like vehicle wraps, mail marketing, and so on to reach your ideal customers.

Birdeye is the top-rated customer experience platform that allows you to grow your business with reputation management, local marketing, appointments, social media management, and referral marketing solutions.

Check out our pricing today!