Focusing on SEO improved our online visibility, leading to increased website traffic in six months. Positive Google reviews also helped attract more customers. Also, using Facebook and Instagram to share project photos and tips helped us connect with our community and generate more leads over a year. Print ads, like flyers and newspaper ads, didn’t bring in many customers, as most people preferred searching online. We also tried TV commercials, but they were costly and didn’t generate enough leads, so we stopped after three months.
When I started OP Plumbing Services over 20 years ago, our marketing was almost entirely traditional. Word of mouth and local newspaper ads the bread and butter of local businesses. And you know what? Those methods worked really well, helping us build a strong, loyal customer base. Word of mouth is still one of the best methods for new business. With the rise of digital marketing, we began experimenting with online tactics. Investing in an website and Google Ads initially, with mixed results. Recently, we've had a focus on local SEO and started creating content centered around common plumbing issues. So I think mixing traditional methods with investing in a website is a great way to target your local market.
As a co-founder of Limestone Digital, organic search and pay-per-click advertising have driven the strongest results for our plumbing clients. For one client, we increased their Google Ads Performance by 35% in 9 months, leading to 45% more calls. Running a social contest generated 32 high-quality leads and 500 new Facebook followers for another plumber in 6 weeks. In contrast, traditional advertising fell short. We’ve found digital marketing excels at generating leads and loyalty for plumbers. While timelines vary, plumbing businesses can expect noticeable results within 6-12 months. SEO and social media require consistency but provide long-term benefits. For organic search, we focused on content creation, local citations, and customer reviews. We published blog posts on common plumbing issues to establish subject matter expertise. We listed plumbing businesses on 30+ local directories and review sites. We set up automated review requests to generate real customer reviews. These actions significantly improved rankings and drove more local traffic. Pay-per-click ads allowed us to target homeowners searching for plumbers. We tested multiple ad variations to optimize click-through rates and cost per conversion. Retargeting ads kept the plumbing business top of mind for website visitors. Precise targeting and re-marketing deluvered an affordable and steady stream of qualified leads.
We are a plumbing, heating and renewables company, set up in December 2021. We originally had a small budget for marketing, so had to make careful decisions as to where to invest to get the most return. We set up a website and placed an ad in a planning application magazine and local magazines/ newspapers. We found that the traditional methods failed, receiving one phone call from the planning magazine which did not convert. The local magazine/newspaper did not produce any leads. We abandoned the traditional methods after a few months. After reviewing our efforts in Summer 2023, we discovered that most people who are looking for a heat pump installation use a search engine as a primary tool for research and so focused on the website ranking higher with SEO techniques. We also improved our local SEO with the google/bing business profiles and attended a digital marketing course to learn about SEO, blogging, social media advertising and utilising AI. Sales increased, receiving an average of 10 leads per month. The conversion rate increased among these organic leads to around 50% which is a massive improvement. We are continuing to improve the website and the google/bing business profiles, running targeted advertising on Facebook to increase our impressions and leads continue to grow. In March 2024, we received 15 leads through these channels and the conversion rate continues to average at 50%. From the last two and a half years’ experience with both digital and traditional marketing we have learnt that gaining organic leads is key to growing the business. Traditional marketing is reducing in popularity, even among the older population, and going forward digital marketing will be key to standing out amongst our competitors and continuing to grow a successful and stable business. Out of the digital marketing strategies, we have found that the opimisation of the google and bing business profiles has produced the most success and leads to date. We predict that as we continue to optimise our website, this will rank higher and eventually produce more leads, however it is a long term process. We are investing a larger budget in improving the website over the next month and plan to launch a youtube channel in the new year to further increase our online presence. We believe that over the next few years, traditional marketing methods will continue to reduce in popularity and we may even see the end of the paper magazine/ newspaper in the near future.