As much as many plumbers would hope that the biggest determining factor in their success is their plumbing skills. The evidence seems to point elsewhere.
It’s not how long you’ve been plumbing, which accreditations you have or how many years you’ve served.
These are all advantages, no doubt. And if I was a plumber, I’d prefer to have these than not.
But if you’re looking to grow your plumbing business at a rate which is ‘unnatural’ to the rest of the industry, then there are other factors to consider.
Think about this.
Is the best plumber you know also the richest plumber?
No, it’s rarely the case.
The bottom line really comes down to how easily, profitably and ultimately quickly you can bring in new customers, whilst also getting repeat business from existing customers too.
Money loves speed.
One of the biggest determining factors is how quickly you can make things happen.
- How quickly you answer your phone
- How quickly you get to the customer’s house
- How quickly you can get them a quote
- How quickly you can schedule the work to be done
- How quickly you get the work finished and signed off
- How quickly you take payment
If the above process all happens within a 24 hour period, you’ve probably got a very happy customer and some decent profit in your pocket.
If it drags out over a few weeks, the flow of money will sadly be less forthcoming.
The same principle applies with your website and marketing too.
Here are the 5 ‘multipliers’ which as you successfully apply, will compound the effectiveness of bringing in new sales enquiries through your website..
Speed Multiplier #1: Speed At Which They Find You
For anyone who doesn’t already know a good plumber, and they want the job taken care of, they’ll most likely head off to Google.
They’ll do a search for “plumber near me” or “boiler repair Manchester” or wherever they are located. The sooner they find you the better.
The fastest way of them finding you is to take up the most space on the first page of results. Your website should appear in the ads at the top, the map listings and the ‘organic’ 10 results further down the page.
Like most things that work, I’m afraid this won’t be an easy job.
If you want a predictable flood of leads and enquiries, you’ll need to understand (or work with someone that understands) exactly how to master the search engines.
Speed Multiplier #2: Speed at which your website loads
Someone has clicked on your listing in Google and is taken to your website. The next most important thing is making sure it loads FAST.
It has always been essential to get someone’s attention quickly. But it feels like the world’s attention span has withered away to almost nothing.
The evidence backs this up.
If your website takes more than a second to load, you’ll notice a drop off in enquiries.
If it takes more than three seconds then you’ll have people clicking back before you know it.
Website speed is where your plumbing business can get a critical advantage.
The faster it loads, the more people will read it.
Speed Multiplier #3: The speed they can understand why they should choose you
Having a fast loading website might stop potential customers sleeping through your fingers, but it won’t get the phone ringing on its own.
The prospect needs to understand and agree with ‘the reason’ for choosing you, over everybody else including doing nothing and just proscratating.
The cleanest and simplest way is to articulate this is by using a compelling ‘headline’.
A sentence or two which will stop the prospect in their tracks and make them pay attention.
A great headline should be focused on your prospect’s needs and not yours.
It should describe what they will get from you, that they can’t get anywhere else.
It could be focused on what they get, how their lives will be better, what pain they will avoid or what promise you are making to them.
Are you the longest running, best rated, only same-day response or do you offer free call outs?
Speed Multiplier #4: The speed at which you build trust
Now that you’ve made a great promise, you very quickly need to add credibility by stacking ‘evidence’ to prove that you can deliver.
The important thing to know is that the decision to trust firstly comes from an emotional part of the brain. In a split second sometimes. It’s then subsequently justified with functional and logical reasoning.
The best way to help your prospect to trust you on an emotional level is by ‘showing’ and not telling.
This is processed quicker by the brain.
To do this, you want real images of your team, your engineers, your vans, your work, your customers, etc.
Avoid stock images like the plague. Especially the ones that are used over and over again on plumbing sites up and down the country.
Another way to add ‘overwhelming’ evidence is to show your credibility with reviews.
For any plumbing business reviews are like gold nuggets.
If you don’t have reviews, make it your top priority.
Ask, ask, ask. People are more likely to give you a review than you might expect.
If they don’t, you’ve more than likely got other operational problems you need to take care of before trying to market your business.
Speed Multiplier #5: The speed at which you present the next step
So you’ve got the reader to your website and got their attention.
Are you going to just leave them to figure out the next step of their own accord?
Hoping they’ll find the contact us page and send you an enquiry or give you a call is too risky.
If you crave an above average amount of sales enquiries, you’ll need to present a good reason to get in touch.
And more importantly you want this button to be visible from the moment they land on your page.
In fact, it’s hard to have too many. I just checked one of our best performing pages and the same button is repeated 15 times.
The best thing to offer is something that is quick, easy and doesn’t take too long to get. At the same time it should also ‘set up’ the sale. For example, “check pricing and availability now”.
FREE Review of your plumbing website and marketing
Getting a plumbing website designed and built is a fairly straightforward process.
But getting that website to consistently and predictably bring in new customers month after month isn’t so easy.
If you’ve ever given it a go yourself, you’ll no doubt have experienced the difficulty. Getting anything working takes investments of money and time to figure out what works and what doesn’t
Thankfully, you have the opportunity to take an incredible shortcut.
We work exclusively with fast growing plumbing companies so we’ve already done the hard work.
You’ll get a ‘no holds barred, take no prisoners’ full review of your website and marketing to find out each of the things that are currently growing or slowing your business right now.
Reviews take time to prepare for and host so we can only do a small number each month.
