Tulloch Priest breaks down three ways to grow a plumbing or heating business: manage customers by returning calls fast and asking for reviews, do offline marketing with van wraps and leaflets, and build a digital presence with a website and Google ads. All three matter equally.
No matter how good of a gas engineer or plumber you are, your business is bound to fail unless you get enough jobs and price them correctly. Whether you've just gone self-employed, hired a new engineer, or simply want to fill up your schedule, there are 3 things you need to focus on. The first is your customer, as a happy customer leads to referrals and recommendations. The second is offline marketing, which includes everything you do in the real world to find jobs. And the third, last but not least, is digital marketing, which is everything you do online to find customers. Now, you're unlikely to find much success by focusing on just one of these areas. It will need to be a combination of all three. Let's go over some strategies you can use in each of these areas, starting with your customer. Return the calls as soon as possible. Customers don't like to wait. If you're too busy during the day working on jobs, try blocking off some time to return calls during the day or hire a part-time assistant. Ask for reviews. There is no reason to be shy about asking for reviews. A happy customer will be willing to leave you a 5-star review, and this can help you get lots more work in the long run. Send service reminders. What better way to impress your customers than to send them a yearly service reminder. This can be completely automated with tools like Gas Engineer Software. Now let's move on to offline marketing. Most of these are quick and easy, so I'll fire them off quickly. Leaflets or flyers posted through letterboxes near where you're working. Wrap your van with vinyl that has a company name, logo, and contact details on it. Boiler stickers so new house owners or forgetful ones can be reminded of your business. And branded radiator keys to leave at a customer's house. Now for digital marketing, which is a great way to find those customers who search online for businesses like yours. Make sure you have a simple but clean website with all the basics on it. Claim your Google Business Profile so searchers can find your business online. Create some social media accounts and start posting at least once a week. Run some online search ads with Google so that your brand pops above your competitors in searches. And that is it for this video. For a more in-depth guide, be sure to check out our full guide, which includes a downloadable workbook full of useful marketing tips and tricks. Until next time.
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