Guide
Plumber marketing: do it in the order that wastes the least
Most plumbing jobs are decided before your phone rings. The customer read your reviews, checked you exist, and chose. This guide puts plumber marketing in spending order: reviews on every job, an emergency-search presence, a repeat-work habit, and video last, once the basics hold. Most of it costs time, not money.
- Spent on ads in the first three steps
- $0
- Finished 30 second ads Lite covers, once video enters
- ~11
- To cancel if video turns out not to be your lane
- 1 click
Reviews are the marketing. Everything else amplifies them.
A stranger with water on the floor picks between three plumbers they have never met. The only evidence is what past customers wrote.
Fifty reviews at 4.8 beats a billboard, and it is built one ask at a time. The moment to ask is at the door, job done, water back on. Not an email three days later.
Say it plainly. It would really help me if you left a line about what I fixed today. Send the link by text while you are standing there.
Reply to every review. The reply is read by the next customer, not the last one. A bad review answered calmly is worth more than ten perfect ones, because it shows how you handle a problem.
- One ask per job, at the door, link sent by text on the spot
- Name the job in your reply, so the review reads as real work
- Answer the bad one within a day, offer to come back, keep it calm
- Aim at the review count of the plumber above you in the map results
Be findable at 2am, because that is when pipes burst
Plumbing search is emergency search. The searcher wants the nearest competent person, now, and Google's map box is the whole battlefield.
Claim the Google Business Profile. Exact hours, emergency availability written into the description, a phone number that gets answered. Load it with photos of actual jobs, vans and faces, not the logo.
Google's Local Services Ads sit above everything for plumber-near-me searches and charge per lead, not per click. Prices vary by city, and the channel only pays once the profile and the reviews can close what it sends.
The website has one job: say what you do, where, and what things roughly cost. A plumber who publishes a price range gets the call from everyone tired of hearing it depends.
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Repeat work is cheaper than any lead
The customer whose tap you fixed will one day need a boiler service, a bathroom refit, a frozen pipe. Whether they call you again depends on whether they can find you in a year.
A sticker on the boiler with your name and number outlives every ad you will ever buy.
Keep a list. Job, date, what will need attention next. A text in October saying it is service season, reply to book, fills a winter.
Referrals follow the same physics. The neighbour sees the van, the customer mentions the price was fair. A card left behind with keep-this-for-next-time finishes the job.
Video is the open lane, because almost no plumber drives in it
Search any trade on TikTok or Instagram and plumbing is thin. Barbers and detailers post daily. Plumbers, almost never. That is not a reason to skip it. It is the reason it works.
The content is native to the job. A cut-open water heater full of scale is more watchable than most of what is on those apps, and you produce a version of it every working day.
Video does not bring the 2am call directly. It makes you the known name when the search happens, and it gives your map listing a face.
The honest floor: a phone, the platform's own captions and a steady habit cost nothing, and they are enough to start. The step that kills the habit is editing.
The editing step, priced
Filming a take at the van costs five minutes. Cutting it, timing captions and placing shots used to cost the evening, which is why most trade accounts go quiet by week three.
Cutroom is built for exactly that take. Upload it and the transcript becomes the editor: highlight the phrase about the corroded valve and your shot of it lands on those words. Captions burn in. A finished 9:16 MP4 comes back in about a minute.
A batch is 100 credits, export adds 20 credits per finished minute, so a 30 second ad is about 110 credits. The first 3 are free in your first 7 days, with 600 credits and no card, and carry a Cutroom mark. Lite is $19.99 a month for 1,250 credits, about 11 of those, takes the mark off, and cancels in one click.
What one 30 second ad costs, step by step
Batch plus export. Lite is $19.99 a month for 1,250 credits.
- Batch: transcript, director pass, b-roll100 CR
- Export 30 seconds, at 20 CR a finished minute10 CR
- One finished 30 second ad~110 CR
Questions people ask
- How do I market a plumbing business with no budget?
- Ask for a review at every door, claim and fill the Google Business Profile, leave a sticker on every boiler, and text past customers when service season starts. All of it costs time, not money, and it is the order this guide recommends before any ad spend.
- Are Local Services Ads worth it for plumbers?
- Often, because you pay per lead and the placement sits above the map. They convert on your reviews though: under thirty reviews, fix that first. Prices vary a lot by city, so test for a month and count booked jobs, not calls.
- How often should a plumber post videos?
- One a week is plenty, and it is a pace that survives a full call sheet. A steady weekly post for months beats a burst of seven followed by silence.
- Do I need a marketing agency?
- Not at the start. Everything in this guide is owner-sized: the review ask, the profile, the sticker, one video a week. An agency starts to make sense when there are several vans and the owner's time is worth more on quotes than on posts.
- What does the video step cost with Cutroom?
- About 110 credits for a finished 30 second ad, batch plus export. Lite is $19.99 a month for 1,250 credits, about 11 of those, cancel in one click. Basic is $39.99 for 2,500 credits and adds avatars and generated music.
- What should a plumber's website say?
- What you do, where you work, what common jobs roughly cost, and the phone number in the header. Price ranges beat a quote form: the customer calling at 11pm wants a number, not a callback promise.
Ask at every door, own the map box, leave a sticker on every boiler, and post one explained job a week. That order wastes the least, and the only expensive step left now takes about a minute.