Advertising for plumbing and heating firms

Plumbing and heating covers three revenue streams with almost nothing in common: emergencies, installations, and maintenance. Treating them as one market is the standard error.

Emergencies: findability, not advertising

A burst pipe generates a search and three phone calls within ten minutes. The decision is made on who answers.

What matters: a complete map listing with accurate hours and a working phone number; genuine reviews, since a panicking customer scans star ratings; a call answered by a person, not a voicemail; and a stated response time you can actually meet.

Search advertising on emergency terms works and is expensive per click, but the jobs justify it. Cap the daily budget and accept the cost.

Heating replacement: a long decision

A heating system is replaced roughly every twenty years. The decision takes months and involves grants, technology choices and considerable anxiety about cost.

The advertising that wins it is not an advertisement. It is content that answers the questions people actually search: what does a heat pump cost in an unrenovated house, which grants apply now, whether radiators need replacing, how long the work takes.

Service contracts: the overlooked product

Sell the contract at handover of every installation, in writing, with the first year included in the price. Conversion at that moment is many times higher than any later attempt.

The grant question is your best content

Heating grants change frequently and are hard to understand. A page that lists the current schemes for your region, with amounts, conditions and deadlines, updated quarterly, does three things: it ranks in search, it generates enquiries from people at the start of the process, and it positions you as the adviser.

It also needs genuine maintenance. An out-of-date grant page is worse than none.

What to show

Photographs of finished plant rooms, not stock images of taps. Named equipment brands, because informed customers search for them. A price indication per system type. And the names and photographs of the installers who will actually come to the house.