6 Plumbing Marketing Tips to Increase Revenue With Google My Business

If you’re handling plumbing marketing, you’ve probably heard that it’s crucial to set up a Google My Business (GMB) page to ensure that Google gives your company the best rankings on local search results. It’s free, and it’s extremely effective at generating visibility in your local market. By tying into other Google products like Google+ and Google Maps, GMB is now a single source of info for consumers looking for a product or service.

The key pieces of information Google requires are company name, phone number and address, and the most important factor for ranking is the latter. This is simple for typical brick-and-mortar storefronts — but what if your business doesn’t have a physical address? Or even if you do, what if the more relevant geographic info is your service area?

Not to worry. You’re setting up a GMB account with complete, up-to-date information. Follow these steps and optimize your plumbing marketing with a free Google My Business listing in your local market.

1. Pick an address to associate with your business, and decide whether or not to make it public

You have to choose an address for GMB, and you will most likely only rank for that city, regardless of your service area. So choose wisely. If you have an office, use that address for GMB and everywhere else you’re listed online (it’s important to be consistent). You can also use the address of a business partner if that person/company is in your service area.

If your business address is also your home address, though, you’ll want to make this private, so only Google can see it. The exception is if you are actually officing out of your home and receiving customers there on a regular basis — in which case you should make your address public and be transparent that you’re directing customers to a residence.

2. Focused plumbing marketing: select your service area

The good news is that GMB allows you to select a service area by entering either the ZIP codes or cities you service. To do this, log into GMB, navigate to the “Address” section, and select “Yes” next to “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their locations.” Keep in mind, however, that Google will locate a center point of the areas you enter and draw a radius out from there — so if you enter too many cities, the result may not look like what you want.

If you want your physical address to be public and you have staff at your storefront or home office, you can also check the box next to “I serve customers at my business address.”

3. Set your hours generously

Brick-and-mortar stores may only to enter the actual hours their storefront is staffed. But plumbers can enter any hours they are willing to receive phone calls. Having longer hours may set you apart from other businesses in your category. Think hard about when you’re willing to pick up the phone.

4. Request and respond to reviews

Take your plumbing marketing to the next level with online reviews. Google takes reviews of businesses very seriously in its local SEO ranking process. It’s a good idea to create a link that customers can use to write a Google review of your business. It’s against the rules to give incentives for customer reviews. But, giving your happy customers an easy way to write a quick kudos can improve your rankings significantly. And once you have them, be sure to engage with customers by responding their reviews.

5. Take advantage of the new Posts feature

Google recently launched a new feature of GMB called Posts. Similar to social media, you can now share photos, updates or promotions directly to your GMB account. This will build your customer base and help engage repeat customers. Your posts appear on your GMB listing. You can use them to direct visitors to take specific actions, like request an estimate or sign up for your newsletter.

6. Remove duplicate listings on Google

Finally, but possibly most importantly, locate and delete any duplicate listings for your business. Google typically only allows one listing per business. Duplicates can cause confusion for both search engines and customers.  If you have two listings and reviews are split between them, you’ll find neither listing has a very impressive record. Or if you have two listings with different phone numbers because it changed at some point. These inconsistencies will lead to lower local search engine rankings. And you can imagine how quickly potential customers will move on to the next business.

According to Google, 70% of consumers consider multiple businesses before choosing to go with one. Your Google My Business account can harness the power of local search and capture those customers.

Looking for more marketing tips for your plumbing company? Read this list of 25 Plumber Marketing Ideas from the Pros.

Want to learn more about how to grow your service area business using technology? Book a free, private demo of Vonigo’s plumbing business management software and we’ll show you.