trade shows

Have a plumbing business and looking for effective ways to attract more customers? Below are just a few marketing strategies that are worth trying to help boost business.

Build an attractive website

A website is essential for generating customers and making your business look official. This needs to look professional in order to build a sense of trust. Make sure that information like contact details, services you provide and credentials are clearly visible on the homepage. You can also display testimonials from happy customers. There are lots of cheap and easy ways to build your own website. Alternatively, you can always hire a web design company to make one for you.

Get on social media

Social media is another great tool for connecting with customers online. You should create a Facebook business page at the very least. Post content on your page regularly – this could include updates, promotions and plumbing-related tips. Boost posts to help them reach a larger audience.

Encourage positive online reviews

A lot of customers like to look at online reviews before deciding whether a business is trustworthy. Encourage every happy customer you work with to leave a positive Google review. This will help you to encourage more customers by showing that you’re a company people can depend on.

Invest in SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is a marketing strategy that can help to boost the rankings of your website. This can lead to more people visiting your site – and consequently more customers. SEO relies on using various tricks such as using keywords on your website and boosting the page of your site. It’s worth hiring an SEO company to do all this for you as it’s not something you can easily do yourself. 

Print off some business cards

There are many types of marketing to try beyond online marketing. Handing out business cards is a simple and effective way to get business offline. If you meet someone who may be looking for a plumbing service, you can quickly exchange contact details and make yourself look more professional by handing out a business card. You can also post business cards through letterboxes and pin them up on public notice boards.

Consider taking part in local marketing events

There may be local events that you can sponsor – this involves putting some money into the event in exchange for being able to display branded posters and banners at the event. There could even be a local trade show worth entering – by renting a 10×20 trade show booth and showing up with some flyers, you may be able to generate some business. 

Invest in branded vehicle wrapping

Your car or van could be used as a form of mobile advertising. Using a vinyl wrap you can easily promote your company name and contact details on the side of your vehicle. This will make your business look more professional, and you could generate some extra business from it. There are companies that specialize in producing these vinyl wraps. 

No doubt about it, COVID-19 quickly changed the way we work, and play. Travel and in person visits came to a screeching halt. Professional offices, suppliers, even many working shops closed their doors to visitors. Training in the not to distant past was done, for the most part, in person. Conveniently, most trainers adapted quickly to offer online training options. Many of the companies in our industry were already familiar with platforms like Go To meeting. This made the switch to virtual training fairly easy for those trainers.

Some trainers I met through the ESCO group devised hybrid virtual training events. With a few cameras, one that would follow you around a room they kept the hands on training available also.

An instructor in front of a piece of equipment would be led through the troubleshooting in real time, clever and almost like being there.

The question remains, what happens going forward in the training world. In some cases offices that made the change to virtual workspaces plan on staying that way. In some larger cities’ that has created  office space vacancies and those building owners are scrambling to repurpose those spaces to get the rent rolling back in.

In cities like San Francisco it was a tough slog to see more than two engineering firms in a day due to traffic and parking logistics. With online, virtual sessions you can present to their entire staff as well as any locations they have scattered around the world.

I’ve started limited travel myself for training events. I doubt cramming 30 or more folks into a hotel meeting room will ever be attractive anymore. In some cases moving the training into the shop area, parking lot or a large cafeteria  area is a good option to allow attendees to spread out more.

I doubt anyone knows for sure how this will shake out or what “bug” will hit us next that makes  people want to avoid crowded rooms and spaces, but plan on having options. Come up with new ways to engage the attendees. Not being able to see faces, expressions and not getting that in person feedback changes the game for a trainer.  Add polls to your training to get some interaction and a feel for the groups. Consider multiple speakers or trainers to get some back and forth conversation in your online trainings.

The need for having a trained workforce is critical. Equipment is becoming more sophisticated and specific, so factory training will march forward. We would love to hear from all the players in the industry, thoughts suggestions, what we can do to keep you’ all coming back.

Let’s rid the ‘VID and get back to the normal face to face that we all crave.