For many plumbing contractors, having a good system to get qualified plumbing leads is crucial to ensuring a consistent stream of customers and a steady revenue flow.
As more property owners are looking online for plumbers, you must be where your potential clients are to obtain more plumbing leads.
There are many plumbing pay lead service providers that help plumbers get leads using internet marketing strategies. Just like not all plumbers are created equal, not all plumbing pay-per-lead generation services companies are the same.
All sales start with generating leads, and plumbing contractors are always searching for strategies that will convert plumbing leads into sales. One of the effective ways can be via pay-per-lead services for plumbers such as Porch, Thumbtack, and Angie’s List.
While these providers offer short-term assistance, they are ultimately not a crucial part of lead generation for your plumbing company. This post will explore everything about pay-per-lead services and the cons and pros of each.
Why Do Plumbers Require Effective Lead Generation Strategies?
In some industries, such as retail, transactions are simple and quick and don’t need a lot of lead nurturing. That’s not the case for skilled trades, like plumbing and roofing. Homeowners require to understand that plumbers can get your job done right and reliably and won’t surpass their budget. And with so many plumbers competing for the attention of the same prospects or leads, local homeowners require to research the available options before selecting a plumbing company.
To be considered, you will need to get found by those prospects and prove to them you are worth hiring. That implies you must strike a good balance between personalized marketing messages and sales pitches.
Here is where plumbing lead generation is crucial. Lead generation for plumbers can help you focus on qualified leads so that you are not wasting energy, time, or advertising dollars who will not hire your company.
While countless plumbers rely on plumbing pay lead generation service providers to find new customers, a great lead generation plan requires more ingredients. You need to optimize your plumbing website, develop social media pages, and begin implementing SEO so clients can find your business when they require it online. When combined with a great lead generation strategy, pay-per-lead generation websites can take your plumbing business to new heights, but only if you use them properly.
What are Plumbing Pay Per Lead Services?
A pay-per-lead service for plumbers is close to what it sounds like. There are tons of sites and directories online that target specific plumbing industries or geographic areas. These directories are not there just to offer a public service, there are numerous ways of gathering data that can be sold to a target audience. If you want to access these target audiences, you will be required to pay to be listed in those directories, which can be one way to generate plumbing leads.
There are also companies that specialize in plumbing pay lead services. Instead of you paying them for a listing, as some of those directories do, they will offer you a free listing with a tracked web form and phone number to know how many leads they send your way. You are then charged per plumbing lead.
Benefits of Plumbing Pay Per Lead Services
Plumbing lead generation can be expensive and time-consuming, and most plumbers don’t have the time to sacrifice getting new leads.
If your company required new plumbing leads yesterday, you need a lead generation strategy that makes the most of your ROI, stretches your advertising budget, and saves the frustration and time of getting new clients. Pay-per-lead websites for plumbers can help you get started with a lead generation strategy, sell your plumbing services and boost your online presence.
If you are still on the fence about using a lead generation website to connect with local homeowners, here are some key advantages to consider:
Improve Brand Awareness
Building brand awareness and increasing your visibility online are vital ingredients for your success. You can achieve this by signing up for pay-per-call plumbing leads and creating compelling, strong profiles that put your plumbing business in front of wallet-out leads. This way, more homeowners will learn about your plumbing business and the services you provide. Then, when they are ready to make a hiring decision, you will be there when they require you.
If you don’t have the budget to hire a professional website designer or a reputable plumbing SEO agency, plumbing pay-per-lead generation websites can assist you to hit the ground running with a short-term project.
Get More Client Reviews
When it comes to converting plumbing leads into appointments, social proof is all you need. Online reviews show potential clients why your plumbing service company is better than your competitors. Reviews show clients exactly what they can expect from hiring your plumbing company, from the materials used to the quality of your plumbing services.
Of course, you won’t obtain online reviews automatically, even when your plumbing services surpass expectations. Especially for new plumbing businesses, lead generation websites for plumbers provide quick access to short-term projects, which makes it super easy to get client reviews.
After completing a job and asking for a review, you can utilize these reviews to fuel your internet marketing strategy. You may post them on your plumbing website, create infographics or social media pages.
Expand Your Market
If you require plumbing leads instantly, listing your company with an established, large traffic base is one of your top options. When you begin creating your plumbing lead generation plan, you need to focus on a specific group of people. Lead generation websites can help you know about your clients, show you who is interested in your plumbing services, and connect with a large demographic.
Maybe you are obtaining engagement from first-time homeowners and other demographics that you have not incorporated in your plumbing marketing campaigns. With plumbing lead generation websites, you will be able to understand the trends and tweak your plumber marketing campaigns properly.
Plumbing Pay Per Lead Generation Websites – How do they work?
A lot of lead generation sites have a plumbing pay-per-call strategy, implying you will be required to pay for every call made by a potential client for your services. The awesome thing about this is it does not involve any shared plumbing leads, which normally end up in bidding pricing and wars much lower than they are worth. With a plumbing pay-per-call plan, all you will be required is only to pick up your call.
If you pick plumbing pay-per-call as your marketing strategy, there will be a campaign built with your special tracking number. Based on your plumbing lead generation partner, you could end up paying for anything from resold to spam leads from the previous months. So, asking about the money you will be charged per lead is a crucial question for any lead-generating sites you are searching into. With Blackstorm Design + Marketing, our services revolve around only paying for qualified plumbing leads so you will never have to pay again for an irrelevant plumber lead.
Crucial Factors to Consider When Hiring Plumbing pay per lead generation service providers
When looking for a plumbing lead generation provider, there are tons of factors to evaluate and consider. But what qualities should you look for when a pay-per-lead service provider to partner with? Here are some factors that can make a difference between a complete disaster vs. successful partnership.
Transparency
If the lead generation service providers you opt to work with is going to be great partner, they will be adequately honest and open with you, whether the news they bear is ugly, bad, or good. There should be no surprises, and you should understand their plans, how they expect to attain your business goals, and how to measure the failure or success of their work.
Professionalism, Integrity, and Respect
The way a plumbing pay-per-call service goes about its daily business is also very crucial. If your account manager told you your Twitter followers had increased by 325%, would you be thrilled and ecstatic with your choice of lead generation for plumbers providers? The lead generation service you work with will be acting on your behalf, so it is important that they do so with class.
Enthusiasm
The plumbing pay-per-lead service provider you will partner with should be enthusiastic about your success and partnership. If you shoot your account manager an email, you don’t want to wait for days before it is finally answered.
Signing up with a plumbing lead generation service company is not a decision that you should take lightly. Ideally, this will be the starting point of a reliable and positive partnership that leads to growing your plumbing company.
If a marketing agency wants to charge you by the states and lead that you are required to sign a long-term contract before moving forward. This helps the plumbing business to take your money before they have offered any leads for your company, and whether or not the leads turn out bad or good, you have locked in.
Another thing to watch out for is plumbing pay-per-lead service providers that have a low cost per lead. If the deal sounds too good to be true, particularly with brand new sites that are just attempting to get their foot in the door, whether it is a good fit or not.
How Much Do Plumbing Leads Cost?
The costs of leads vary based on the type of plumbing work requested and the market. Although qualified plumbing leads may be more expensive, they will prove valuable in the long run. Paying for thousands of leads with little or no potential of converting into real clients is a waste of money and time. Paying for one plumbing lead that converts into a real client is much more crucial than paying for 10 cheap leads that don’t result in a paying client. Plumbing leads can range anywhere between $25 to $125 per call, while the average ticket price reported by our clients is $600.
Another reason why qualified plumbing leads are more expensive is since the higher cost per lead allows your marketing agency to spend more to keep your results at the top of Google search results.
Most Common Pay Per Lead Services for Plumbers
Plumbing is a competitive industry, so that is why we decided to focus on the four major plumbing pay-per-lead service providers:
HomeAdvisor
HomeAdvisor is a major directory in the home improvement space. The service is absolutely free for property owners, but plumbing contractors who want to be listed here have to pay a yearly fee to advertise and pay for each lead generated by HomeAdvisor.
The only downside is that plumbing contractors are charged for each lead they talk to, regardless of whether it turns out to be a qualified client.
Angie’s List
Angie’s List was bought by its main competitor, HomeAdvisor in May 2017. If you can’t beat them, join them. Angie’s List can be described as a plumbing pay lead service that is free to register, but you have to pay to play. If you opt to use the paid version of the platform, you will be required to pay a consistent amount every month, whether you get 200 or zero leads.
Porch
Just like Thumbtack, Porch places the power of contacting in the hands of plumbing contractors. Plumbing contractors can see the leads before they decide to call the lead, for which they are going to be charged.
Why we don’t recommend you to use plumbing pay lead services?
After analyzing some of the advantages and disadvantages of each of the major pay-per-lead services for plumbers, there are three primary reasons to avoid them altogether:
- Race to the phone: As stated, most of these plumbing pay lead services send out leads to multiple plumbers, such as chum to sharks. Very often the initial plumbing business to contact the lead closes it, and not every plumber has the time and resources to stay on their phone around the clock.
- No Tracking: These lead generation sites are not actually working for you, you are working for them, thus, they are not invested in offering you powerful and smart tools to monitor where plumbing leads are coming from and where they go.
- You have to pay for the lead regardless: As their name suggests, these platforms don’t care whether the lead they offer you ends up closing (many plumbers receive numerous leads at the same time).
Replace Plumbing Pay Per Lead with Plumber Internet Marketing
Everything we have been elaborating on so far revolves around what happens when other people regulate the audience and your plumbing marketing collaterals or assets.
This places you in a position of renting your advertising instead of owning it. When it comes to lead generation service for plumbers, owning is always highly recommended than better renting. Here’s why:
Qualified leads: Instead of dealing with anyone who wants to give out their contact details, you can educate them using assets such as:
- Quality content and blogs
- Clearly messaged and strong plumber websites
- A consistent email newsletter
- Client service as a marketing strategy
- Customize: You can decide what your brand message will look like and can alter it whenever you want to or the challenges dictate. You can also decide how much you want to spend on advertising instead of being downtrodden by whatever you are offered.
- Target: Plumbing pay lead websites were built for scale, and as such, they are not concerned with the particulars of your local marketplace.
Here are some digital marketing strategies that you can use to increase sales and leads more effectively than plumbing pay-per-lead services:
- Build an SEO-friendly plumbing website that tells your prospects what services you provide, what areas you serve, and why they should trust your business for your plumbing needs.
- Create a plumbing SEO strategy that may help your business rank higher on search engine results pages, get more traffic, and obtain more leads that are likely to become clients.
- Manage your plumbing company reputation to help in establishing trust with prospects and bring in a steady flow of qualified leads.
- Invest in Pay-per-Click advertising to help you obtain plumbing leads fast by putting your business on top of the organic search results.
Own your Plumbing Leads instead of Buying Them with Blackstorm Design + Marketing
Qualified leads are what constitute plumbing sales. But if your leads are not ready to convert, the sales won’t happen.
If you are tired of using plumbing pay lead services and want to develop a comprehensive plumbing marketing strategy to help you increase sales and leads, schedule a free profit session with Blackstorm Design + Marketing to get started today.