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While already fairly saturated, the plumbing industry serves a nearly infinite market: anyone with a home, apartment complex, or office. That means there's always room for new entrants. You can gain a foothold in the plumbing industry by applying innovative, cost-efficient advertising techniques to make your company stand out from established competitors, and by offering first-class customer service. Some of the best marketing techniques come from adequately reporting/monitoring the status of your business. Take a look at these amazing tips to help you target your market and increase your overall profitability.
Marketing
1. Create an eye-catching logo and slogan. A good deal of plumbers do not utilize this simple, time-honored advertising technique, and those who do can gain a competitive advantage in picking up new clients. Consumers subconsciously associate businesses with logos/slogans with higher quality and reliability, while associating others with a generic brand image.
2. Use software to your advantage! The plumbing software Smart Service allows users to use mail merges with a simple click. This helps businesses send promotions via mail to homes in their area. Direct mail campaigns work most effectively when the advertising message has a high degree of relevance to a large number of recipients. In the case of plumbing services, virtually every home in your community is a potential client, making direct mail a highly effective technique.
3. Pass out service brochures and promotions to apartment and office complexes. Try to secure as many partnerships with apartments and offices as possible, as this can lead to long-term growth opportunities. Offer price discounts to these large customers in return for frequent business.
4. Invest extra money into searchable advertising media. Pay extra for premium listings on search engines. Place advertisements in local newspapers. Think “wide, local reach” when choosing advertising outlets. Remember that your target market consists of every single home, office, and apartment complex in your area.
5. Place coupons in community business publications. Take advantage of opportunities to place promotions in coupon books sold by direct marketing companies and youth organizations, such as sports teams and scout troops.
Effective Reporting
1. Create easy to read reports. Find software to help you build and save reports from year to year. Smart Service and QuickBooks represent great examples of how a CRM and your accounting software can work hand in hand to provide you with accurate reporting. Both products offer the ability to choose from a host of prebuilt reports, as well as create your own complete custom reports, all of which can be saved and reused.
2. What data are we trying to gather? There are a host of reasons to run reports, and reporting can be one of the most powerful tools for tracking your business. Simple revenue reports, P/L reports, and marketing reports are all incredibly easy to build and utilize.
3. Tedious data entry can become a real downside when it comes to reporting. No matter the software, users can enter information incorrectly. Picking a software that can make specific fields required can help overcome this. Choosing an inadequate software could end up costing you the ability to accurately report info if your data entry team makes mistakes.
4. Use reporting to grow your business! Building reports to see where your target geographic market lives can be extremely helpful. Simple reports for customers, city, and zip-code will give you a great idea of your service area, and you can use this to target more customers, or even expand out of your market. Running quarterly reports on the services you provide can also yield great insight. Providing promotions on installations, maintenance plans, or emergency service can help you pick up some extra revenue in an area that could be lacking.
Conclusion
Implementing marketing strategies along with effective reporting can seriously improve your business. Investing in software like Smart Service and QuickBooks to manage these things can save you a huge amount of time and effort. Having the tools and the data to provide your customers with marketing material will not only help bring on new business, but you will become a known, reliable brand in the plumbing industry.
