Key takeaways
- Judge a plumbing marketing agency by booked calls traced to invoices in your field software, not by clicks, impressions or rankings.
- Insist that the Google Business Profile, ad accounts, call-tracking numbers and website are in your name before any work starts.
- Ask how the agency handles emergency and after-hours calls; an agency that only talks about traffic has not run plumbing campaigns.
- Shared leads, owned tracking numbers and long contracts are the three red flags that cost plumbing companies the most.
Choosing a marketing agency for a plumbing company comes down to one test: can they show you booked calls, traced to invoices, from work done in accounts you own? Everything else follows from that. A good agency knows that emergency calls, water heater replacements and repipes are different leads, and builds and reports each one separately.
What to look for
Look for an agency that talks about your phone before it talks about traffic. In plumbing, the job goes to whoever answers first, so marketing that sends calls to a line nobody picks up after five is wasted spend. Use these questions in the first meeting:
- How will you report results? The answer should be booked calls and cost per booked call, by channel, matched to jobs in ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro or Jobber.
- Whose name is on every account? The Google Business Profile, Google Ads, Local Services Ads, Meta, the website, the domain and the call-tracking numbers.
- How do you separate job types? Emergency calls, drain cleaning, water heater replacement and repiping need different keywords, pages and budgets.
- What happens to after-hours calls? A good answer covers ad schedules, answering setups and missed-call text-back.
- How do you track phone calls? Calls should be tracked as conversions from ads and from the website (Google's call tracking setup), not counted as "engagement".
- What is changing with Local Services Ads? Google is moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads as Performance Max with pay-per-lead goals, in phases (Google's transition notice). Plumbing is named in the first phase, but a service-area plumber without a storefront may move later. A good agency can tell you which group your account falls in and what it will do before the switch.
- How do you plan around the season? They should mention the first hard freeze and the holiday drain-clog rush without being prompted.
- What will you do in the first 30 days, and by what date?
- Who does the work? Names and roles, not "the team".
- How do I leave? The answer should be "with everything, any month".
Choosing a marketing partner
| Question | Look for | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts | Everything in your name | They own the ad account or site |
| Contract | Projects with outcomes and dates | Long lock-in with no exit |
| Reporting | Calls and booked jobs | Impressions and clicks only |
| Promises | Honest trade-offs | Promised top rankings |
Red flags
Walk away from any of these:
- Shared leads sold as marketing. If the "leads" also go to three other plumbers, you are buying from a lead marketplace, not hiring an agency.
- Tracking numbers the agency owns. If they keep the numbers when you leave, every listing and truck wrap pointing to them stops ringing at your office.
- Reports in impressions and rankings only. A chart of keywords with no call count means nobody is measuring what matters.
- One campaign for everything. "Plumber" as the only ad group mixes a clogged toilet with a full repipe and wastes budget on both.
- A twelve-month contract with no outcome attached. Lock-in protects the agency, not you.
- A website you cannot edit or take with you. Ask who owns the hosting and the domain before you sign.
Agency vs hiring
An agency makes sense when you need several skills at once and do not want to manage them. Plumbing marketing spans the Business Profile, service pages, Google Ads, Local Services Ads, call tracking and CRM follow-up. One hire rarely covers all of it well. A hire makes sense when you have steady coordination work, such as job photos, review replies and social posts, and someone to manage that person. The hire-or-agency guide for plumbers gives you a worksheet for comparing the two at your own local costs.
Why VETS Growth Marketing
We run every plumbing engagement the same way, and the steps are written into the project before it starts:
- Assess. We review your Google profile, website, ads, call handling and follow-up, and pull your booked calls by source from your field software.
- Prioritize. We rank the fixes by booked calls they should add and put a date on each, with emergency coverage and the freeze season first.
- Execute. We do the work inside your accounts: profile, service pages, Google Ads and Local Services Ads, call tracking (Google's conversion measurement), CRM follow-up.
- Measure. We report booked calls and cost per booked call by channel each month, and choose the next priority with you.
Every account stays in your company's name. Work is scoped as projects with outcomes and dates, and there is no long-term contract.
How VETS Growth Marketing helps
If you have been burned before, start with the audit, not a contract. In a growth consultation we review your profile, site, ads and follow-up, and you leave with the five moves that would add the most booked plumbing calls, whether or not you hire us. If you do, the work runs in your accounts, on dates, reported in calls and jobs. See the plumbing marketing overview for how the pieces fit together.
Sources
- About conversion measurement, Google Ads Help
- Set up tracking calls to a phone number on a website, Google Ads Help
- Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, Google Ads Help