Key takeaways
- Plumbing marketing needs at least five skills: Business Profile and SEO, website, paid search and Local Services Ads, tracking, and CRM follow-up.
- Price each role at your local rates, then add the management time you or your office manager will spend, before comparing with an outside team.
- In-house fits steady coordination work close to the trucks: job photos, review replies and social posts.
- Many plumbing shops end up hybrid: an in-house coordinator for daily work, an outside team for the specialist systems.
Choosing between a marketing employee and an agency for a plumbing company starts with listing the work, not comparing salaries. Plumbing marketing spans the Google profile, service pages, paid search, call tracking and CRM follow-up. One person rarely does all five well. Price each role at your local rates, add management time, then compare.
What the work actually requires
The work behind a steady flow of plumbing calls breaks into five roles. A few hours a month can cover some of them; others need a specialist's attention every week, especially through the freeze season.
| Role | What it covers in a plumbing shop | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Local SEO and Business Profile | Plumber category and related categories, service areas, photos, review replies, service pages for drains, water heaters and repiping | Weekly |
| Website | Page speed, click-to-call, emergency hours, landing pages for ads, fixes when something breaks | Monthly, plus urgent fixes |
| Paid search and Local Services Ads | Keywords by job type, ad schedules matched to your answering hours, budget shifts during freezes, the move of Local Services Ads into Google Ads | Several times a week in peak season |
| Tracking and reporting | Call tracking, conversions in Google Ads (Google's conversion measurement), matching calls to jobs in ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro or Jobber | Monthly, after a careful setup |
| CRM and follow-up | Missed-call text-back, estimate follow-up, review requests, reactivation of past customers | Setup once, then weekly checks |
Coordination is the sixth job that nobody lists: getting photos from the techs, answering "can you post this?", and keeping the office in the loop. It is real work, and it is the part an in-house person does best.
In-house, agency or hybrid
| Question | In-house | Agency | Hybrid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skills covered | What one or two hires know | A team of specialists | A lead in-house, specialists outside |
| Your management time | High: you manage people | Low: one partner | Some: one hire and a partner |
| Account ownership | Yours | Insist it stays yours | Yours |
| If someone leaves | Their knowledge goes too | The team covers it | Partly covered |
Cost comparison framework
Use this to compare options with your own numbers. We do not publish salary figures because they vary widely by market.
- List the roles you need. Use the table above. Cross out any you will not do, such as paid search if you rely on the Map Pack alone.
- Price each role locally. Look up what your area pays for each skill, or get quotes from freelancers. Add payroll taxes, benefits, software and training for employees.
- Count how many people it takes. If one hire covers two roles well, count one. Be honest about the roles that hire would cover badly.
- Add management time. Count the weekly hours you or your office manager would put into briefing and reviewing the work, and price them at what your time is worth during the busy season.
- Add the cost of a gap. Note what happens if the person leaves in November, just before the first freeze. Who runs the ads and answers the review questions until you replace them?
- Get outside quotes on identical scope. Have agencies price the same roles and outcomes, with reporting in booked calls.
- Compare like for like. Put the totals side by side with the control and management time each option needs.
The SBA's small business guide is a useful starting point for planning marketing alongside the rest of the business (SBA).
When in-house makes sense
Hiring in-house works when the work is steady, local and close to the trucks. A coordinator who rides along for photos, knows every tech by name, posts real job updates and replies to reviews the same day is hard to replace from outside.
It also makes sense when you have someone to manage that person. Marketing employees without a clear owner end up running errands for the office, and the specialist work stalls.
Here is how the three options usually compare:
| In-house | Agency | Hybrid | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control | Highest: you direct the work daily | Set by scope and reporting | You direct daily work; the agency runs the systems in your accounts |
| Cost shape | Fixed salary and benefits, whether the phones ring or not | A fee per month or per project, tied to agreed work | A coordinator's salary plus a smaller outside fee |
| Skills covered | Usually one or two of the five roles | A specialist for each role | Daily coordination inside, specialist roles outside |
| Your management time | High | Low to moderate | Moderate |
| Risk if someone leaves | The work stops | Continues if accounts are in your name | Systems keep running; daily work pauses |
Hybrid models
The hybrid model splits the work by what each side does best. Common setups for plumbing companies:
Coordinator plus outside team : An in-house coordinator handles photos, review replies and social posts. An outside team runs SEO, paid search, tracking and the CRM.
Office manager plus outside systems : Your office manager owns the review routine and customer follow-up, using automations an outside team built and maintains in your CRM.
Owner plus project work : You keep the day-to-day, and bring in an outside team for defined projects: a new website, a CRM setup, a Local Services Ads migration.
In every version, keep the accounts in your company's name, so changing the outside team never means starting over. The agency checklist for plumbing companies covers what to ask before you bring one in, and how to get more customers shows where to point the work first.
How VETS Growth Marketing helps
We cover the specialist roles in the table, from the Business Profile to the CRM, for about the cost of one senior hire, and we are glad to split the work with an in-house coordinator who knows your techs. Everything runs in your accounts, scoped as projects with dates, reported in booked calls and cost per booked call. Book a growth consultation and we will help you fill in the framework above with your own numbers.
Sources
- Marketing and sales, U.S. Small Business Administration
- About conversion measurement, Google Ads Help