How We Brought a Start Up Plumbing Company from 0 to 600 Customers in 5 Months & This Is How We Did It!

My eyes were red and sore. That day, I was on my 14th hour of straight research. I had spent weeks in front of the my screens. Every forum and comment I read shouted “they’re not dependable”, “they rip you off”, “they’re never on time”, and every time I read these comments my hope was lifted and I was able to magically download more energy to keep going.

That night, as I sipped my 7th black coffee, and I starred at my mind map wondering if I had enough information to make this work. My mind went back to when I was interviewing plumbers and everyone of them said “it won’t work”.

That’s not what my research was indicating. I seen a gap in the market and you didn’t have to be a genius to see it was there.

I was about to launch a brand new plumbing company and these were the reasons I was told it wouldn’t work.

1) You have no client base.
2) You’ve no experience in the industry.
3) It takes years to build up a reputable name and be trusted.

I won’t lie, every time I spoke to a plumber my energy was sapped and I doubted myself, but I pushed on. If you’ve got a new business or you’re a small business looking to generate more revenues and market share online, stay steadfast, you can do it!

I had four people working full time marketing this company when it launched. They created content, got back links, improved website speed and advertised the brand online. Where any of these people professionals? No. In fact, they were all students and I trained and guided each one of them as they fulfilled their tasks.

Within a week and a half, calls start to drip in and by month 5 we had over 600 new customers!

I want to show you why this website was unlike any other website in the industry, and I want to show you why it was so successful. You see, most business don’t understand what a website really is. They look at it as a calling card; a way of telling people who they are. BUT it’s not, it’s so much more!

My fear is that you’ll buy a “pretty” website from someone local and you won’t realise your true potential.

My hope is you’ll realise just how much you could accomplish with your business if you have the right people supporting and growing your business for you.

Below you’ll discover 5 key things that made this business successful. I hope you enjoy the read.

This Is How I Brought Them from Zero Customers to over 600 Customers in 5 Months

I spent weeks reading forums trying to identify the voice of the customer. I identified the major problems customers had with plumbers and plumbing companies. Once collated, I turned problems into unique selling points for the startup plumbing company. This is how it looked.

1) Identify Industry Problems & Create Unique Selling Points Around Them

The Customer’s Problem:

When something plumbing related stops working customers need help fast. It could be heating, lack of fresh water or a blocked toilet. Most people stress out during theses situations. My research showed this, and most plumbers stated it could take 1 – 3 days before they could get to the customer. In addition, plumbers couldn’t give a set time and they often showed up hours late, if they showed up at all.

Our Solution:

Turn industry problems into selling points. We took the common issues that people had with plumbers and turned them into unique selling points. In other words, we took their major objections to purchasing our service and turned those objections into value statements.

Instead of a customer worrying about a plumber not showing up, we created “Fast Response Times” as a unique selling point. We uncovered 4 major objections to purchasing services from a plumber within the industry and turned them all in value statements to create a unique selling point (USP).

2) Use Imagery to Sell Emotions NOT Features

The Customer’s Problem:

Our research showed that customer’s worried about the effects of no water or no heat would have on their family and children. Coupled with poor quality work within the industry, our audience worried the problem would not be fixed correctly by a plumber on the first visit. This led them to see choosing a good plumber as a challenge and a high risk decision.

Our Solution:

Our brains are wired to release chemicals like Oxytocin which makes the viewer feel a sense of belonging when they see certain images like babies. Colours like green promote feelings of love for family and friends subconsciously. We purposefully arose emotions in our audience through the use of images and colours.

Aligning relevant images alongside our selling point allows the viewer to emote feelings like belonging and trust within the viewer. This helps our viewers overcome their fears about choosing a supplier and creates a sense of confidence in the brand while promoting a stronger desire to take action immediately.

 

The image of the mother and child reinforces the need to take action and protect family while adding pressure to take action. They are both smiling which releases a “feel good” chemical in the body of the viewer.

When this image is used along side the quality workmanship USP, the customer’s fear of paying for something and not having it fixed correctly (poor quality workmanship) is quelled. The customer’s guard is lowered and they are more inclined to feel comfortable purchasing from us.

3) Use Social Proof with Your Call Action To Demonstrate Credibility & Security

The Customer’s Problem:

In today’s age, it’s easy to get shafted. Every where you look, there’s some sort of scam from big government skimming the cream off budgets, to the high street butchers selling horse meat in burgers. Customer’s want to know a company in credible before they hire one.

Our Solution:

Good honest feedback goes along way to gaining credibility. That’s why we immediately started asking for and uploading reviews of work we completed.

To get a potential customer to go from website visitor to customer, they will need an extra push psychologically. That’s why it’s important to place testimonials alongside a call to action.

As you can see, we keep the feeling of love for family and friends consistently represented with the color green in the button. The call to action is big and is a clear sign what the visitor should do next.

There’s a phenomenon called “click fear” and it’s how visitors feel about clicking buttons and links when they’re not confident about where the link will bring them.

This button clearly states what they are expected to do next when they click the button, “Order Today” and it includes a command “click here” to gently persuade the viewer to take action.

During that few split seconds when the viewer is making a decision to order, studies show, the viewer will scan the page to gather all information necessary to make the decision, and by including testimonials with the call to action we are able to give the viewer confidence in their decision.

4) Strategically Use Site Architecture To Uncover What Your Customers Want Before You Sell To Them

The Customer’s Problem:

When a visitor lands on a website no matter what the industry, they have one goal: to identify if the company offers a solution to their problem, and identify if the company is credible and can be trusted to complete the job in a satisfactory manner.

The problem we witnessed in the industry was that plumbing websites were normally one page which listed some basic services and a phone number. These website did not give the customer confidence in purchasing.

Our Solution:

If you go to a coffee shop and they try to sell you a pair of shoes would you think it strange? Unfortunately, many business do just this. They create a generic sales pitch and hope that visitors take them up on their offer. When selling a service, it must be relevant to what the customer wants.

We designed a customer journey in a way that would tell us exactly what service the visitor desired. The visitor would end on a page that was the exact service offering they desired.

This page, also called a landing page, would identify some fears related to the problem to heighten the awareness of their problem and sell the unique selling points of hiring our company for service delivery.

Most people just won’t go through the effort of creating so many relevant and service specific landing pages. However this is the key to your success.

Firstly, it provides the customer with a targeted sales pitch, secondly, it provides you with more keyword rich pages that will help you generate more traffic, get better rankings, more leads and sales. This is how the final landing page template looked.

 

5) Creating a Trustworthy & Approachable Brand

The Customer’s Problem:

We identified through research that customers generally had a distrust of tradesmen. Shows like cowboy builders helped to strengthen the distrust and fear people had in choosing reliable tradesmen.

Our Solution:

We knew immediately that the brand we design must be able to bypass these fears and create a sense of trust and reliability. The human brain has a “reptilian function”. The reptilian brain is the area of the brain that protects us from our environment and keeps us safe in high risk situations.

It is this area of the brain we needed to get on our side in order to create credibility and trust. This is how we went about creating a winning brand that bypassed the reptilian brain and was immediately recognised and trusted.

We designed the van livery and website based on known neurospychology evidence.

We incorporated colours that promoted “Good” feelings. The colour yellow helps to create clarity of thought. This means we could get the brain to focus on the task at hand; their decision to purchase our services. Yellow also creates enthusiasm for life and awakens greater confidence and optimism. It was clear to us that yellow would play a role in establishing credibility.

The colour green is an emotionally positive colour and brings forth feelings of nurture. It is a charity worker, good parent and helpful neighbor. We seen this as a colour to help promote trustworthiness.

The colour black radiates authority and mystery. It was important that when using the other colours of yellow and green that we create a foundation for them to operate. Bright colours alone would have made the brand seem incredible, perhaps like a ice cream van, however, the black strengthens the authority and gives confidence to the overall brand.

Why Was This Website Was So Successful in Creating a Booming Business?

1) Customers could easily find the service they desired.

2) The brand exuded trust and credibility

3) Each landing page was relevant to the customers needs and demonstrated an understanding of the customers voice i.e fears.

4) Social proof and call to action made it easy for the visitor to take the next step in the sales cycle.

5) The creation of over 30 pages of search engine optimised and relevant landing pages allowed the company to rank in the first position of Google for many alternative keywords consumers used to find a plumber.

If you are ready to take your business to the next level and become as successful as the one we’ve just discussed then get in touch and we can discuss what you can achieve with your budget.

We offer web development, branding, SEO, content marketing and sales funnel development services. We mostly serve the local Belfast area in Northern Ireland and have customers from regions all over the world. Get in touch now and see how we can help you!