Quicklink

Home

About Us

Services

Team

Contact

Privacy policy

Services

Project Planning
 

Safety Planning

Resourcing Design

Inventory Design
 

Lean Contracting

Business Growth

Proudly created with WebWave

Created by: Assuvia

Send Us A Message

info@drainsform.com

Call to us

+ 358 400 48 2244

Drainsform is a Professional Training Company for CIPP & SIPP Pipe Rehabilitation and Drainage Professionals.

Latest news

One of the most common questions we're asked when we chat with our customers or prospective clients is: How can they get more work for their business?

This isn't a simple question by any measure. Sales and marketing of a drain cleaning business is often a tricky question, as there are so many variables individual to each company.

Some operate in a large cities with a huge concentration of people in a really small area, with the added bonus of having a lot of modern people used to utilizing internet in their search for service providers and solutions.

Some work in a rural small town where the population might still be big, but it mainly consists of aging population, who do not use internet as their go-to source of information.

This is just one example of many variations that affect how your drain cleaning business should be marketed, and how you could find people to sell to.

Before doing anything else, the very first thing you should do is learn about your business:

- Where are it's strong points?

- What services do you excel in?

- What services are producing highest profits for you?

- Is it residential or commercial, installs or service?

- How are people finding the company right now? Do you ask new customers that question?

There's no one size fits all plan, your plan needs to mesh with what's already there so that you can target your marketing and sales efforts to bring in the kind of sales that your company is equipped to handle. Talk to your techs and master plumbers, do ride alongs if you can. Get in tune with the company's service offerings and overall efficiency.

We are not going to dig too deep on all of the different variables throughout this article, but instead, we've gathered an exclusive list of all sorts of different strategies we've utilized in our own and our customers' businesses over the years. Some of them are free, some of them have a price, but all of them are field-tested and valuable for you to implement in your own drain cleaning & inspection company.

So, without further ado, let's go:

Sales and Marketing Tactics for Drain Cleaning & Inspection Business

- Set up a small website where you can guide customers to in your general marketing efforts. It doesn't necessarily have to be a huge multi-page website which would obviously be 

- Set up a Google Business Profile, optimize the living heck out of it and follow all guidelines to up your profile visibility in Google's search engine. Use a lot of real life photos from your jobsites. Craft customer testimonials into text & graphics and frequently post them on your profile. Make sure to keep your company data always up to date. Add your services and your transparent pricing on the profile too. Consider Google Guaranteed / LSA.

- Have all property, plumbing & real estate companies contact details scraped off Google Maps and various other geospatial systems that allow you to target your service area for information extraction.

- Once you have all this information gathered, clear all the emails from that list and send them an email outlining your services and added value. Don't just spam them with a standard menu of services and your contact details, but instead write up a little bit about the common issues you've come to learn from problems faced working with your other customers. Tell them that you are available for jobs in a super flexible manner and your prices are competitive in the market. Leave out all the fluff.

- Get in touch with your past customers and be open & honest - tell them, that you're trying to amp up your marketing as these tough times we're living in are especially tough for a small business like yours, and that you'd highly appreciate if they still remember the service you provided them, that if they could write a brief testimonial or even record a quick FaceTime video where they tell what they think of you, your company and/or your service and such.

- Use these testimonials in everything you do: when you email new customers, tell them that you already have a good bunch of existing clients who are happy to vouch for you. When you have your Google Business Profile set in place, guide your customers to leave their review there. Offer them a perk for doing so, if they'd otherwise decline.

- Get in touch with all local plumbers, HVAC installers / service companies and electrical companies local to you. All of these other professions are often in a position where they are offered or asked about opportunities in your services segment, and might be inclined to guiding some of those customers your way. The deeper level to this is to make an actual profit sharing agreement with them, should they not light up about working this out of pure kindness. You should also remember that this should always be a two way street so make sure to return the favor.

- Utilize video testimonials from past customers - cell phone videos are perfectly fine, and can even look more genuine than onces really "done".

- 3rd Party Portal Reviews from sites like Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack and NextDoor. Gathering these reviews can also help your online marketing & local SEO efforts significantly.

- Get an intro video for your website. And don't just go down the usual path of using some random stock photos and text explaining your business, but instead have your partner, friends or business partners help you in recording some quality footage with your phone. "Hey, it's John Doe here! I've been in the plumbing business in Home City, HC for over 20 years..." This brings out your experience in a natural way and builds trust with your potential customers through body language and visuals.

- Highlight & showcase any certifications, numbers and other validating evidence. "I've helped over 250 local customers over the past 2 years." or "I'm a certified master plumber" or "I've worked with [Insert Well Known Local Company] for several years."

- Showcase your pricing in a transparent and unbias way. This is often very hard to do, but a lot of times price transparency can assure a customer they are getting a fair and equal rate as others. If you're utilizing an options based pricing system, you can always just show the bottom of your deck, and add "all projects are unique and if we see value in offering you something beyond this menu, we will absolutely work with your best interest in mind". If you do the some of the other things mentioned on this list to build trust, it can also help raise your rates - people pay more for trust, quality and likeability.

- Create useful videos giving out snippets of useful tips and answers about fixing/maintain and share those videos on your YouTube page and other social media channels. People are going to search and try themselves on a lot of things anyway. When they get stuck, they know who to go to. Make sure you tell them that in the videos.

- Setup a referral and recommendation system giving people a discount or added value if they give you a nice review or recommend you to someone else. When you get a testimonial make sure it's not saying:

"Was great. Good service!" ...

that sucks & can easily be deemed as a false review bought online. Instead it should say something like:

"Before (company name) I was (__Problem___ and ___pain caused by problem) and (__terrible feeling it gave me___). After talking with (company person) I felt comforted that they were truly (___ desired appearance e.g. experienced/professional/knowledgeable___) and the whole thing was (__measurement of added excellence e.g. finished quickly, completed to obsessively beautiful standards, he made it look effortless etc___ we now can/have __end result making you look like a rockstar___) and can finally (___personal impact of end results e.g. finally don't have to worry about my children's safety in our own house, finally can invite our friends over again, finally don't feel like such a failure when my parents visit, finally can feel proud of being a home owner, finally have time to play with my children again). Thank you XYZ company!"

quick e.g. of the above: "Before I hired 'Billy Bob's Plumbing Company' I was so tired of hearing a constant dripping in our living room and mystery puddles on the floor in our kitchen that seemed to have no known source! After talking with Billy I felt comforted that they were truly experienced and listened to what I was experiencing. They come over immediately to check it out and found the problem IMMEDIATELY. Finally we can invite my friends and parents in law over without the embarrassment of having to throw towels on the floor and make excuses about the sounds. This has been the most wonderful experience. Our lives are finally back on track. Thank you XYZ company!"

- Have a smart follow up scheduler, keep in touch with your customers. It's easier to profit from existing customers than it is to find new ones.

- Oh and ask every single customer where they found you. When you're done ask them what could of made the experience better. Log it, and improve.

- Do you live in a town that has city water and sewage? The best thing a local plumbing company did was to show homeowners how to reduce their water bill (toilets with a slow run, dripping outside faucets, how to see if you have a leak) a few short marketing videos might do the trick on how to ID an issue, and that you're available to implement the solution. Seriously - guy runs the posts the week water bills go out and is always busy. but. that is his preferred sort of job - easy fixes two appointments a day sort of thing. But - that is using digital marketing. so maybe do a flyer drop on common ways to reduce water bills.

- Property managers may want a plumber on contract with on call for the apartments or rental units. Going into a commercial area you can hand out business cards, mention your on call 24/7 (if you are) and hand them a quick tl;dr (cliff notes) on what the business covers.

-Targeting of property management companies, apartment complexes, commercial real estate, local government and housing developers to service all their properties. Utilize cold email outreach, direct mail campaigns, go drop off some fliers and let them know your name and your face.

- Utilize video in your cold emails to new partners and potential customers - it makes it much more personal and unique.

- Real estate agents are on both sides of a home sale, so owners may need fixes to existing properties before sales and new owners may want changes to their new property. It's good to develop relationships with them.

- Submit your website to directories in your region. E.g. list of businesses, Yelp, Airbnb experiences, TripAdvisor (if it's tourist-friendly) and whatever else is relevant.

-  Run Google Ads on your direct-intent keywords. If you're an accounting firm in Boston, run ads to your home for all variations of the "accounting firm Boston" keyword

- Optimize your homepage for the respective keyword via YoastSEO or RankMath.

- Create a page for every location you run, and optimize it for the keyword [location] + [service].

- Create a page for every service you offer, and link to them throughout your website. Optimize each page for the keyword [location] + [service], e.g. "photography nyc"

- If your website is getting 1,000+ traffic per month, set up Facebook Remarketing and run lead generation ads to everyone that visited your website.

- Run location-based Facebook ads, targeting your city or a specific district. Advertise an offer (e.g. free consultation call, dessert, whatever) instead of just advertising your business. This will let you track people who came to your business via ads, and will let you know whether you're generating an ROI or not.

- Don't overthink your marketing tactics. You don't need to go viral on TikTok, do a PR dance-fest in city center, or whatever most people think of when they hear the word "marketing." Tried-and-tested marketing always works better.

- Go leave your flyers to local businesses where drains are an active issue player: restaurant, office spaces, shopping malls, amusement parks and more. Make sure the business managers have your details at hand when they run into a clogged drain on a super busy saturday shift, and everything is going sideways unless it's unblocked NOW. Make sure to have their problem solved in less than an hour from their emergency call.

- Many drain cleaning & inspection company’s business is doing emergency plumbing repairs. This indicates that ranking high on Google and buying Google AdWords for “emergency plumbing repairs” would have a high ROI. Make sure the links are to a landing page that focuses on “emergency plumbing repairs”. Also make sure the ads are just targeted to your target cities. “Emergency plumbing repairs in ABC city!”

- Figure out Craigslist marketing for US and Kijiji marketing for Canada.

- Focus on video content. This is super easy and cheap to produce by yourself nowadays, and making it by yourself, looking like a "semi-made" video can also boost the credibility of your videos as they are not done by a professional. This brings likeability and personality to your business. Some example topics for your video content could be:

• Problem specific quick guides on what to do if you run into this type of pipe emergency

• Tips on choosing the correct repair: don't get played by unnecessary upsells

• Homeowner drains maintenance and how-to

• Product comparisons between drain cleaning agents, filters etc.

• Feature pros and cons (cleaning, descaling, inspection, locating, CIPP lining, SIPP coating, patch repair etc.

- Set up a membership program for your customers. This is popular with HVAC companies right now. Basically it's a monthly fee your customers pay and they receive two free (or however many) check ups each year. You can sell the memberships better by providing a small discount to members. So it goes something like, "Hi James, the total today is $250 for members and if you're not a member, the total is $287." This prompts the question of what is a membership and the opportunity to sell it. The checks ups aren't just $0 revenue jobs, they're opportunities for your client to enter the customer's home or building and find upsell opportunities.

- Make sure your Yelp profile is highly optimized. Make sure all of your installers ask every customer for a review on Yelp (or Google profile if their email address contains Gmail as Google requires a Gmail account to leave a review) and even go as far as to make handouts that they can simply hand to his customers with their invoice/receipt with directions on how to leave a review + with coupons or referral bonuses.

- Get on a CRM and figure out how to automate thank you emails that also ask for a review.

In addition to this list, here's a little bonus: A Quick Guide on New Drain Cleaning Business Internet Marketing

If you're just getting started in the drain business, here's also a little quick guide on marketing efforts I published in one of the great social groups within the industry. It's outlining some of the bare necessities for getting your online marketing rolling. Make no mistake - having a great website is of great importance to your businesses SEO effects, visibility and usability, but I still stand behind the opinion that it's crazy to spend thousands on your website when you're just getting started and you should be investing in equipment and other things in your business first.

Here's the whole content of my post:

"Might get some hate for this but there’s a lot of home service marketing fluff going around lately so I wanted to chime in:

 There’s Very Little Reason  For  New Entrepreneurs To Invest In  Expensive Marketing Solutions 

• A One Page Website with necessary means for your prospective clients to reach you.
• Optimize the sh%! out of your Google Business Profile. Find your step-by-step guide below.
• Set up a free professional business email. Get yourself a professional domain for website & emails.
• Set up a super lean, free booking system through Calendly. Integrate the booking form to your calendar & your website.
• Set up a Facebook business profile, and match it to the style of your website. When you update your Google Business Profile, run updates to your FB profile as well.

YOUR ONE-PAGE WEBSITE

• A professional domain indicating your business/industry/name. Dot com domain is also a safe bet.
• A good looking, easily scrollable website
• Information in few core components (Who & where are you serving and with what, service descriptions, social proof e.g testimonials from existing customers, and a way to contact you or even book your services on-site.)
• Photos / videos related to your business. Preferably your own photos & videos to establish credibility instead of using stock photos.

OPTIMIZE YOUR GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE

• Set up & verify your Google Business Profile.
• Make sure your NAP (Name, Address & Phone) details are accurate.
• Make sure your website URL is accurate.
• Set up your business location (A service area business not offering a storefront, if this is the case. Then no storefront info needed). Pinpoint your service areas.
• Pick one primary category and potential sub categories for your business. (e.g. Plumbing + drain cleaning & drain inspections)
• State accurate business hours in your profile.
• Set up an Appointment URL in your Google profile. If you don’t have any other solutions at this time, you can easily use Calendly.
• Thoroughly describe your business. The description should be 700 to 750 words long. Leave sales pitches out - Google only cares about information.
• Feature your services (and products). Make sure to describe your services correctly so that customers know what they get when they hire you.
• Set up Highlights/Attributes that work best for you.
• Enable the Messaging components. This will make it easier for the prospective customers to reach out to you through your GBP.
• Take some high resolution photos & videos from jobsites, from your office, and whatever fits your business - and upload them to your GBP. This gives the profile a living vibe. You should also build a habit of adding more photos & videos weekly to signal Google that your business is active and should be promoted.
• Write posts & updates regularly - preferably every week.
• When you ask & get reviews from your clients, PAY ATTENTION. Reply to every review. If you get lemons, make lemonade - apologize, take the conversation offline and try to resolve the problem. NEVER ask to remove the review.
• Showcase your opening date. This will tag your profile with a timeline of how long you’ve been in business.
• Set up Q&A’s for most common questions your customers might be interested in.

Thanks for reading. I'll dig deeper into the next topics later. 

And that's all, folks!

While I could continue this list for another good while, I'll leave it here for now. I hope this list helps you in recognizing opportunities on several fronts. Use these tips as they are, or combine them with ideas of your own for maximum effectiveness.

Sales and marketing are paramount for trades businesses like drain cleaning, drain inspection, pipe rehabilitation and plumbing. Even though word of mouth is one of the most effective ways of bringing in new customers, that's also the one method where you have zero control over what's happening with your sales / marketing; given that you're constantly providing great service and creating happy customers, the word of mouth is often generated in return, but that's not automatically the case either.

What if the customers stop rolling in? The problem is, if they do, you might find yourself in a position where you've already built a substantial drain cleaning operation by hiring several techs, and suddenly you have no idea how to get your team on enough jobs to pay their salaries.

Make sure you're always working on couple of fronts for solid marketing; create a strategy & execution plan for internet marketing, and make sure to stay in the loop with your local businesses so that you always have people to turn to, when the slow season hits.

Don't know where to start?

If you're having problems in deciding where to start with your marketing efforts, or have already tried several different tricks but feel like it's not producing any results, don't hesitate to reach out to me. I'm actively working with several drainage companies on developing their daily operations, whether it's about marketing, sales, field ops or business development in general.

I'm happy to help you too. You can reach me through email through: atte(at)drainsform.com

Thank you for reading - I hope this helps. :)

Have an awesome day!

Atte

Give Us A Call

+358 (0) 400 48 2244

Send Us A Message

info@drainsform.com

Piispanristintie 20

FI-20780 Kaarina