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How do the top 10% of pricing companies attract and retain customers when charging more than the competition? Tommy Lee-Zmuda, installer and founder of The Boiler Business, shares his thoughts.

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Well, it's all gone a bit, Pete Tong, hasn't it?

The cost of food is up. My Friday night Kebab costs more, and the tasty IPA I'm currently drinking is now £7.50. The diesel for my van is £1.98, and copper, flux, radiators, boilers and \"serviceable parts\" well, let's not go there.

With prices in every industry rising fast, how can we stay ahead of inflation? No, forget that. Let's aim higher in life! How do we fill the van, buy the grub, enjoy our pint and get into the top 25% or even the top 10% of pricing companies within the plumbing & heating industry? How do we get into the top decile earners in \"The Williams State of the Trade\" survey?

Is it as easy as just putting your prices up, and they will pay?

Or is there more to it? How do the top 10% attract and retain customers when charging more than the competition?

If you want to up your game, work less, charge more and move into the top 10% of pricing companies within the plumbing industry, you need to be aware of the 3 stages of plumber marketing.

After walking in the footsteps of the busy sole trader plumber, I went on to build a team of seven who installed over a thousand boilers. My team have tried & tested most forms of traditional & digital marketing strategies.

However, you will often see my comment that there is no \"one size fits all\" strategy for every UK plumbing business. Unfortunately, the manual to instant marketing success is sadly just a myth. You can't buy success from that company selling magic beans. Still, you can learn and implement low-cost marketing strategies with a small budget if you are willing to invest the time.

Since starting the Boiler Business Community four years ago and launching the Dominate Marketing programme the following year, I have noticed many people going through the same 3 stages of marketing & overall business development.

Stage One - The \"Word of Mouth\" stage

The first stage of self-employed life is usually finding work through \"word of mouth\" & repeat business for a small number of regular customers. Without any other dependable marketing channel, working for family members, friends of friends, builders & landlords is the norm when you are new to self-employment. You will notice that the people with no \"advertising\" are often the most generalist. Fitting bathrooms one week and full central heating system the next.

Being \"busy\" and booked up for as many weeks as possible offers some security. Those big projects lasting for numerous weeks are a welcome bonus, but here's one of the big negatives of relying on \"Word of Mouth\" and accepting those big jobs. One month on a large job equals only one customer, one online review and one mouth to tell others about your business. Relying on \"word of mouth\" may keep you busy but will slow the growth of your customer database. The fact that there seems to be less opportunity for new customers often leads to a fear that you will lose customers by increasing the cost of your services.

Stage Two - The \"Advertising\" stage

For some businesses, increased \"busyness\" comes with more profits and the chance to advertise for more customers and sell your most profitable services to \"better\" customers. The Williams annual report refers to the respondents who use Advertising platforms such as Checkatrade and My Builder, often charging higher hourly rates for their services.

For those not at this stage yet, consider how much more confident you would be to charge more for your services if you had more choice on who you worked for? If you had 4-8 high end bathroom enquiries per month, would you still work for the landlords? Or if you had 20-40 boiler enquiries per month, would you still be quoting for full central heating jobs in November+?

The problem with the \"advertising\" stage is you are usually renting somebody else's space which hits your profit margin. Not only does it cost you to rent that space, but the advertising channel will often rent more \"space\" to your competition right at the side of the \"space\" they kindly let you rent.

To be fair to those companies, they have made it easy for you to rent the space they own. But you now have increased overheads and competition for work leading to a squeeze on profits. Your \"investment\" is just another overhead. The leads and enquiries will stop as soon as you stop paying the rent. So if this is where you are, let's look at what the top 10% earners will have in place.

Stage Three - The \"Marketing\" stage

So marketing and advertising, what's the difference again?

Advertising usually is \"renting\" somebodies space to get in front of \"their\" customers' eyes. For instance, you rent a display at Tesco supermarket. Are they your customers, or are they Tescos customers?

Marketing differs from advertising by focusing on creating your own space to attract your chosen customers. Understand who you want to serve and what they want, and you will attract that type of customer. Do you want boilers or bathrooms? Heatpumps or emergency plumbing?

Setting your shop front up to attract customers looking for a product or service is just what the \"middlemen\" do. The difference is in your space; you are in much more control of what your potential customers can see. You can influence their perceived value and potentially charge a premium rate compared to advertising in a crowded place.

How do you want to display your fantastic reviews, articles, videos and dedicated pages on that high-ticket service? Building your marketing channels and assets like websites and social media is not as easy as paying the middleman for the space they want to \"rent\" you. But your website, social media, and printed/ digital media will continue to attract better customers, and will continue attracting them for years to come. Long after you stop paying rent for somebody else’s space.

So if you have read this far and want to take control of your marketing and step up to the next level, remember this classic line from Mike Michalowicz. \"Word of Mouth\" is most welcome. You can't say no to the icing on the cake. But “Word of Mouth” is not the whole cake!

Tommy Lee-Zmuda

The Boiler Business 2022

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FREE FIVE PART MARKETING CLASS

If this has helped and you want to learn more about marketing in the plumbing and heating industry, head to our space for the free marketing & sales masterclass. It's all video, so you can listen or watch rather than read! www.theboilerbusiness.co.uk

Also, while you are at it, surround yourself with like-minded, forward-thinking business people discussing all things business within our industry. Engage with 1500 other engineers on The Boiler Business Facebook group. We'd love to connect! www.facebook.com/groups/theboilerbusiness

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The 3 stages of marketing for plumbers