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The 16th Williams “State of the Trade Survey” found that, not surprisingly, “word of mouth” is still most effective marketing tool, with 84% of responses describing it as having a large effect, and less than 2% feel it has no impact at all.

However, it takes time to build a business based solely on personal recommendations, and not everyone is in a position to be patient while they build their reputation. We asked about a range of other routes to winning work, and tried find correlations these strategies with either achieving higher rates (being in the top quartile) or of keeping busy (having 8 weeks or more of work booked in).

Whilst it is important to remember that correlation is not the same as causality, it seems that roughly half our respondents might be missing out by not having a website, although missing an online presence is no means a barrier to either top rates or a full diary.

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Turning to social media, while firms charging the most seem more likely to use it than the average respondent, the busy firms – those with 8 weeks or more booked in – are less likely to use it, with nearly half of these businesses ignoring social media altogether. Perhaps this is related to availability? Social media is an impatient platform, so why bother if you are already booked months in advance?

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It appears that a similar logic applies to digital marketing, which seems more popular with firms asking a higher hourly rate than it is with the busy firms, or with respondents as a whole.

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Perhaps work of short duration, but high potential hourly rate (for example emergency call out work) is disproportionately driven by digital platforms like Google, Checkatrade and MyBuilder? Planned projects of longer duration like fitting bathrooms or completely overhauling a heating system, might be more likely to be decided by personal recommendation or at least require a well-maintained website as quality conscious customers have more time to research. It is these longer jobs which fill up a diary and give the security steady work even if they don’t always attract such premium rates.

Of the more traditional means of advertising, the old favourites of local print advertising, whether by flyers, parish magazines or local press has fallen out of favour, with more than 80% having either given up, or feeling that it has no impact. Only 1 in 20 respondents found that this had a large impact.

Maintaining a company brand identity through sign-written vehicles and branded clothing remains fairly popular as over 60% of all businesses and 70% of top decile priced firms “dress for success”. Busy and premium charging business are more likely to describe this as having a large impact, but the absolute numbers of those convinced that brand identity is the secret sauce remains relatively low, at around 10% of all firms only rising to 17% amongst the more successful groups.

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After walking in the footsteps of a busy sole trader plumber, Tommy Lee-Zmuda, installer and founder of The Boiler Business carries on the conversation and discusses what he’s learnt about marketing: The three stages of marketing for plumbers.

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Williams State of the Trade Survey 2021 – Marketing Supplement