Most plumbing companies have hired a marketing agency before. That's usually the problem. You paid a generalist to learn your business on your budget, got a report full of impressions, and never found out whether any of it produced a booked job.
Why a specialist agency beats a generalist
A generalist agency will hand you a template it also gave a dentist and a law firm. The vocabulary changes; the strategy doesn't. Meanwhile the things that actually decide whether a plumbing company grows — map pack position in each town you serve, emergency versus scheduled work, review velocity, speed to lead, whether your CSR books the call — never come up.
John Verhoff of Plumbing Nerds put it plainly: he'd already been investing in digital marketing, but felt his prior provider produced mediocre results because they didn't understand the home service industry deeply enough. He wanted specialists who would own the work instead of making him manage every Google, Bing, PPC and website issue himself.
Before working with us he said the company was doing about $1.9 million a year. In a client interview recorded just under two years later, he said it was on pace for roughly $4.3 million. He didn't credit one keyword or one ad. He credited an industry-specific team taking responsibility for the moving pieces — and giving him back the time he'd been spending managing vendors.
Source: Plumbing Nerds client interview.
What we actually do
One system, three steps, run for every client — the Accelerated Growth Model.
Step 01 — Drive Leads. Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search, Local Service Ads, and social. Google Business Profile optimization for the map pack, a page for every service and every city, and content aimed at demand that already exists.
Step 02 — Maximize Conversions. Web Design built to convert, Reputation Management to keep reviews climbing, and Conversion Amp for speed-to-lead: instant text-back on missed calls, follow-up on unsold estimates, reactivation of the database you already own.
Step 03 — Optimize Results. Call tracking, a live ROI dashboard and a monthly strategic review in plain English. Spend, leads, booked jobs and revenue visible in one place.
One scoreboard, not five dashboards
Bud's Plumbing is the clearest example of why attribution belongs inside the system rather than bolted on. The program combines the website, SEO, Google Maps, paid search, marketing automation, tracking and dispatch integration instead of treating them as disconnected campaigns.
In one agency-reported month the scoreboard showed $13,535 in total investment, 828 exclusive leads, 248 booked jobs and $210,000 in revenue — $16.35 per lead and a 15.5x return. Those figures should be reconciled against the source dashboard before anyone treats them as final audited numbers, and we'd say the same to you about your own reporting.
The point is the chain itself. When spend, lead flow, booked jobs and revenue are visible in one system, budget decisions stop being arguments and start being arithmetic.
Source: Bud's Plumbing case study, August 2026.
Revenue hiding in your database
72 Degrees / Carney & Sons ran a reactivation campaign to a database of roughly 5,000 contacts. It produced about 300 replies, 119 booked jobs, 29 completed jobs and approximately $84,000 in revenue — without buying a single new lead.
Most home service companies keep buying new attention while ignoring the people who already raised a hand. A real agency should be working both.
More of what this looks like
Warhold Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning
Chad Warhold came to us after paying for SEO and getting essentially no lead flow — in his words, so far down in Google the company was effectively invisible. After the switch he saw trackable leads within a month or two, consistent page one and two placement for the searches that mattered, and reported income up dramatically. He and his team still had to answer the calls and run the jobs; what changed is that the demand became visible.
Honest Abe's Home Services
Abram ran his first call in February 2018 as a one-man, one-truck operation. Roughly two years later he had eight trucks and was projecting more than $2.5 million in annual revenue. His advice to other owners is the part worth hearing: make sure your recruiting system is ready, because marketing can create demand faster than you expect.
The Meridian Company — East Lansing, MI
A plumbing, HVAC and electrical company that had plateaued and had lost confidence in its incumbent provider. After the change, Craig Phillipitch described strong visibility across most search categories and said the business almost doubled in size. He called our work a major component of that growth rather than the whole story — a qualifier we keep in on purpose.
All figures come from named client interviews and are documented in How to Triple Your Sales by Getting Your Digital Marketing Right.
How we're set up
Founded by Josh Nelson and Dean Iodice, Plumbing & HVAC SEO works with plumbing, HVAC and electrical contractors and no one else. 35+ team members. Clients across the US, Canada and Australia.
The tenure number is the one we'd point at. Contractors don't stay seven years with an agency that isn't producing.
Want to see how we think before you talk to us?
Josh Nelson's book How to Triple Your Sales by Getting Your Digital Marketing Right lays out the entire system, case studies included. It comes with the Growth Training Library — 10 recorded workshops, the keyword tool, the Marketing Plan Builder and the lead-gap calculator. Free, by email, no call required.
What it looks like over the long run
The Meridian Company on nearly doubling in size — including the parts they credit to their own operation, not to marketing.
Schedule a Strategy Session
We'll review your market, show you where you rank against the plumbing companies you actually compete with, and give you a plan. You'll leave with a keyword list, a ranking report and a conversion review of your site — whether or not you hire us.
One contractor per market.
Questions contractors ask before hiring us
Let's look at your market
Start free with the book and training library, or go straight to a conversation.
Want more proof? See full client stories, with video, on our case studies page.
