How to get more work as a plumber

Ask a plumber where their work comes from and most will say word of mouth. That’s a good sign: it means people who’ve used you are happy. The trouble is you can’t turn it up when the diary’s quiet, and it stops the day you’re not the name people remember.

The customers you’re missing are the ones who don’t know anybody. They’ve got water coming through the ceiling, or a boiler that’s given up, or a bathroom they’ve been saving for, and they go to Google. Getting more work as a plumber means being the one they find, trust and get hold of.

Two kinds of plumbing customer

Plumbing has two quite different customers, and they choose in different ways.

	Emergency	Planned
The job	A leak, a burst pipe, no hot water, a blocked toilet	A new bathroom, a boiler swap, a cylinder, a kitchen
How they search	“plumber near me”, “emergency plumber” plus the town	“bathroom fitter”, “boiler installation” plus the town, then your website
How they get in touch	They ring, and keep ringing until someone answers	Often a form or a message, with photos
What decides it	Who answers first and looks legitimate	Reviews, photos of real jobs, a clear quote, and who follows up
How you lose it	A missed call	A slow quote, or a quote nobody chases

We don’t work with a plumbing firm yet. But we see the same split across the trades we do work with:

What we have seen

In the 60 days to 1 October 2026, 84 people got in touch with Junk Busters, a rubbish removal firm in Swindon, and 64 of them rang. In the same 60 days, 29 people got in touch with A.P. Berrystone, a building firm in Swindon: 24 through the website forms and 4 by phone. (A.P. Berrystone is a family firm: Adrian Berrystone is Tyler’s dad.) Junk Busters’ case study, Berrystone’s case study.

The point isn’t the trades, it’s the type of job. At Junk Busters nearly everyone rang; at Berrystone most used the form. A plumber gets both urgent and planned work, so be ready for both.

1. Answer the emergency, or text back within a minute

An emergency customer won’t leave a voicemail. They’ll ring the next plumber on the list. If you’re under a sink or on a roof, you can’t pick up, but you can make sure a text goes back straight away:

“Hi, it’s Sam at Northgate Plumbing. Sorry I missed you, I’m on a job. Is it a leak or something that can wait an hour? Reply with your postcode and I’ll ring you back as soon as I’m free.”

That one text can stop a lot of customers ringing round, because they know a real person has seen it. How to set it up is in missed call text back, and what missed calls really cost is in missed calls cost jobs.

Two more things for emergency work:

• Set your real hours on Google. If you say 24 hours and don’t answer at night, it shows in your reviews.
• Say what a call-out costs, or at least how you charge. People with water on the floor still want to know they won’t be stung.

2. Be on the map in your own town

A lot of emergency calls start on Google Maps. Google’s own help pages use a plumber as their example: “if you’re a plumber and run your business from your residential address, clear the address from your Business Profile”. So:

• Hide your address if customers don’t come to you, and set the towns you cover as your service area. Google allows up to 20 service areas, and says the overall area “shouldn’t be more than about two hours of driving time” from where you’re based.
• Your real trading name, nothing added. Google says unnecessary information in the name “isn’t permitted, and could result in the suspension of your Business Profile”. “Smith Plumbing 24/7 Emergency Boilers” is the kind of name that gets suspended.
• Your main trade as the primary category. Google’s advice is to “use as few categories as possible”. Only add categories for work you want, because each one brings its own enquiries.
• Every service listed in the customer’s words: leak repairs, burst pipes, toilet repairs, tap replacement, bathroom installation, boiler servicing.
• Photos of real jobs, regularly. Neat pipework photographs well.

Google ranks the map on relevance, distance and prominence, and says “there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google”. Distance means you’ll do best in the town you’re based in. The full method is in how to rank higher on Google Maps.

3. Say clearly what you can do: plumbing, gas, or both

This is the biggest trust signal in your trade, and the one customers are most confused about.

Gas Safe

Gas Safe Register’s own words: “All gas businesses and their engineers must be on the Gas Safe Register to carry out gas work legally.” Every registered engineer has a Gas Safe ID card, physical or digital, and Gas Safe tells customers to ask to see it. It shows:

• the engineer’s photo and the business they work for, with its registration number
• start and expiry dates
• the types of gas work they’re qualified to do, such as domestic boilers

Customers can also check you on the Gas Safe Register website.

So if you’re registered, put your registration number on your website, your Google listing, your quotes and your van, and say which work you’re qualified for. If you’re not, say so plainly: “We don’t do gas work. For boilers, we’ll recommend a Gas Safe engineer we trust.” That honesty wins more trust than leaving it vague.

WaterSafe

WaterSafe Register describes itself as “a free online directory and national accreditation body for competent and qualified plumbers”. It’s funded by the water industry and supported by the drinking water regulators. Plumbers join through an approved contractors’ scheme (APHC, CIPHE, SNIPEF or WIAPS), and WaterSafe says “it’s free to join for most eligible contractors”.

What’s in it for you: customers can search it by the service they need and their postcode. And WaterSafe tells customers they should get a work completed certificate that “gives you a legal defence provided that the approved contractor is approved for the scope of work completed”. That’s something to say on your quotes for bigger jobs.

4. A website that wins the planned jobs

The bathroom and boiler customer reads before they ring. They’ll open two or three websites and compare. Yours should:

• Say what you do and where on the first screen, with your number one tap away on a phone.
• Show real jobs: finished bathrooms, boiler installs, tidy cylinder cupboards. Labelled with the job and the town.
• Have a page for each main service and each town you cover. Someone searching “bathroom fitter” plus a town you cover should land on a page about exactly that.
• Show your Gas Safe number and WaterSafe membership, if you have them, near the top, not hidden in the footer.
• Show your reviews, and how you charge.
• Have a short form that asks for photos and a postcode. Planned-job customers often prefer to write than ring.

More on this in what should be on a trade website.

5. Landlords and letting agents: work that comes back every year

If you’re Gas Safe registered, landlords are steady work. GOV.UK says landlords must “have a registered engineer do an annual gas safety check on each appliance and flue”, and give tenants a copy of the record “before you move in, or within 28 days of the check”.

That’s a job that comes round every year. Keep a list of every landlord you’ve done a check for, with the date, and send a reminder a month before the next one is due. It’s the easiest work you’ll ever win, because they already know you.

6. Quote fast, and chase every quote

A boiler or bathroom customer usually gets more than one price. The job often goes to the firm that quoted clearly and followed up, not the cheapest.

1. Visit or price from photos within a day or two.
2. Send a written quote within a day of the visit, saying what’s included: parts, making good, taking away the old units, any certificates.
3. Follow up two days later: “Hi Mr Ahmed, just checking the boiler quote came through and whether you had any questions. Sam, Northgate Plumbing.”
4. Again after a week, and a friendly “shall I close this off?” after two weeks.

Plenty of quotes that go quiet haven’t been turned down. The customer just hasn’t decided. Word-for-word texts are in how to follow up a quote.

Then ask for the review

Ask every customer, the same day, with your review link. For emergency work, ask once the panic is over and they’re grateful. Google says “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking”. The exact texts are in how to get more Google reviews without begging.

Lead sites can top up a quiet week, but you’re paying for the contact and often pricing against other plumbers. Our guide to whether Checkatrade is worth it has the terms from Checkatrade’s own pages.

How we do it, and why it works

We don’t have a plumbing case study yet. What we’d do for you is what we do for every trade:

• Found. Your Google listing set up and worked every week, a review asked for after every job, and a website built to be called, with your Gas Safe and WaterSafe details where customers look for them.
• Answered. Calls ring you as they always have; we never answer your phone or book your diary. A missed call from a mobile gets a text back in your name, every form and message gets a reply in your name, anyone who goes quiet is followed up, and every quote is chased to a yes or a no.
• Counted. After each enquiry, a text asks whether you won it and for how much. Once a month, one page: what came in, what you won, and what it was worth.

Why it works: emergency jobs are lost on the missed call, and planned jobs are lost on the quote nobody chased. We cover both, so you can stay on the job. We can’t promise you a position on Google, and nobody honest can. We show where you stand and change what can be changed.

We do the Google work for one plumbing firm per town. You pay nothing until you’ve won £500 of work through us; after that it’s from £500 a month, any month the work you win through us comes to less than £500 is free, and there’s no contract, just 30 days’ notice. The free check shows the firms Google lists for your trade in your town, where you sit, and whether your town is still free.