How to choose a marketing agency for plumbers: sort out your own side first

Follow the customer, not the owner. Picture a householder whose boiler dies on a cold evening (an illustration, not a case study). They search on a phone and see ads, map listings and ordinary results. They shortlist two or three firms by star rating and number of reviews, then ring the first number that looks right. Here the path forks. If a person answers, the householder hears a price and a time, books, and the call can be traced back to the ad or listing that produced it. If the call rings out, the householder simply rings the next firm on the shortlist, and the money spent getting them to your number has bought a competitor's job. An agency can shape the search and the shortlist: where you appear and what proof sits beside your name. Which branch the call takes is decided in your business, not in the agency's.

Get your side ready first

Each item below says what to prepare, how to check it and how a good agency would use it. A short list of questions for agencies follows.

1. A phone that gets answered, including out of hours

Plan cover for every hour you want work. In the US, Google treats plumbing as an urgent category on Local Services Ads, saying people often ring plumbers for time-sensitive problems like a hot water outage. Invoca's 2026 benchmark report found that 52% of calls to home services businesses in its data were answered by a person. Counting only calls over 15 seconds, which filters out misdials and quick hang-ups, the figure was 65%. Google's Local Services help page says ad ranking may be affected when an advertiser regularly misses calls or leaves messages unanswered. Google also says it charges for each valid lead, and a voicemail from the customer can count as one.

Ring your own business line at 7pm on a Sunday and at 8am on a Monday, and write down what happens. Then ask each agency whether every source gets its own tracking number, because that is how answered and missed calls reach a report.

2. Licence and register details that match the work you do

In Great Britain, HSE says a gas engineering business has to be on the Gas Safe Register before it can legally take on gas work covered by the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. Each engineer's Gas Safe card sets out, category by category, which appliances that person may work on, so a boiler advert needs an engineer whose card includes boilers. For UK plumbers on Local Services Ads, Google's help page lists public liability insurance, a business check and a business licence at country level, so keep those documents to hand.

In the US, where firms call themselves plumbing companies, check your own state or city, because two examples show how specific the rules get. California's contractors board says a licensed contractor's licence number must appear in every form of advertising. It also says C-36 plumbing contractors must show their name, address and licence number on both sides of every commercially registered vehicle, so check your vans. In Texas, the number a plumbing company's adverts must carry is the one held by its responsible master plumber (RMP) of record, with listed exceptions.

Put every service line you want advertised next to the card category or state record that covers it. An agency that writes copy before asking for that list has skipped the step that matters.

3. Badges and trust marks you actually hold

WaterSafe says approved contractor status belongs to an individual, not the business, and covers a specific scope of work. So a badge on a van does not tell a customer who is approved for what, and a mark used without permission is on the CMA's list of practices banned outright.

Google now uses a single Google Verified badge for all Local Services advertisers. The Money Back Guarantee that came with the old Google Guarantee badge is being discontinued. Its page says customers can request reimbursement for services booked before 7 December 2025.

List every badge, register and directory mark you show, who awarded it and when it lapses. Anything missing from that list, old Google Guaranteed wording included, should come off your ads and listings, whoever wrote it.

4. A review habit that follows the rules

In a 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, BrightLocal found that 47% would not use a local business with fewer than 20 reviews. In the US, FTC guidance says a business that pays incentives for 5-star reviews breaks its reviews rule, even if the reviewers disclose the incentive.

Count your Google reviews and note the date of the latest. Then ask to see the request an agency would send: one message after every job, worded the same for every customer, with no reward tied to the rating.

5. Price wording you can defend

CAP and the ASA advise UK advertisers to claim "no call-out charge" only if they do not charge for travel time, for diagnosing the fault on that first visit, or for anything else until the customer agrees to the repair. They add that a diagnostic fee charged to a customer who decides against the repair is likely to be seen as a call-out charge.

Write down your call-out fee, diagnostic fee and hourly rate as a customer would hear them, and expect your wording, not an invented free-visit offer, in every ad and listing.

6. Your own numbers and the jobs you want

One month of figures is enough: calls received, calls answered, jobs booked, and the split between emergencies and planned work. Google says lead prices can differ with your location, the job type, the lead type and your bidding mode. Not every lead becomes a job, so track cost per lead and cost per booked job as separate numbers. Keep emergencies and planned work apart. In Great Britain the rules treat them differently, and the Business Companion guide for traders says the off-premises cancellation exemption covers urgent repairs the customer specifically asked for, but not other work done during the same visit. Decide which work you want more of. In England and Wales, only MCS certified installers can apply for Boiler Upgrade Scheme vouchers, so a heat pump push built on those grants needs that certification first.

The plan you want is built around work you can staff, and reported against that baseline.

Questions to ask once you are ready

1. Which licence and registration numbers go in each ad, and who checks them against my card or state record?
2. Will your report split answered from missed calls, and emergency jobs from planned ones?
3. In the US, how are you handling Google's move of Local Services Ads campaigns to Performance Max? Google's phased plan starts in August 2026 for select US home service advertisers, plumbing included.
4. If a lead platform is in the plan, what evidence sits behind its claims about leads turning into jobs? Announcing a proposed order in January 2023, the FTC said its March 2022 complaint alleged that HomeAdvisor often told service providers its leads became jobs at rates much higher than it could substantiate. That was one company and an allegation, not a finding about all platforms.
5. Who, by name, does the work? Ask for the people who will build the campaigns, who will answer your calls to the agency, and who signs off the numbers. Get their names and roles in the proposal, and ask what happens if one of them leaves.
6. What will you do when the numbers go wrong? Ask what number or event triggers a review, how soon you will hear, and what the agency will change or stop. Agree this at the start, not during a bad month.

When not to hire an agency yet

If your phone goes unanswered, fix that first, because no agency can. If you want a few more calls a week, a freelancer or a Local Services Ads account you run yourself, paid per valid lead, may beat a retainer. Our post on how much to spend on ads helps you size that. Our marketing for plumbers page describes what we offer plumbing firms. You may finish this guide and decide to fix your side first, which is a sound outcome.

Three jobs for this week, in order

Start with the handover from ad to person. Ring your own line on Sunday evening, and if it rings out, decide this week who answers out of hours: you, a colleague on a rota, or an answering service that books jobs. Next, take one claim at a time from your website and listings, licence number, badge or price line, and remove any you cannot match to a card, a record or your own price list. Last, put last month's calls, answered calls and booked jobs on one sheet, with the Sunday test result at the top, and send it to two or three agencies. Their replies will show which of them read the missed-call line first.

If you want to talk through where your business stands, tell us about your business and you will get a reply on whether we can help.