How to get more plumbing jobs in the UK

Most plumbing work comes through a handful of channels. Knowing which ones bring your best jobs tells you where to spend time and money:

• Google: searches and Maps results for "plumber near me" and the job itself, such as a leaking tap or a new bathroom.
• Lead sites and directories such as Checkatrade and MyBuilder.
• Landlords and letting agents, who need repairs, safety checks and reliable cover.
• Builders, kitchen fitters and bathroom fitters who need a plumber they can trust on their jobs.
• Past customers and the people they recommend you to.
• Your van, your website and anything local people see every week.

Ask every new customer how they found you and write it down with the job value. After three months you'll know which channel brings the jobs you want, and which brings price shoppers.

Start with your Google Business Profile. It's free, and it's what appears in Maps and the local results when someone searches for a plumber nearby. Google's own advice is to keep your information complete and accurate, respond to reviews and add photos, and it says there's no way to pay for a better local ranking.

Set it up the way Google's rules expect for a trade that travels to customers:

1. 1Hide your address if you work from home. Google says a service-area business should hide its address and set a service area, and that the area shouldn't usually stretch beyond about two hours' drive from your base.
2. 2Use your real business name. Adding keywords or towns to your name isn't allowed and can get the profile suspended.
3. 3Pick the right main category, list your services and keep your hours up to date, including bank holidays.
4. 4Add photos of real jobs, your van and your team. Before and after shots of bathrooms and boiler swaps work well.
5. 5Ask every happy customer for a review, and reply to every review, good or bad.

Reviews do the heavy lifting. Our guide on how plumbers can get more Google reviews covers the review link, when to ask and what Google bans.

Google also sells Local Services Ads, where you pay per lead rather than per click and can earn a Google Verified badge. Google warns that if you regularly fail to answer calls or respond to messages, your ad ranking may be affected. Read our guide to Local Services Ads and missed calls before you switch them on.

Lead sites can fill a quiet diary, but they cost money and you're often competing with other plumbers for the same job. Here's what each one says about its own fees:

Sources: Checkatrade's join page and the Rated People help page for tradespeople, and MyBuilder's support pages on what the fees are and how lead fees are calculated. MyBuilder's terms say each shortlist fee is based on the likely size, value and location of the job.

Judge a lead site by the cost of each job you win, not the cost of each lead. For example, if you spend £300 in a month and win five jobs from it, each job cost you £60 to win. If those jobs average £150, that may be fine. If they average £90, it isn't.

Rented homes need repairs all year, and landlords and agents want one plumber who turns up, sends photos and invoices promptly. That makes them some of the best repeat customers a plumber can have.

If you're Gas Safe registered, there's also regular work built in. The Health and Safety Executive says landlords must make sure a gas safety check is done every year on each gas appliance and flue they provide, and that the check is done within a year before any new tenancy starts. Only a Gas Safe registered engineer can do it.

To win this work:

1. 1Visit or ring the letting agents in your area and ask who handles maintenance. Ask what they need from a contractor.
2. 2Make it easy to work with you: clear quotes, photos before and after, invoices the same day and a straight answer on when you can attend.
3. 3Offer to keep a reminder list for landlords' gas safety checks, so the work comes back each year.
4. 4Answer the agent's calls. An agent with a leak in a tenanted flat will ring the next plumber on their list if you don't pick up.

Your past customers already trust you. A few habits turn them into repeat work:

• Keep a list of every customer, the job and the date. Send a reminder when a boiler service or a check is due.
• Ask for a referral at the end of a good job, not weeks later.
• Build links with trades who need a plumber: builders, kitchen fitters, bathroom fitters and electricians. They'll pass on work if you make them look good to their customers.
• Get listed where customers check you. The WaterSafe register is a one-stop resource for consumers to find approved plumbers. To join you need a recognised plumbing qualification and Water Fittings Regulations qualification, and £2 million of public liability insurance, through one of its approved contractor schemes.

If you also fit boilers, our guide on how to get more boiler installations covers manufacturer schemes, finance and heat pump grants.

Yes, and it's cheap compared with a month of leads. Your van is seen every day by people in the area you work in. Keep it simple: your business name exactly as it appears on Google, what you do, one phone number and your website. Use the same name and number everywhere, from the van to your invoices to your Google Business Profile, so customers who see you in one place can find you in another.

A website doesn't need to be fancy. It needs your services, the areas you cover, photos of real jobs, reviews and a phone number that's easy to tap on a mobile. If you publish rough prices, our guide on what to charge as a plumber shows how to work them out.

As fast as you can, because the caller has a list of other plumbers. In the same BT Business survey, 58% of UK adults said they'd tell friends and family to avoid a business that didn't pick up, and 67% of small firms said they miss at least one call a day that costs them business.

Every channel in this guide ends in the same place: a phone ringing while you're under a sink. If it goes to voicemail, you've paid for the lead or earned the review and still lost the job.

The cost of a missed enquiry is the job's value times the chance the caller would have booked you. For example, if you miss four enquiries a week, one in three would have booked, and the average job is £150, that's about £200 a week, or £10,400 a year. Put your own numbers into our missed call calculator, and read what missed calls cost a plumber for the full sum.

Following up matters too:

1. 1Ring back missed callers the same hour if you can, not at the end of the day.
2. 2Send quotes the same day, in writing.
3. 3Follow up a quote you haven't heard back on after two or three days. A short message asking if they have any questions is enough.

If you can't answer while you're working, our guide to plumber answering services compares voicemail, callbacks, receptionists and answering services. For calls at night and weekends, see how to handle out-of-hours plumbing calls.