Case study · Plumbers · USA

Plumber Case Study USA: +160% Leads

Name: Marketing Lead Expert
Address: IN
Price range: $$

How a 14-van plumbing business in Atlanta grew calls and inquiries 160% and cut cost per lead 56% in 6 months with Google Ads, Business Listings and Local SEO.

Illustrative case study: the business is anonymised and the figures are modelled on typical results for this market.

Plumbers · USA

Plumbing

A 14-van plumbing business based in Atlanta, serving the wider Atlanta area and focused on water heater replacement and sewer line repair. Before working with us, 56% of inquiries came through Angi and similar paid platforms, where the same lead often went to three or four competitors. The goal was more exclusive calls and inquiries, a lower cost per booked job and a pipeline the owner controls.

Results After 6 Months

Leads per month

+160%

Cost per lead

-56%

Marketing-sourced revenue

+197%

Return on marketing spend

8.6x

The challenge

Where the business was stuck

Emergency jobs go to whoever answers first, so missed calls after 5pm quietly hand revenue to competitors.
Lead marketplaces sell the same inquiry to three or four plumbers, which drives prices down and win rates with them.
Low-value tap and toilet jobs fill the diary while hot water, re-pipe and bathroom work, the jobs that pay, go elsewhere.
Peak season (frozen and burst pipe calls spike in northern states in winter; water heater failures rise in colder months nationwide) was not being planned for, so budget ran out when demand was highest.

The approach

Three services, one goal

We focused on Google Ads, Business Listings & Citations and Local SEO & Google Maps, the three channels with the best cost per booked job for plumbing businesses in Atlanta. Every call, form and chat was tracked to a booked outcome from week one, so every decision was based on revenue, not clicks.

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What we did

The technical work behind the numbers, service by service.

Service 1

Google Ads

Restructured the account into 25 single-theme ad groups by job type, with exact and phrase match only and a 757-term negative keyword list.
Installed call tracking and imported booked jobs from the CRM as offline conversions, so bidding optimized for revenue, not form fills.
Moved from manual CPC to Maximize Conversion Value with a target ROAS once 30+ conversions a month were flowing.
Set up and managed Google Local Services Ads next to search campaigns, disputing invalid leads weekly.

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Service 2

Business Listings & Citations

Claimed and completed profiles on Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and 68 local and industry directories.
Cleaned name, address and phone details everywhere, removing 3 duplicate listings that were splitting reviews and confusing Google.
Added services, photos, opening hours, license numbers and booking links to every profile, with UTM tags to track leads by source.
Set up monthly listing monitoring so incorrect edits by users or aggregators are caught and fixed within days.

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Service 3

Local SEO & Google Maps

Rebuilt the Google Business Profile: primary category corrected, 3 secondary categories added, 11 services with descriptions and a service area matched to the real travel radius.
Published 11 suburb and area pages across the wider Atlanta area, each with local job photos, travel times and area-specific FAQs.
Launched a review request flow by SMS after every completed job, lifting review velocity from 4 to 26 new reviews a month.
Tracked rankings on a 9x9 geo-grid around the office to see Maps visibility street by street, not just from one location.

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The numbers

Before and after

Metric	Before	Month 6	Change
Calls and inquiries per month	58	151	+160%
Cost per lead	$62	$27	-56%
Cost per booked job	$150	$58	-62%
Lead-to-job rate	41%	47%	+6 pts
Website conversion rate	2.4%	3.7%	+50%
Marketing-sourced revenue / month	$17k	$50k	+197%
Share of leads from paid directories	56%	23%	-33 pts
Search impression share	20%	57%	+37 pts
Listings with consistent details	12	71	all fixed
Keywords in the Maps top 3	1	18	+17

Lead growth

Calls and enquiries per month

Marketing-sourced revenue went from $17k to $50k a month, measured from booked booked jobs in the CRM.

Optimisations That Moved The Numbers

01
The 757-term negative keyword list cut wasted spend on jobs, DIY and supplier searches by 47%.
02
Offline conversion import let bidding favour water heater replacement searches, raising average lead value by 32%.
03
Fixing duplicates and inconsistent details lifted Google Business Profile views by 32%.
04
Adding 3 secondary Google Business Profile categories lifted discovery searches by 47% in six weeks.

The 6-month timeline

From tracking to scale.

Weeks 1 to 2
Audit, tracking and baseline
Call tracking, conversion tracking, CRM connection and a full audit covering Google Ads, Business Listings and Local SEO.
Weeks 3 to 6
Build and launch
Google Ads, Business Listings and Local SEO live for water heater replacement and sewer line repair.
Months 2 to 4
Optimise
Weekly search term, call and landing page reviews. Budget and effort moved to the jobs that close.
Months 5 to 6
Scale
Expansion into Phoenix and nearby areas, plus new services with proven demand.

Illustrative case study: the business is anonymised and the figures are modelled on typical results for this market. Your results depend on your market, budget, capacity and follow-up. We share realistic forecasts in your free audit.