Gasfitters and HVAC contractors: part of the plumbing family!

We welcome all gasfitters, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) contractors and related trades and firms to plumbermarketing.com!

 

Depending on where you are in the world, the scope of 'plumbing' changes - so we would like to make clear that we welcome gasfitters, HVAC contractors and related trades into the plumbing family!

 

Of course, at the more industrial and engineering end of the spectrum the distinction can become even more blurred - major contracts require firms to provide complete development solutions.  What is interesting about these trades is not what distinguishes them, so much as the shared nature of the problems they solve.

 

From a business perspective, this means that the marketing strategies that underpin good practice for an industrial plumber, or a supply product, work well with gasfitting and HVAC marketing too.  If there is one major difference, it is that at a residential level gasfitting and HVAC can be more seasonal.  Homeowners don't worry so much if their central heating doesn't work in summer, but fret about their air-conditioning, and vice versa.  Spring and autumn can be underpinned by hot water systems.

 

 

What this means is that there can be huge opportunities to TARGET your marketing with this in mind.  You know that there is at least one part of the year where you are run off your feet (heating in winter, cooling in summer) - so you need to target your marketing to cope with these different periods of feast and famine.

 

1.  FEAST:  This is often the time when you barely have to try to get work - it can just flood in.  The problem is that it can be difficult to control, and some jobs are big, some jobs are small.  The idea at this time of year is to target your marketing for the really big jobs - the huge profit spinners.  If you market yourself without targeting this, you can end up overwhelmed with requests you can't really satisfy and you don't really want.  So in a sense you limit your marketing push to the work that really pays - and you give yourself a huge advantage for getting those jobs (over those just marketing in a general sense).  This is one of the reasons why it can pay to diversify your marketing efforts away from Yellow Pages - where the one ad has to work for the whole year.  Add new marketing streams - like online marketing and direct marketing (by mail).

 

2.  FAMINE:  These are the times when work is thin on the ground.  Of course the good parts of the year more than compensate for it, otherwise you wouldn't stay in business, but a lot of the overheads are continuous - vehicle fleets, wages, liability insurance.  And most valuable of all - time is being wasted: time when you are not being paid.  Often, perversely, this is when many businesses take their foot off the marketing pedal - they stop advertising and pushing for work because they know they get less back for each ad.  Instead they need to modify their marketing for this time of the year - not necessarily spending more, but not slashing spending either.  Once businesses realise that, yes, the return on their marketing investment will be different at this time of year it can liberate them to advertise more aggressively.  When your competitors take their foot off the pedal, and you put yours down, who is going to win the race?  Yes, the cost of acquiring sales can be higher at this time of year - but that is in the nature of the seasons and weather conditions.  The important point is that profit versus no-profit is a no-brainer.  Keep pushing.

 

 

Plumbermarketing.com can help your gasfitting or HVAC business, from contractors, to industrial enterprises, to trade products and supplies.  You can email us here, or you can call us in the US, UK, Australia, Canada or New Zealand.  Call us any time of day!  Our phone numbers are here.