How to Build a Marketing Strategy for Your Trades Business (Even If You Hate Marketing)

Let’s be honest. If you’re a trades business owner reading this, you’d probably rather be on the tools than thinking about a marketing strategy for your trades business. Marketing feels like something other people do — people in offices with whiteboards and fancy job titles. Not plumbers, electricians, or heating engineers.

But here’s the thing. You already know word of mouth alone isn’t going to get you where you want to be. You’ve seen competitors showing up on Google, filling their diaries, putting on staff — and you’re wondering what they’re doing differently.

The answer, almost always, is that they’ve got a basic marketing plan for tradesmen in place. Not a complicated one. Not one that takes hours every week. Just a handful of things done properly, in the right order.

That’s what this guide is. A trades business marketing guide that starts with the free stuff, builds from there, and doesn’t require you to become a marketing expert. Think of it as a priority list: do this first, then this, then this. Each step builds on the last.

Step 1: Claim and Optimise Your Google Business Profile (Free)

If you do absolutely nothing else on this list, do this. Your Google Business Profile is the single most impactful free tool available to any local trades business. It’s the box that shows up when someone searches “plumber near me” or “electrician in [your town]” — your business name, phone number, reviews, photos, opening hours.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Claim your profile at business.google.com if you haven’t already. It takes ten minutes.
• Fill in every single field. Business description, services, service area, hours, website link. Google rewards completeness.
• Upload real photos. Your van, your team, finished jobs. Not stock images. Real photos of real work build trust and improve your visibility.
• Choose the right categories. Your primary category should be your main trade. Add secondary categories for other services you offer.

This isn’t a “nice to have.” When we set up and optimised Videtta Heating’s Google Business Profile properly, it generated 134 phone calls in just six months. That’s 134 potential customers calling directly from Google, without a penny spent on advertising.

Most tradespeople have either never claimed their profile or claimed it years ago and haven’t touched it since. Either way, you’re leaving calls on the table.

Step 2: Get a Website That Actually Converts

You don’t need a flashy website. You don’t need animations, parallax scrolling, or a homepage video that autoplays. You need a website that does one job: turn visitors into enquiries.

That means:

• Phone number visible in the header on every page — tap-to-call on mobile
• A clear “Get a Quote” or “Book a Call” button above the fold, before anyone has to scroll
• Individual pages for each service you offer — boiler installation, bathroom fitting, emergency repairs, whatever your bread and butter is
• Real photos and genuine reviews displayed prominently
• Fast loading speed — if it takes more than three seconds, people leave

Most trades websites fail not because they look bad, but because they don’t make it easy enough to get in touch. The visitor has to hunt for a phone number or dig through three pages to find a contact form. By then, they’ve already called someone else.

Videtta Heating’s website converts at 18.7%. That means nearly one in five visitors fills in a form or picks up the phone. The average trades website? About 2-3%. The difference isn’t design — it’s structure. Every page is built around making the next step obvious and effortless.

If you’re wondering how to start marketing a plumbing business (or any trade), a website that converts is the foundation everything else sits on. Without it, every pound you spend on ads or SEO is partially wasted — you’re driving people to a site that doesn’t do its job.

Step 3: Turn On Google Ads for Quick Wins

Once your website is ready to convert visitors, Google Ads is the fastest way to get it in front of people who are actively searching for your services right now.

This is the “tap” approach. You turn it on, people searching “boiler installation [your area]” see your ad, click through to your site, and enquire. You pay per click. When your budget for the day runs out, the ads stop. Simple.

Here’s what realistic looks like:

• Budget: £500-£1,000/month in ad spend for most local trades businesses
• Cost per lead: £15-£40 when campaigns are set up properly
• Timeline: leads within days, not months

The key phrase there is “set up properly.” A badly configured Google Ads campaign will burn through your budget faster than you can say “wasted money.” You need the right keywords, negative keywords to filter out rubbish searches, proper location targeting, and ads that send people to relevant pages on your site — not just your homepage.

Videtta Heating runs Google Ads at an average cost per lead of £22. When your average job is worth well over a thousand pounds, spending £22 to get someone on the phone is a very good trade.

If you’re not ready to manage this yourself — and most tradespeople shouldn’t be managing it themselves — this is where working with someone who understands marketing for plumbers and trades businesses makes a real difference.

Step 4: Build a Review Generation System

Reviews aren’t a vanity metric. They’re one of the most powerful trust signals you can have — and they directly affect whether you show up in Google’s local results.

Think about your own behaviour. When you need a restaurant, a dentist, or a tradesperson, what do you do? You check the reviews. Your customers do the same. A business with 80 five-star reviews beats a business with three reviews every single time, regardless of who’s actually better at the job.

The problem is, happy customers don’t leave reviews on their own. They mean to, but life gets in the way. You need a system — and it doesn’t have to be complicated:

• Ask at the right moment. The best time is right after you’ve finished a job and the customer is pleased. Not a week later by email — right there, while they’re still buzzing about their new bathroom or functioning boiler.
• Make it stupidly easy. Send them a direct link to your Google review page via text. One tap, write a few words, done. The fewer steps, the more reviews you’ll get.
• Be consistent. Ask every customer, every time. Not just the big jobs. Not just when you remember. Every single time.

A steady flow of recent reviews tells Google you’re active and trusted. It tells potential customers the same thing. And it compounds — every new review makes the next customer more likely to choose you.

Step 5: Invest in Local SEO for Long-Term Growth

This is the long game. Google Ads gets you leads now. Local SEO gets you leads for months and years to come — without paying per click.

Local SEO means making your website and online presence so relevant and authoritative for your area and services that Google ranks you organically. When someone searches “heating engineer in Leeds” and you appear in the top three results without paying for an ad, that’s SEO working.

Here’s what local SEO involves in practice:

• Service pages optimised for each thing you do — not one generic “Services” page, but individual pages for boiler installation, central heating, power flushing, whatever you offer
• Area pages for each location you cover — “Plumber in Harrogate,” “Boiler Installation in York,” and so on
• Consistent business information across the web — same name, address, and phone number on your website, Google Business Profile, Yell, Checkatrade, and everywhere else you’re listed
• Regular content — blog posts, FAQs, project write-ups — that show Google your site is active and authoritative
• Backlinks from other reputable local sites — trade directories, suppliers, local business associations

SEO takes time. Three to six months minimum before you see meaningful movement. But the leads it generates are essentially free once you’re ranking, and it compounds over time. Month six is better than month one. Month twelve is better than month six. You’re building an asset, not renting one.

This is where the full marketing strategy playbook really comes into its own — combining ads for short-term results with SEO for long-term, sustainable growth.

You Don’t Have to Do Everything at Once

If this list feels like a lot, take a breath. You don’t need to do all five steps tomorrow. The whole point of a marketing plan for tradesmen is that it gives you a sequence — a clear order of priorities.

Here’s the realistic version:

Month 1: Claim and optimise your Google Business Profile. Start asking every customer for a review. That’s it. Both are free.

Months 2-3: Get your website sorted. Make sure it’s fast, mobile-friendly, and has clear calls to action on every page. Add individual service pages.

Months 3-4: Turn on Google Ads with a modest budget. Start generating leads while your SEO builds in the background.

Months 4 onwards: Layer in local SEO. Create area pages, publish useful content, build your online authority. Let the compounding effect take hold.

Each step builds on the previous one. Your Google Business Profile drives calls. Your website converts visitors. Your ads drive traffic to that website. Your reviews build trust. Your SEO reduces your dependency on paid ads over time.

What Happens When You Get This Right

Jordan at Videtta Heating followed this exact approach. He started as a one-man band turning over £223k a year. Good money, but he was grafting for every penny — stuck on the tools, chasing every quote, completely reliant on referrals.

Within eighteen months of putting a proper marketing system in place, his turnover hit £1.3 million. That’s 486% growth. He now runs a full team and is off the tools entirely, focusing on growing the business instead of being buried in it.

That didn’t happen because he became a marketing expert. It happened because he put the right system in place and let it run. The leads come in, the phone rings, the diary fills up — without him having to think about marketing every day.

That’s the whole point. A good marketing strategy for a trades business isn’t something you need to babysit. It’s a system that works in the background while you focus on what you’re actually good at.

What to Do Next

If you want a structured starting point — something you can follow step by step without needing a marketing degree — grab our free 90 Day Growth Playbook. It lays out exactly what to do, in what order, for the first ninety days of your marketing. No fluff, no jargon, just a practical plan.

And if you’d rather have someone look at your specific situation and tell you honestly what to prioritise, book a call with us. We’ll tell you what we’d do if we were in your position — even if the answer is “you’re not ready for an agency yet, go and do these three things yourself first.”

No hard sell. Just a straight conversation about what makes sense for your business right now.