Why Would a Woman Choose a Plumbing Business?
July 20, 2007
This post is a response to a question from Ian from Phoenix from the Ashes, wanting to know more about Kwik Fix, my plumbing business and how we manage to compete against our rivals. It’s tough to answer in just one post, so I’ll try to write a few related posts over the next few days.
Why Would a Woman Choose a Plumbing Business?
Kwik Fix was only born in March this year. I’m not a plumber myself, which is a good thing, as I’ve realised from past experience that it’s often best if you don’t actually know how to do the technical work yourself. We didn’t launch the business because of all the rubbish in the media about a plumbing shortage. In fact, I personally believe the whole shortage of plumbers story has been overhyped by the expensive plumbing training schools that have sprung up all over the country. However, I do believe there is a lack of good plumbing services, and that’s why we decided to offer something better.
How Can a Start Up Beat the Competition?
We don’t so much try to beat the competition. Some of them are national companies with a mountain of cash to invest in their business, so we’re not even playing on the same pitch. Instead we try to be different to them. Basically, there are a few different types of competitor in the region, so we took all the things we didn’t like about them, and resolved to do it differently. Here’s a few of the things we’ve done so far:
Branding: From the beginning, we’ve had branded vehicles, uniforms, letterheads etc, and our plumbers carry ID cards. It creates a professional image, but very few tradespeople bother to do it.Â
Reliability: This is the main reason we went into plumbing. When we tried to get a plumber for customers in my last business we were lucky if they turned up at all, and if it was just a small job, you could forget it. We decided to offer a service where we could be at emergency plumbing jobs within 2 hours, and non emergencies within 2 days. We always give a definite appointment time, and make sure we turn up when we say we will.Â
USP: Finding a Unique Selling Proposition for your business (business jargon for doing something different to your competitors) is not easy, and finding something that your competitors can’t copy is even tougher. We looked to other industries for ideas and decided to go with “Two hours or it’s free” for plumbing emergencies. A couple of days later, we noticed that a large national competitor had copied us. The hilarious thing is that the competitor in question subcontracts out most of their plumbing work, and that weekend they called us because they’d been trying all day to get a subcontractor to go out to an emergency. We helped them out, but by the time they called us - they were already well over their two hour time limit.
There is absolutely no point in having a USP if you can’t live up to it, but even though our competitor couldn’t actually be there within 2 hours, I was still determined to find something that couldn’t be copied - so now we offer a free washer changing service to existing customers and newsletter subscribers. If this is copied, I’ll keep finding something better.
Customer Relationships: We keep in contact with our customers on a regular basis, but we’re not constantly trying to sell to them, we just make sure we remind them that we’re there - that way they’re more likely to use us again and recommend us to others, and it works. No matter how good a service is, if the business in question doesn’t keep in touch, it’s difficult to remember them. Also, it is a huge turn off when a company calls you constantly to try to sell you something, then they don’t even call you once afterwards to check you were happy with the service. Two companies have done that to me recently and it hasn’t inspired me to use them again.
What I Struggle With Most: The biggest problem I’ve faced is actually finding and recruiting the right plumbers. The problem is the industry is notorious for poor service standards, so most of the plumbers are only as good as those who have trained them. Many are resistant to change anyway, and not everyone is suited to working for a start up. There also seems to be some resentment because we’re not actually plumbers ourselves. We’re hoping to improve this situation by eventually training many of our plumbers from scratch.
Plans for the Future: We currently operate within Cumbria, but we plan to expand into other areas eventually and also offer additional services. I’m determined not to go against my principles, just to speed up our growth, so there’s no way we’ll be subcontracting work out. If we did that - we wouldn’t be a plumbing service, we’d just be middle men, and we’d lose control of quality.Â
As for additional services - we don’t want to copy some of our larger competitors. There seems to be so many national companies springing up now, who offer these jack of all trade services. They sound professional, because they have a lot of money to spend on marketing, but the reality is, that most of them are just call centres who pass work to random tradespeople all over the country.Â
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6 Responses to “Why Would a Woman Choose a Plumbing Business?”
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Cath,
Your business sounds fantastic. I bet it’s a challenge keeping to the USP! But what a claim it is. If you change hearts and minds of those you employ, I bet you will have people flocking to your door!
Can I recommend a book that may help?
Firstly, entering “plumbers” in Google and check out the adverts on the right. Are there any advertising from your area?
If not, then you can corner the market.
I’m about 2 chapters from the end, but the thing I didn’t know which spooked me a little is that when you hit search, Google knows where you are! And I mean the city you’re in!
You can bid for clicks just from people in Carlisle or even Cumbria.
The ideas resonate with email marketing. Like the way a subject line often works better without benefits, the top line of a Google Ad should reflect the search term the potential clicker will go to, but necessarily be quite dull. Click through rates multiply by “resonating” with the thoughts in the searchers’ heads.
For example, someone enters “back pain” in Google, then your headline “Back Pain remedies” as opposed to something like “World’s best chiropractor” will beat the competition and get clicks.
With an email, you want them to open it. With a Google Ad Word campaign, you want relevant potential clients to click your ad. And then capture their email details almost immediately - something the majority - even the big corporates who you would think should be clever, don’t do allegedly.
What fascinates me more is that you can have the guts of an ad unchanged, but change this heading to suit the keyword(s) people search on - dozens of variations.
Equally illuminating is that the landing page you send them to can get even better results if it matches the keyword too.
There appears to be only some very subtle differences in the online world compared to traditional direct marketing - things that have worked for a hundred or more years still work, but tailored only very slightly for the medium. But those slight adaptations seem to make an exponentially huge difference.
About a third of the book is on testing and how multiple minor changes and split-testing can fine-tune a campaign which can run for months or years unchanged.
I strongly suspect that the copy you write for the automated emails which go out following each click wil be going to people who are more likely to buy by virtue of their original Google search. There are even methods for excluding tyre-kickers from clicking.
That’s why I’m interested. If I type in “computer support”, I don’t get any local companies (remember, Google knows I’m in Liverpool, so nobody in our area is doing this). Out of 8 ads that appeared, only 3 contained “Computer Support”. Two of those were US companies. Only 1 attempted to capture me - but by downloading a free trial.
Apparently you pay less if there’s fewer people competing for your area or who achieve less success. Apparently, the more successful and relevant your ad, the less you pay, and the higher position you can gain on the page without any extra cost.
Fascinating!
Sorry - didn’t tell you the book. It’s:
“Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords” by Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd.
I’m not on any commission or anything! It was just a fantastic read and I can’t wait to try it (current budget challenges allowing!).
It’s a really good and easy read. Full of stuff I can’t wait to try. http://www.perrymarshall.com is the author. The split-testing sections are eye-opening. Particularly that you can tweak 4 key elements of the click through process and split test them.
So, split-test the ad. Ditch the loser. Then create a split test for the winner. Ditch the loser etc. But the trick is in how you tweak.
Then when they click through the trick is capturing. So split test the landing page.
Then the first email that goes out etc.
You can improve results by typically 60+ times those that you currently get. And the figures are substantiated.
Also has some fascinating sections on reducing the price you pay per click and strategies for getting rewarded by Google for relevance and the various formulae they use.
Rivetting!
I just came from your comment on problogger. I really like your blog. I was looking for a blog that shares the real tips from small businesses. You really share your real experiences and learning. Not many people really disclose the secret of the business they are currently learning. Please allow me to study your contents. You got so much here.
But, business is hard and I’m hoping that by sharing I’ll help others.