Don't Take Slow Times Lying Down

🚨 Slow Season in Your Plumbing Business? Here’s Exactly What To Do.

In this episode, we break down practical plumbing marketing strategies to keep your phones ringing, your technicians busy, and your business growing — even during slow periods. From direct mail campaigns and email marketing to branding, social media, partnerships, and neighborhood marketing, this is a complete playbook for plumbing company owners who refuse to sit back and accept “slow.”

If you own a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, or home service business, this episode is packed with actionable ideas you can implement immediately to generate more service calls, improve team morale, and build a recognizable local brand.

You’ll learn why successful companies focus on consistency, branding, visibility, and proactive marketing instead of waiting for leads to magically appear.

🔥 In this episode, you’ll discover:

•  Why every plumbing business needs 3 calls per tech per day 
•  How to market your plumbing company during slow seasons 
•  The power of direct mail postcards and local radius marketing 
•  Email marketing ideas for plumbing and home service businesses 
•  How to reactivate past customers with simple offers 
•  Why collaboration with electricians, HVAC companies, and roofers works 
•  Social media marketing tips for plumbing businesses 
•  Neighborhood marketing strategies that actually get noticed 
•  How yard signs, A-frames, and truck placement generate leads 
•  The importance of branding in the trades 
•  How purpose-driven marketing builds customer loyalty 
•  Leadership mindset and responsibility as a business owner 

This episode is essential for:
 ✅ Plumbing company owners
 ✅ HVAC contractors
 ✅ Electricians
 ✅ Home service business owners
 ✅ Trades entrepreneurs
 ✅ Service managers looking to improve call volume

📈 If your business feels slow, don’t panic — market harder, get visible, and create momentum.

👇 Subscribe for more plumbing business coaching, marketing strategies, leadership advice, and home service growth content.

#PlumbingBusiness #PlumbingMarketing #HomeServiceBusiness #HVACMarketing #ContractorMarketing #ServiceBusiness #LocalMarketing #BusinessGrowth #TradesBusiness #PlumbingContractor

⏱️ CHAPTERS:
 00:00 Why Slow Seasons Are Dangerous
 00:55 The “3 Calls Per Tech” Rule
 02:26 Direct Mail Marketing Strategy Explained
 04:06 Handling Slow Periods the Right Way
 05:23 Email Marketing for Plumbing Companies
 07:11 Predicting Slow Days & Seasonal Trends
 08:25 Calling Your Customer List for More Work
 08:53 Partnering with Other Trades for Referrals
 10:54 Social Media & Customer Engagement Tips
 12:11 Why Doing Something Builds Company Morale
 12:52 Neighborhood Marketing Tactics That Work
 14:18 The Power of Yard Signs & Visibility
 15:02 Why Techs Need Sales Training
 16:59 Building a Strong Plumbing Brand
 18:18 “Banana on the Roof” Branding Concept
 19:35 Creative Marketing Campaign Ideas
 20:23 Creating Social Media Content That Stands Out
 20:41 Purpose Partnerships & Sponsorship Marketing
 22:31 Using Community Branding to Get Direct Calls
 23:45 Collaborating With Local Business Owners
 24:26 How to Use Your Service Trucks as Billboards
 25:21 Why Owners Must Lead Marketing Efforts
 26:17 All Hands on Deck During Slow Seasons
 26:32 Final Motivation for Business Owners

Source transcript adapted from uploaded script file.

The Podcast that helps plumbing and heating service contractors stop working for free and actually turn a profit. 

Connect with me on social media: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dennistheapprentice/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064205912242 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dennistheapprentice

Thank you once again for your support and don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this podcast with your peers! Stay tuned for more exciting content coming your way every week.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning. Hey, this is a special This is a special video about marketing. I keep hearing about companies being slow and kind of wondering what to do next. And just a little bit of an acceptance that it's slow. In my perspective, if you're in business for yourself, it is your responsibility to have full-time work for all your employees. And whose job is it if it's not yours? And so I I I talked to a lot of business owners and they're kind of they don't know what to do. They already they already put a bunch of money into Google and they spent all their money on Yelp and whatever else, and they're kind of wondering what to do. So this is to answer that question, what to do, there is so much to do. So let's get into it. Marketing, if you don't have three calls a day per tech, then it's all hands on deck. All hands. We want an empty parking lot. It kind of occurred to me the other day, I remember we've been slow too, right? For years we we we struggled to be busy. But then there was a time when the last 10 years, it was like if there was a truck in the parking lot, what was wrong? Like the parking lot was always empty. And I would drive by other shops and see their shop, their trucks in the parking lot, wonder what's going on. And but even as we got big with like 25 techs, the parking lot was always empty. And it hardly ever happened. But it's super important. You want all your trucks on the road. They all everybody needs to be working. And and so, first of all, we need three calls a day. If you get any more than that, well, that's kind of the average. Like I think our average is like 2.6. Basically, in our career, it's like 2.6 calls a day. That's all really all you need. If you've got a good sales program. If you need more calls than that, then that's another topic. I think I think our techs can do better than that. They can they're they're they're missing something. So, but usually three calls a day works out to good, full-time, solid work, all with techs doing very well, making bonuses and all that. Okay. So let's get into it. What I think a lot of people wonder what to do. Like, what do I do? Like, what what well there's something for everybody to do. So let's get into this. Office, we need to mail our five-mile radius. And I focus on a five-mile radius. In fact, I forgot I was gonna get a picture. I found a picture of my five-mile radius behind me at my old shop, and I was gonna post that here. But we focus on a five-mile radius, and when I say mail your five-mile radius over and over, what I mean by that is we had this cheap little inexpensive yellow postcard. It was it was a pale yellow with pale blue ink. Super simple, super cheap, flimsy. And we would mail those out to zip code by zip code, like, okay, this week, this zip code, this next week, this zip code. And we would just rotate through and mail those out. And I think it was like$25 off a service call. That's all it was. And what would happen is when we go, we'd go to a house, we would see those up on the refrigerator. It's kind of interesting. People saved them. And the next thing is some people would call us and say, Hey, I came home and the water heater's not working. I got this in the mail. I guess I'm supposed to call you. Serendipity, right? It was a timing thing. And we did that so much, we kind of got known for the pale yellow postcard. And it was kind of embarrassingly cheap looking. And a lot of the techs thought that was partly what made it work. Like we all want everything to be glossy and shiny and full color. But this was meant to be as cheap as possible and to really stick out. And so that's what we did. So do that. I would suggest doing that. And that's something that you can do when it's slow. If you track, if you get organized and start tracking your call account over a couple years, you'll start to figure out what the slow times are. And so when the slow times are coming, you can ramp up your mailers and start mailing them out, right? Or when it's slow. Because here's here's a key point. You want when the tech's, you know what's bad when it's slow? Everyone's looking at you like, what's the problem? Would you screw up? Do you ever feel that way? It's like, oh shoot. Everyone's looking at me like what like I screwed up the marketing. And so you want to be able to tell the plumbers, your technicians, that you've done something. Does that make sense? So, hey, I know it's slow. I'm sorry, we're doing our best. I've just put out 5,000 mailers yesterday morning. That feels way better than going, I don't know. I called all my buddies and they say it's slow too. That doesn't go very far. Like, if you want to keep your text, you you gotta keep them busy. And if they're not busy, they need to know that you're doing your level best to fix that problem. Or they should go somewhere else. Like, they only have so many years to plumb, right? So why sit around twiddling their thumbs? So this is super important. So you can email an offer to your entire email list. So I I'm on the other side, like I'm developing a coaching program, right? And so your your email list of people that might be interested in your coaching is super valuable. And and so we don't talk about that much in the trades, but our customer list, our email list, what why don't we send out why don't we email out an offering of some kind? For instance, I'll give you an example. This is what I mean. Right now, currently, my toilet handle again is getting stuck. We push the button and it flushes, but it'll get stuck down. And it's just a little hassle. And so in the subject line, you can say, is your toilet handle giving you trouble? Just a little thing. And that might like how many people are having that problem where their their handle's not quite working? Or is the kitchen sink faucet bugging you again? Or whatever little thing in the subject line, and then you send an email out and a little special offer. And and that's a whole nother thing is writing emails, right? But when was the last time you emailed your email list? Those are your existing customers. And you can you can shake you can shake the tree a little bit, and some things will fall out. If I got that email, my wife would probably answer and say, Yeah, that thing, Dennis hasn't fixed it yet. And come on out and fix that, especially if it's for$99 or something, right? And let's fix that handle. And then now that they're now that they're now that the plumber's out here, what else do we have issues with? We've got a couple things. Every house has a couple things. So have you emailed your email list? And why not do that on a regular basis? Or at least when it's slow, as those slow times come. You know those slow times. In Seattle, we fit it, it took us years to figure this out. I'm kind of embarrassed to suggest this, but but in Seattle, it took us years to figure out that if it was a Monday and it was sunny, it was gonna be slow. It's kind of weird. Like it, like we're known for it's cloudy and kind of rainy and drizzly a lot in Seattle, right? Well, if ever it was Monday and the weather popped and it was nice, it would just be slow. And I don't know, the plumbing doesn't know that the sun's out, but people just don't want a plumber out, like they're gonna go take advantage of it. It's the weirdest thing. You would think that people aren't affected that much by it by it, but it it it's true. And the other thing is if it's rained for several days and then all of a sudden there's like a Thursday pops and all of a sudden it's a beautiful day and it's rained for a week, it's probably gonna be slow in Seattle. So every market's gonna have those kind of things. But maybe those are the days when then, okay, put a blast out, like let's put an email blast out and make a special offer. And you can have those pre-built. You can pre-build those and you can reuse them over and over, right? So call the customer list and make them aware of the same offer. So you can email them, but you can also call them. Just when it's slow, just print out your list or work your list, however you do it, and get to work and make some phone calls. Again, it's better than sitting around. And when the plumbers are worried about why it is so slow, it's the second day it's been slow. Then you can say, Hey, the office called, made 500 phone calls yesterday, offering this special deal or something. So that's something you can do. Here's another thing you can do. You can collaborate with another trade in your five-mile radius and promote them and vice versa. What do what do we mean? What do I mean by that? Right now, I right now, today, I have an electrical company putting in some electrical work. If I was in business for myself as a plumber here, I would collaborate with them. They're my electricians. They've done several jobs at my house, and they're right here in the shoreline area in my town. I would collaborate with them and say, hey, could I, would you mind if I if would you put out an email on my behalf? Like, hey, our friendly, our friend, our plumber friend has a special offer this week. And I would do the same thing. Hey, my electrical friend has a special offer this week. And what's that doing? That's getting in front of a whole nother mailing list, a whole nother group of people. See what I'm saying? And you can do that with several trades. You can do that with roofing, with the yard work, electrical, HVAC. Why not call another company that does not do what you do and swap email lists? Or like you can send them an email and say, hey, would you guys send that out and you guys give me your email and I'll send your email out. And you can collaborate. And now you can double, you can work that. I did a thing for a while, it was called a shout out. And I would shout out, I would make an email, make kind of make it flyer, and it would shout out another brand. And I would just send that out to my whole email list, and I would just shout out and promote another brand. And guess what's going to happen if I did that for them? That just makes them feel good about me, right? And they'll they'll probably refer me a lot more often than if they didn't know I did that. So that's another thing you can do. The office can post a Facebook ad. Like I really think that the office needs to be doing that on a regular basis. They need to be in charge of that. That's kind of a whole other topic. They need to be posting social media content. There's also social media content to post. And then they need to comment on the post of routine customers. I don't mean call looking finding Mrs. Smith on Facebook and comment. And I don't mean that. But if you have a property management company that calls you once a week or twice a week or whatever, that calls you frequently, why not go to those customers and comment on their Facebook and share their posts and stuff? Does that make sense? They're gonna see it. Don't you see when someone shares your stuff? And it means something to you. Well, that's just another way of getting in front of your ideal customer again, is to is when it's slow. Now, when it's busy, you don't have time to do this stuff, right? Necessarily. But when you've got a minute, why not go and and like, comment, and share the posts of your customers, of your commercial, your repeat customers. Does that make sense? So those are all that's not all, but that's a list of I those those are some ideas that you can you can get busy with right now, putting the office to work on working to make the phone ring. Really sitting around is boring. Sitting around drains the energy, it makes everybody wonder if everything's okay. Like if there's a sense of doom. So do something. It feels so much better to do something. It it increases the self-esteem, it increases the morale of the company if everybody's doing something. And if it's slow, everybody should be doing something to make it not slow anymore. And if everybody just knows that, when it's slow, you just get to work doing that, it'll make a huge difference in your company. What can the apprentices do? They can clover leaf around each call, right? And I think they should be doing this all the time, right? Is when they go on a call, you know, put door hangers on the calls, the houses around the call that they're in. They can put an A-frame sign out at the start of the job. Like when they pull into a neighborhood, they can hop out of the truck and put an A-frame out saying, hey, this, we're to work, we're working in the neighborhood. And you can do all sorts of stuff with that. You can put a QR code if you call today,$49 off or something, right? You can put a yard sign out and take a picture. You can put a yard sign in on the yard that you're working on. That that's one thing. I see people I see people do that, but then take a picture. Take a selfie. Take a picture with a person in it, maybe the customer, maybe your plumber, or maybe the apprentice. Maybe it's a selfie with a sign, whatever. And then post it on social media. See, the sign can be seen as people drive by, but why not put it on social media so lots more people have the opportunity to see it? And then it lasts forever. Even if they take the sign out of the yard, it lives forever online. Isn't that cool? Another thing you can do, yeah, so that's that's something that the apprentices can do. Frankly, I think they should be doing doing that on every job. Especially on here's the next thing. What you don't realize is some people overlook this, but we're in the neighborhood and we're working and we do the water heat or whatever, and then we leave. Or we do a water line and we clean everything up, you know, we'll wait for inspection tomorrow and we leave. What we don't realize is after we leave, people, everybody comes home and they walk the dog and they there are people out and about a little bit in the neighborhood, and they'll see a work being done in the yard, and you're you should have your son out there saying this work's being done by so-and-so, or another job being done by so-and-so, right? And they can see, oh, there's work being done, and then they can talk to the neighbor, how do you like these guys? And they're oh, oh, they're great. That's what's going on when you're not there. Super important. All right, the plumber. Now, the plumber's already got his job to do, in my opinion. The plumber, we need we need the plumber to sell work and additional work. Today I was thinking about it as extra yardage. You know, when we in football, they they they pass the ball and the receiver catches it. And that's cool. But the extra yardage after the catch, that's really cool. That's like selling something extra. That's like when we talk about if you hear me putting them, you hear me talking about putting them on notice that there's something else that they might want to know about, that's the extra yardage. That's that's what's really powerful, right? And so if if your plumber needs more than three calls a day on average, yes, there's always a day where sometimes we just get we reruns six calls, right? That just happens some days. But looking back over a month's period of time, it's usually no more than three calls on average if you've got a good sales process. So if you need more than three calls, I can tell you right now, you're probably not, your tech is not leaving options and letting the customer buy more initially. And then number two, they're not putting them on notice that there's something else that they notice. I don't know if you want me to worry about it now or next time, but I thought you at least want to know about it. They're not doing that extra step and sometimes selling additional work. If your techs do that well and they're clean and on time and professional, then they shouldn't need more than three calls a day on average. Okay, so but the plumber sells additional work, additional work, and additional work. They do good work, clean, on time, and professional. That's really all we ask, right? And that's actually remarkable in today's age. And then get that review. Get that review, it's super important. And if if that's that is a lot, that is the essential thing. So that's that's what the plumber does. Now back to the owner. The owner, there's some stuff here that these are major topics basically, but the owner needs to establish the story brand. What is the brand of the company that like here's something that's hitting me? Everybody's trying to go compete on Google or wherever or in Yelp for a call. But what if plumber, what if customers just called you? That's called branding. They don't look and say, hey, I need a plumber. Which plumber should I call? Branding is when they know what plumber they want to call and they just look for your phone number or your email. That's branding. And I don't hear people talking about branding enough. And that's the story brand. Like a story brand has a lot to do with your purpose and why you exist and what you do, and it's a whole topic. But that's the owner's responsibility to just to figure that out. You can establish a yard sign contest. We can get into this later, but there's a way to make a little, you can make a little contest where once a month, if you see a sign up, you can look up that house number and give them give them a free gift or give them 50 bucks or 100 bucks or a coupon somewhere and make a little contest of it. And what that does is that helps them keep the yard signs out longer. Does that make sense? So that's a whole thing. Banana on the roof. Banana on the roof. There is a guy on social media right now. This is it's it's uh May, it's May 11th, 2026. There's a guy in social media right now that will just put a cake or a bundle of bananas or something on the roof of his car, and then his whole social media is watching people react and pointing at his hey, you've got you got a cake on the top of your car, and he's getting lots of attention, like tens of thousands of views, and everybody notices the bananas on the top of the car. That's that's kind of your job as the owner to figure out what it what's your what's your brand? What's the deal? Are you into dogs? Do you have dog scarf? Do you sponsor do you sponsor pet stuff? Like what what is what is your deal? What's your thing? And that that kind of revolves into that. But if you can't, people like this can't be leaving random stuff, but you can get known for that. What if you always have bananas on the hood of the truck? You can get known for that. Right? So it's just a little thing to do to get some attention. And that's not, you don't want all your plumbers just doing their own weird thing. But you as the owner need to figure out what are we gonna do that makes this stand out. And does that make sense? Campaign for election. One thing I did, the name of our company was Gene Johnson, plumbing and heating. Gene Johnson was a real guy, my father-in-law. And so I got I actually ran for election every year, unofficially. You can't elect a plumber, but that's what I would do. I would say Gene Johnson for plumber. And remember, and I'd put the I put campaign signs out, Gene Johnson for plumber. And I'd kind of get in a little bit of trouble by then the city might call me once or twice, and they thought it was clever, but like I can't. I'd always put the date of the of the election so they knew. But that's what we did. We ran campaigns, and I would try to get myself elected every year. The electricians are working. Social media content, that's the owner's number one response. That's that's primarily the owner's responsibility. He's been doing a really good job of that, or she needs to be doing a really good job of that. Establishing purpose partnerships, that's where there's a kit there's a company called Cat Cat Fence or something like that. Adopting cats and doing stuff with cats, right? But establish your purpose partnerships so people call people reach out and call you. We sponsored a bike racing team. We were looking for a purpose, and we kind of got involved with a bicycle racing team, and pretty soon there were a hundred, we were sponsoring a big, huge team, 150 bikers. You know, really good bike racers. And guess what they do? They take pictures of themselves in their jersey. We had our brand on our jersey on their jerseys, and they took pictures and selfies of themselves every day. Every time they went for a ride, they take a selfie and put it on Strava or whatever, or on Facebook, and they'd take pictures of themselves riding. People would see them riding, and they would see our logo on their on the on their jerseys. Our guys would say, I saw one of our guys, and it was all over town. And so we were looking for a purpose, more of a cancer or something. But the cycling kind of became did that for us. And what I mean by purpose is when you get involved with a purpose, other people that are involved with that purpose will call you directly because you're involved with that purpose. Does that make sense? So when I would go to bike races and stuff, people would come and say, Hey, my competitors, the other teams would come and say, Hey, thanks for supporting cycling in Seattle, and we use you guys. You guys were great. And we got lots of business from that. And that was all these people involved in cycling. Think about it. People that can afford a$10,000 bicycle, yeah, they cost$10,000. A decent racing bike is easily$10,000. People that can afford those make good money. They're plumbers and dentists and attorneys and all sorts of stuff. Right? They've got money. And so here they are promoting my brand all over the place. So we didn't have some cancer thing or weren't into pets, but the biking kind of took that for us. But you can do that. You can do whatever you want with that. Like if you like dogs, and we talked, you can get a dog scarf. You can get a dog scarf, and you can get your logo on a dog scarf. And you can have whenever someone's got a dog, you can give them a free dog scarf and take a picture of them with a dog with a dog scarf. You can sponsor, you see those dog adoptions where they have the dog, they have all the people that want a dog sitting, sitting in a in rows, and then they let the dogs out. The dogs come and choose their owner. It's super emotional. You could sponsor that. You could be a part of that. You could have dog treats in your pocket. All your plumbers have dog treats. And you just get known for the the plumber that the dogs love. Right? But you see, now all of a sudden, plumbers, people aren't going online to find a plumber. They're calling you because you're the company that loves dogs. See what I mean? What's your brand? The text can't do this. The office can't do this. The apprentices can't do this for you. You've got to figure this out yourself. So that's why I call established purpose partnerships. Collaborate with other trades. Before, up earlier on, I talked about collaborating with other email lists of other companies. Well, you've got to do that work. You've got to go to the electrical company and make that deal, talk to the owner and say, hey, I would we use you guys. You guys are great. I would like to promote you guys to our email list. Do you guys have a special offer going on that I could promote? Do you have an email that you'd like me to send out on your behalf? And I'm wondering if you do the same for me. Right? And most likely they will. If you're going to do it for them, they'll probably do it for you. The office can't do that. The apprentice, that's your job. The owner, you've got to go collaborate with other owners and come up with that partnership. Make sure the trucks are parked for maximum billboard effect. You have a billboard. Those trucks need to be parked in visible places all the time. I was talking to a company the other day and they were slow. So they're going to pull one of the trucks into the garage for safekeeping, so it's safe. No. When we were slow, I the first thing I would do is I would get my truck and I would drive it down to Fred Meyer parking lot and I'd back it up against the road. So everybody that drove on 85th drove by thousands and thousands of vehicles a day would see my billboard coming from both directions. And then at the end of the day, I'd go pick it up and bring it home. But we did that all the time when it was slow. So make sure, go, excuse me, go take your truck and make sure you're using that billboard effectively. And then here's the next thing. Be willing to do all these things yourself. Here's something I noticed, and I noticed this in other companies. Everybody doesn't, no one really wants to go the extra mile unless they're kind of scared to do it on their own. So you have to lead the way. You have to go do it. Like, here's something else that we did. When we were slow, we would actually go door to door. I would get a hundred flyers and I'd go put a hundred flyers out in a neighborhood. Now, if I told my apprentices to do that, it probably wouldn't work. But if I said, let's go do this together and we do it together, it works. So you gotta be willing to do some of these things. Some of these things are a little out of the ordinary. They should not be out of the ordinary. We need to change the scope of work to some of our to some of our positions in our company. It's all hands on deck. Everybody has a vital role to play making that phone ring. And it's in everybody's best interest to make the phone ring. So just a few things. Wow, it was almost 30 minutes. But just a few things to do if it's slow. If it's slow, it's not ho hum. Call your other buddies, and everybody else says it's slow. Not acceptable. Not acceptable. You have taken on the responsibility to keep all your employees busy, full time work. They're trusting you for full time work so they can pay their mortgage, so they can pay their rent, so they can take care of their families. That is the role of a business owner is taking on that responsibility and caring for your employees. All right, you got this. I've done it. It works. Let's do this. Let's have a great week.