Plumbing marketing before the freeze, when a click costs 32 cents

A click on how to prevent frozen pipes cost $0.32 in the US on 30 October 2026. A click on burst pipe cost $34.90 the same day. That is about 109 times as much, and it can be the same homeowner a few weeks apart, first worrying about the pipe and then standing in the water.

If you own a plumbing business, this post is about the weeks between those two searches. They are coming up now. We pulled every figure here on the day we wrote it.

Why does a burst pipe click cost 109 times a prevention click?

Because of what the person is about to do. Somebody searching burst pipe may need a plumber in the next hour. Somebody searching how to prevent it needs a few minutes of advice and a roll of pipe insulation, so advertisers pay very little to reach them.

These are US figures pulled on 30 October 2026, with average monthly searches.

Two things push the price up. One is urgency, which is why emergency plumber tops the table. The other is the size of the job. repipe house cost is a research search with nobody in a hurry, and it still costs $68.53 because a whole-house repipe is worth bidding for.

The bottom row is the opening. Tens of thousands of homeowners are thinking about their pipes at a moment when reaching them costs almost nothing. They are your future customers, and right now they are reading advice from a home-improvement site that will never come to their house.

When should a plumbing business start its winter marketing?

Before November, if you work anywhere that freezes. This is what US searches did last winter.

Searches about freezing pipes climbed through December and peaked in January. So video you publish in October has weeks to reach homeowners in your area before they start worrying, and a homeowner who has seen you explain how to protect an outside tap has a name to call if the pipe goes anyway.

We make the wider argument about emergency calls going to a remembered name in HVAC and roofing marketing. Plumbing has something those trades don't: a season when the same worry hits a whole town at once.

Plumbers in warm states have a different calendar. water heater leaking stayed between 12,100 and 18,100 US searches in every one of the last twelve months, and slab leak repair cost held steady at 1,000 or more. Those questions work as well in June as they do in January.

What are the best marketing ideas for plumbers?

The right mix depends on when the homeowner meets you. Most lists of plumbing marketing ideas name the same channels, and most of those channels catch somebody who already has a problem.

Set up the first row before you spend money on anything else, because everything below it sends people to look you up. The last row is the one built to reach a homeowner in October, when a pipe is still only something they worry about.

Paid search can put a call on your phone this afternoon, and video can't. The video keeps working in the months you are too busy to think about marketing, and it doesn't stop on the day your ad budget runs out.

How much should a plumbing company spend on marketing?

Start from what one booked job can carry, because a percentage of revenue tells you nothing about whether the spend paid for itself.

Here is the sum with an example. Say one click in ten on emergency plumber becomes a booked job. At $74.89 a click, each of those jobs costs you about $749 in ad spend. That one-in-ten is a number we picked to show the method, so put your own booking rate in its place. If your average emergency job clears less profit than that, those clicks are losing you money however busy the phone sounds.

Count the customer's next job too. Somebody you helped with a burst pipe may also need a new water heater, and cost to replace water heater draws 40,500 US searches a month. If they already have your number, you don't pay for that click at all. The fuller comparison in money and hours is in what social media management costs.

What should a plumber post in the weeks before a freeze?

The advice you already give on the phone every winter, said once on video where your town can find it:

• Which pipes in a house freeze first, and how to protect them cheaply
• Where the main shut-off valve is, and why everyone in the house should know
• What to do in the first five minutes after a pipe bursts
• How to tell whether a frozen pipe has already split

That third one matters most. A homeowner who learned from you how to stop the water has every reason to call you once it has stopped. The electrical version of this argument, about jobs that get costed for weeks before anybody calls, is in electrician marketing.

Who makes the videos when you are under a sink all week?

We do. Filming comes after a full day of jobs, which is why so many owners who start posting stop.

You record with us once, for about an hour. We build a model of your face and voice from that session and produce the videos from it, so you never film again. You read each month's scripts, and nothing goes out without your written sign-off.

Prices are on the pricing page and the process is on how it works. What this looks like across the trades is on marketing for trades.