How to Get More Heating & Plumbing Jobs: Ways to Win Work and Leads

Every heating and plumbing business hits the same wall eventually: the diary’s full one month and worryingly quiet the next. Loyal customers and word-of-mouth help, but they rarely keep the work coming on their own.

The quickest way to get more plumbing and gas jobs is to work three angles at the same time: keep your existing customers coming back, market your business so new customers can find you, and — when you need work fast — buy in leads. No single tactic carries a business on its own. This guide walks through every practical option, from the free stuff you can start today to the paid routes that are worth the money.

It also helps to have a solid pricing strategy behind you, so the extra work you win is actually worth doing.

The three routes to more work

There are three main ways you can get more heating and plumbing leads:

• Your existing customers — repeat work and referrals from people who already know you.
• Marketing — everything you do online and offline so new customers find you.
• Paid lead generation — directories and lead services that sell you enquiries directly.
  

You’ll need a mix of all three. The best businesses lean hardest on the first one, because repeat work is the cheapest work you’ll ever get. Let’s start there.

Reviews are one of the most effective and most underrated marketing tools in the trades. 93% of people admit that online reviews have affected their buying decisions, and the trades are among the industries customers lean on reviews for most.

Most happy customers are glad to leave one — they just forget. So ask. A quick prompt at the end of a job, or a follow-up message with a direct link, makes all the difference. 

If you want a system for this, we’ve covered how to get more reviews and why reviews matter in more detail.

As an example, here are Gas Engineer Software’s reviews on the Apple App Store:

This is known as review marketing and helps build up trust in your brand and can convince customers to work with you.

Some interesting facts about reviews: 

• A 5/5 rating isn’t necessarily better than a near perfect score. To customers, it suggests there are too few reviews for an accurate rating or something suspicious is going on. 
• The trades industry is one of the 3 most reliant on reviews.
• 88% of customers are likely to use a business that responds to reviews, but only 42% if they do not. 
• 38% of customers believe a 4 star rating is the bare minimum.

Source – BrightLocal’s 2023 Consumer Review Survey

Decide on your unique selling points

If you want happy customers, you need to provide a good service that your customers want.

No heating and plumbing business is the same. By working out your unique combination of unique selling points, you can find out what makes your business special. And, if you can stand out and be different from other companies, then all you have to do is make sure the customer has no reason to look elsewhere.

Other companies will have USPs similar to yours, but what will be unique is the combination of the three you select in your area. Click here for tips on standing out without competing on price. 

• Reliable
• Emergency Response
• Trustworthy and Approachable
• Great Customer Service
• Careful and Attentive
• Preventative Maintenance
• Offer out-of-hours emergency work
• Honest Pricing
• Brand Knowledge

Send service reminders

A simple annual boiler service reminder is the classic example. Customers are usually keen to service their boiler once a year, and landlords are legally obliged to.

This can be fully automated with service reminders in Gas Engineer Software, so you’re not relying on memory or a spreadsheet — here’s how to set boiler service reminders up.

Market your business online

Social media

In the UK, people spend an average of 1.56 hours a day on social media. It’s now one of the most effective ways to humanise your business and find extra customers.

Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are three of the most popular in the UK, and all offer great opportunities for heating & plumbing business owners. You can post as much or as little as you would like, although the more the better. 

Here’s what you can do on social media:

• Post regularly to build a following. Primarily, this is a way for you to build your authority as a professional and spread brand awareness for those who stumble across your account. This will cost you nothing and can be very effective if you play the algorithm’s game (how these platforms decide which content goes viral).
• Join Facebook groups of any local area you want to service. People often use these groups to find tradespeople like gas engineers and ask for recommendations. This is another cost-free and great way to find more customers and, again, is totally free.
• Run advertisements. Setting an appropriate budget, social media ads can be used to attract more jobs. All social media platforms offer a range of advertising options which can be cleverly targeted to your ideal customers. 

Read our full guide to social media here.

Here’s an example from Ryan Mills who runs G.D. Mills up in Edinburgh:

Your Google Business Profile

If you do one thing this week, do this one. A Google Business Profile is free, quick to set up, and it’s what puts you on Google Maps and in the local “map pack” when someone searches “gas engineer near me”.

Fill it in properly: business name, service area, phone number, opening hours, the services you offer, and a link to your website. Add real photos of your work, keep your details accurate, and — this is the bit most engineers skip — actively gather reviews on it and reply to them. A well-kept profile with steady, recent reviews will out-rank a half-finished one every time.

Here’s an example of a Google Business Profile:

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

SEO is a great strategy and will highly benefit the effectiveness of your website. Using website builders like WordPress, Squarespace or Wix will help you get all the technical aspects of your website sorted, but you’ll have to create the page content yourself. 

You could go deep into the world of SEO, but we would recommend simply creating a few detailed and well-written pages to start like the ones we listed above.

As you’re creating these pages, think about using certain keywords to help attract relevant website traffic (people that might actually ring you up). Some examples include: 

• gas engineer [your town/city/region]
• best gas engineer [your town/city/region]
• heating and plumbing company [your town/city/region]
• boiler service [your town/city/region]

For example, if you operated around Sevenoaks, you might want to write sentences like:

“We’re a family-run heating and plumbing company based in Sevenoaks. We do boiler servicing and installations in Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, and all nearby areas.”

People in these areas looking for an engineer will type these kind of things into Google, who can then help guide them to your website. Read our full SEO guide for gas engineers here.

Google Ads 

Google Ads (also known as paid search) puts you at the very top of Google for the searches that matter, the moment someone needs you. Google handles the overwhelming majority of UK searches, so it’s where your ad budget should go first.

The trick is targeting. Bid on high-intent local terms (“emergency plumber [town]”, “boiler repair [town]”), set a daily budget you’re comfortable with, and point the ads at a page that makes it dead easy to call you.

Email marketing 

Over the years as you work with more and more customers, you should be accumulating a database of customer details. Sending out marketing emails can help you re-engage with customers who haven’t worked with you in some time and may need some heating or plumbing work done. 

A great example of email marketing is sending out a simple yearly boiler service reminder. Customers are usually keen to service their boilers once a year, and landlords have a legal obligation to do so.

Automated reminders are a great option if you use an app like Gas Engineer Software

Read more: 3 Marketing Mistakes To Avoid With Your Heating Businesses

Market your business offline

Leaflets/flyers

Printing off a few hundred advertising flyers won’t cost an arm and a leg, and it’s a great way to find more jobs in your local area. 

As you’re out on the tools, post a few leaflets through neighbours’ letterboxes. You never know when someone might ring up, especially if you’ve placed your business right in front of them.

Vehicle advertising

Your van goes with you all over the country from job to job. Whether it’s parked in front of a customer’s house or you’re on the move, a van that includes your business name and services is another tried-and-tested marketing strategy for tradespeople. 

Boiler stickers

Stickers are easy to get printed off, and the design need be nothing more than your logo and contact details. The only other thing you’ve got to do is stick them onto any boiler you work on.

The whole idea of boiler stickers is to remind your customers of your business when they need you the most.

Most people aren’t interested in boilers and only look at them when there’s a problem. And if they have a problem, they’ll probably need your help.

Business cards

It’s still a great idea to hand out a business card after you finish a job – especially for new customers. You never know when they might have a friend, neighbour, colleague, or family member in the local area who needs a gas engineer, and they can simply pass your card around. 

Branded radiator keys

Few customers have their own radiator keys, yet they can be useful at times. If you make a bunch of branded radiator keys, you can leave them behind at your customer’s properties.

When they do need one, they’ll find yours – with your company and contact details visible. It’s a cheap and effective way of marketing unique to gas engineers that also carries a bit of goodwill with it. 

Buying plumbing leads

Sometimes you need work now, and there isn’t time to wait for marketing to pay off. That’s where paid lead generation comes in: directories and services that put enquiries straight in front of you for a fee.

• Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People and Bark — the big trade directories. You pay a membership, a fee per lead, or both.
• Local Heroes (backed by British Gas) and similar managed networks — they pass you vetted jobs, usually taking a cut.
• Pay-per-lead services — companies that generate enquiries through their own Google Ads and sell them on.

Paid leads can fill a quiet diary fast, but margins are thinner because you’re paying for the work twice. Treat them as a top-up, not your main strategy. For a deeper comparison, check out our guide to lead generation sites.

Our final takeaway

Finding heating and plumbing leads is all about using several marketing strategies at once and finding what works for you.

More often than not, a customer needs to “see” or “interact” with a brand several times for them to follow through and book a job. This could mean finding your ad on Google, then your website, and then reading some reviews – although each journey is different.