Marketing Budgets
How Much Should Plumbers Spend on Marketing?
Plan on 6 to 10 percent of gross revenue. The band comes from my own books, not a survey. I ran Balanced Comfort for 13 years and held California contractor licenses, including C-36 Plumbing, while I operated it. We built past $17 million in annual revenue with more than 130 employees, spending low seven figures a year on advertising. Low seven figures against $17 million is 6 to 10 percent. Four straight Inc 5000 lists, 2020 through 2023, came out of that spend rate.
The $7,783 Month That Booked $475
Percent-of-revenue budgeting assumes the dollars inside the budget work. Often they do not, and nobody notices. One plumbing company I audited paid Angi $7,783 in a single month. Tracked booked revenue from that spend: $475. The same audit tracked 4,009 calls. 131 of them were new customers. The rest were not.
The owner was not careless and the platform was not lying. The company had a blind spot: no one had ever connected the monthly invoice to the booked-job number. That connection is the whole audit. It is also why I tell plumbers the budget question is the second question. The first is whether you can see what your current spend books. Until you can, changing the number just changes the size of the leak.
This is the cautionary number I want stuck in your head when a rep quotes you a per-lead price: the price of the lead tells you nothing. The booked revenue behind it tells you everything.
Where the 6 to 10 Percent Band Comes From
Industry guides commonly cite percent-of-revenue ranges for the trades. Treat those as directional, because most of the people publishing them never ran a shop. My band is the spend rate I actually held while the company grew: advertising in the low seven figures every year against $17 million in revenue. It funded brand, search, and the phones that answered what the spend produced.
A band beats a flat monthly figure because plumbing capacity moves. Trucks get added, techs leave, a drain season spikes. A percent of revenue scales with the operation. Where you sit inside the band is an operator call: newer and unknown companies live near the top because awareness is bought before it pays, while established shops with heavy referral flow can run nearer the bottom, as long as they defend the base of reviews and rankings instead of cutting to zero.
What Local Services Ads Actually Produce for a Plumber
From client accounts I manage: a Florida plumber took 5 charged phone leads through Google Local Services Ads across June and July 2026. Billing for that account sits with the client, so I will not quote dollars I did not verify. The count is the point. In many plumbing markets, LSA is a steady drip, not a flood, and a realistic budget treats it as one channel among several instead of the plan.
That is why the band matters. Five leads in two months will not fill a board, but five answered, booked, five-star-reviewed jobs compound into the rankings and reputation that produce the next fifty calls. The budget buys the system, not a lead faucet. I published the charged prices behind several trades on what HVAC and plumbing leads cost, and what the organic side of the system looks like on my plumbing SEO page.
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Plumbing Marketing Budget Questions
Is Angi worth it for plumbers?
It can be, if the spend is tracked to booked revenue. The company in my audit was paying $7,783 a month and booking $475, and nobody knew until we tied the call log to the invoice. The platform did not hide anything. The tracking was never built. Whatever lead source you buy, buy the tracking first.
How many leads should Local Services Ads produce for a plumber?
Fewer than the sales pitch implies, in many markets. A Florida plumber whose profile we manage took 5 charged phone leads through LSA across June and July 2026. Volume varies by market, but budget for a steady drip, not a flood, and make every one of those calls count.
Should the budget percent come off gross or net revenue?
Gross. The band exists to scale marketing with the size of the operation, and top-line revenue is the cleanest measure of that. Judge the spend afterward by booked jobs, not by whether the percent looked comfortable.
Where should a plumber put the first marketing dollars?
Toward being found and being answered. Rankings, reviews, and a booking process that picks up the phone. Volume spend comes after that, because more calls into an unanswered line is a bigger version of the same leak. I publish real numbers on what that work produces on my plumbing SEO page.