Plumbing owners are the most expensive trade audience on Google to advertise at. That price is a clue about what your business is worth, and about what a buyer is shopping for.
Most owners think about the sale in terms of trucks and last year's books. A buyer thinks about those too, and then asks a question the books do not answer: after you leave, does the work keep coming?
What a plumbing click costs
Google sells advertising by the click, so somebody pays every time a person clicks the ad, whether that person calls or not. That makes the price of a click is a plain measure of what the click is worth to whoever is buying it.
In the United States, a marketing firm pays about $126 for one click on the search "seo for plumbers". A business broker pays about $38 for one click on "sell my plumbing business". Neither of those is a customer, it's one visit from one person who might close the tab.
Both of those prices were set by people doing arithmetic. Plumbing work is worth so much that a firm will pay $126 to get in front of a plumbing owner, and an owner who wants out is worth $38 to find.
The useful part is what the first number says about a plumbing lead. A call from a homeowner with a burst line is worth that kind of money, so a business that produces those calls every week without buying them owns something a buyer can put a price on.
What plumbing buyers pay for
Buyers pay for steady service work and the customer list behind it, commercial accounts and contracts if you have them, licensed plumbers who stay after the papers are signed, and equipment that has been looked after.
Then there is one more, and it is the one most owners have never built on purpose: proof that new work arrives on its own, meaning calls from people who found the company and not from people who have used you since 1998.
The first four are countable. The fifth one has to be shown, and it can only be shown if it exists somewhere outside your head.
The word of mouth problem
Most plumbing businesses at the twenty year mark run almost entirely on reputation. It works, and it has worked for two decades, right up to the day you decide to sell, when it turns into the problem.
A buyer can't buy your reputation, because it's attached to you. It goes home with you on the last day, along with twenty years of neighbours who ask for you by name.
What a buyer can buy is a Google Business Profile with a few hundred reviews on it and a website that comes up when someone in your area searches for a plumber. Those stay behind and keep working.
What the buyer finds online
I looked at a real plumbing company recently. It's been in business since 2004, the kind of shop every county has one of, and its website has 16 words of text on the front page and its Google Business Profile has 6 reviews. Across six trade businesses I looked at, most did not appear in the top 20 results for anything.
None of that means the plumbing is bad, the plumbing is probably excellent. It means the business is invisible to anyone who does not already know the owner. A buyer reads that one way: the goodwill walks out with him, so they offer less, and they are not wrong to.
You can have that inspection run on your side before a buyer runs it on you, which is what the strategy I offer is for.
Where to start
Start with the strategy, so the decisions come off a list instead of a sales pitch. If the list says build, that is the website, and the plan that keeps it working transfers with the business at sale. If it says the work has to keep going month after month, that is monthly SEO, on its own bill, and SEO for plumbers covers what that work looks like in your trade.
Three years out is the comfortable runway. A review base takes seasons, not weeks, and a buyer wants to see two years of history behind the numbers you show them. If you are closer to the sale than that, book the call anyway. Some of the fixes on a plumbing footprint are fast, and the strategy tells you which ones.
If you want the wider picture first, start with getting your business sale-ready.
Common questions.
Does my customer list transfer, or do the customers follow me?
Some of both, and the buyer knows it. Customers who call because they know you personally are a risk on their side of the table. Customers who found the company through a search or a review are already loyal to the name on the truck. The second kind is the kind you want to be able to point at.
How many reviews should a plumbing business have before it goes to market?
There is no magic number. The bar is the shops you compete with in your own city, and most of the shops I look at sit under ten reviews no matter how long they have been open. How recent the reviews are matters as much as how many there are. A wall of five star reviews that stops three years ago reads as a business that stopped.
I do mostly commercial work. Does the online side still matter?
Yes, for a different reason. Commercial contracts are the strongest thing you own, so the buyer spends their time confirming those contracts survive you. What they find online is the character reference on top. An invisible company makes them look harder at everything else.
Do I need to be number one on Google before I sell?
No. You need to be findable, and you need the numbers going up. A buyer reading a report that shows steady growth over two years believes the growth continues. First place with no history behind it proves less than that.
What happens to the website when the business sells?
It goes with the business, and so does the plan that keeps it working. Nobody has to rebuild anything on handover day.
See what a buyer sees.
Thirty minutes on the phone, and I'll walk your online footprint the way a buyer will.