Short answer
Google wins this for a plumbing business, and it is not close. Google catches people actively looking for a plumber right now. Facebook interrupts people who are not. For emergency work, which is where plumbing money lives, that difference decides it.
Somebody will have told you that you should be on Facebook. They may even be right, but probably not for the reason they gave, and probably not first.
The difference that decides it
Google catches demand. Facebook creates awareness.
Somebody typing plumber near me has water on the floor right now. They are not browsing. You are the answer to a question they have just asked.
Somebody scrolling Facebook is looking at photos of a mate’s holiday. Your ad is an interruption. They may well need a plumber one day, but not at this moment, and by the time they do they will have forgotten you and gone to Google.
For emergency work that difference is decisive, and emergency work is where a lot of plumbing revenue lives. It is the main reason Google Ads tend to be the better first spend.
The case people make for Facebook
It is not that Facebook does nothing. A good before and after photo of a bathroom does persuading that a search ad cannot, and in a small town a page that posts real work keeps you in mind.
But notice what that is. It is demand creation, which is slow, hard to measure and expensive to do badly. A plumbing business almost always has more to gain from capturing the demand that already exists, and there is a great deal of it. People search for plumbers constantly.
So the honest answer is that Facebook can work, but it is the thing you consider after search is doing everything it can, not instead of it. For the plumbers I work with it has never been the right next pound.
Where it disappoints
Emergency work, almost always. Nobody scrolls Facebook looking for an emergency plumber.
Lead forms also tend to flatter the numbers. They produce a lot of cheap looking enquiries because filling one in takes no effort and implies no commitment. Cost per enquiry looks excellent right up until you work out how many turned into jobs. Judge it on booked work, not on the enquiry count.
The order I would suggest
- Finish the Google Business Profile. Free, and it carries the emergency work.
- Get reviews flowing.
- Put tracking in.
- Google Ads if you need work now, SEO for the long term.
- Anything else, only once the above is genuinely working.
Social is not a con and it is not useless. It is simply much further down the list than it usually gets sold as. Starting there means paying to create demand before you have finished capturing the demand that already exists, which is the wrong way round for a trade.
For what it is worth, social is not something I offer, and this post is not me talking you out of a competitor. It is me telling you where I would put the money if it were mine, which is search, every time, until search has nothing left to give.