Plumbing companies · Washington DC & the DMV
Find the leaks costing you customers.
Every plumbing company loses work somewhere between a customer searching and a customer calling. I find where yours is leaking, rank the problems by what they’re costing you, and hand you the list.
Get My Free Lead Leak CheckThis is normally paid work. It’s free while I build DMV case studies, and you keep the findings either way.
The problem
You’re losing customers before the phone rings
A water heater fails at nine at night. The homeowner searches “emergency plumber near me.” You come up fourth, behind two companies with triple your review count and one that isn’t licensed in the District.
Or they find you, land on your site on a phone, don’t see a way to reach you without scrolling, and go back to the results.
Or they call. It rings out, because you’re under a sink in Takoma. Nobody calls back. They call the next name on the list.
Or they ask ChatGPT who to call in Petworth, and it names three plumbers who aren’t you.
None of those people show up in your call log. That’s what makes this so easy to miss: the customers you lose this way never announce themselves. They just go somewhere else.
Where it goes wrong
The six places plumbing companies lose customers
Discovery
Can they find you at all? Google Business Profile completeness, the categories you’re listed under, whether your name, address and phone match across Yelp, BBB and a dozen directories. Most plumbers fill this out once and never touch it again.
Trust
They found you and one competitor. In the ten seconds they spend comparing, who looks safer? Review count and rating against the company next to you, photos of actual work, licence number visible, years in business. This is a snapshot, and right now someone else’s is better.
Conversion
They’re on your site, on a phone, at 8pm. Can they reach you in one tap? A tap-to-call button in the first screen, a way to request an estimate that works after hours, no form asking for eleven fields. If calling is the only option, you only get the customers willing to call.
Response
They called and you were under a sink. What happens in the next five minutes? A missed call with no follow-up is a job that went to whoever answered. This is the leak almost nobody checks, and for a plumber it’s usually the most expensive one.
Reputation
Trust is the scoreboard. This is whether the score is going up. Do you have a system that produces new reviews next month — someone who asks, a moment when they ask, a plan for the occasional two-star? Your happiest customers will leave a review if asked. Almost nobody asks.
AI visibility
More customers are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overview “who should I call?” instead of scrolling results. Those tools build answers from your profile, your reviews and your site. If the signals are thin, you don’t get mentioned. Nobody can guarantee an AI recommends you — but the conditions that decide it are fixable.
Which one is costing you the most?
That’s what the Check is for. Six categories, scored, ranked by what each is costing you. Free right now, and the findings are yours either way.
Get My Free Lead Leak CheckWhat a Check turns up
Three findings from real plumbing companies
Anonymised, but not invented. These are the kinds of problems a Lead Leak Check finds, and roughly how they get written up.
Finding · Conversion
The estimate button was three screens down on mobile
What it costs: A homeowner ready to book has to hunt for the next step. On a phone, at night, most of them don’t — they go back to the search results, which is where the competition is.
The fix: Move the call and estimate buttons into the first screen on mobile, and cut the request form to five fields.
Finding · Trust
A competitor with a lower rating had four times the reviews
What it costs: Two companies side by side, one with a long history of feedback and one with a handful. The deeper profile reads as the safer choice even when the rating is worse.
The fix: A standing review request at job close, and a written way to respond to the occasional bad one.
Finding · Response
Missed calls got no follow-up at all
What it costs: A missed call from a customer with a burst pipe is not a message to return tomorrow. They are calling the next name on the list within the minute.
The fix: An automatic text back on every missed call, and a follow-up sequence so nothing sits unanswered overnight.
The deliverable
What you actually get
- A Lead Leak Score across all six categories, so you can see which are fine and which aren’t
- Your top three leaks, ranked by what each one is costing you — not by what’s easiest for me to fix
- A side-by-side against the two plumbing companies you most often lose to locally
- The specific fix for each, in the order I’d do them
- A written report you keep, whether or not we ever work together
Four or five pages, not fifty. The point is to tell you what to do Monday, not to prove I did a lot of reading.
What the Check doesn’t cover. It scores all six leaks and ranks your top three — it doesn’t write up the other three in detail, and it compares you against two competitors rather than your whole local market. That’s what the Blueprint is for. For most owners the top three is more than enough to be getting on with.
How it works
Three steps
Fifteen minutes on the phone
You tell me what you do, where you work, and where you’d want more jobs coming from. No pitch on this call.
I run the Check
I go through all six leaks the way a customer would — searching, comparing, landing on your site, trying to reach you — and I test what the AI tools say when someone asks for a plumber in your area.
You decide
The report is yours either way. If you want the fixes handled, we talk about which stage fits. If you’d rather hand the list to someone on your team, that works too.
Why DTCSolutions
What you get working with me
You work with me, not an account manager
DTCSolutions is a one-person shop by design. The person who runs your Check is the person who does the work and the person who picks up the phone.
I look at what happens after the phone rings
Most local marketing firms stop at the website. Missed calls, response time and after-hours follow-up are where plumbing companies lose the most work, and almost nobody checks them. I check them, and I fix them.
I built this site the way I’d build yours
This site names six AI crawlers and permits each one explicitly, ships a hand-written file telling AI tools what’s on it, and carries structured data on every page. I wrote all of it — view the source and check. It’s the same work I’d do on yours, and you can check whether the firm pitching you has done it on theirs.
I report on jobs, not vanity metrics
Every month you get a plain-English report showing what changed. If something isn’t working, you’ll hear it from me first.
I don’t promise things I can’t control
Nobody can guarantee a ranking on Google, and definitely not in ChatGPT. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. What I can do is fix the conditions that decide whether you get recommended, and show you the trend every month.
Service area
Plumbing companies across DC and the DMV
DTCSolutions is a one-person consultancy based in Washington DC, working with plumbing companies across the District, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Bethesda, Silver Spring, College Park, Hyattsville, and the surrounding areas of Montgomery and Prince George’s County.
I focus on plumbing because the pattern is consistent and I know what to look for. I also take on HVAC, roofing and electrical contractors where the problem is the same one.
Find out where yours is leaking
The Check is free right now while I build case studies in the DC area. You get the full findings in writing whether or not you decide to work with me. That’s not a sales tactic — I’d rather show you what I can do than tell you.