How to Brand Montana’s Biggest Plumber: Williams Plumbing
For three years, I managed the branding and marketing for Williams Plumbing, the biggest plumbing company in the state of Montana. Here’s what that looked like.
How do you keep a growing company connected?
Share the stories that matter.
As part of an overall strategy to improve cross-division communication, I created a monthly newsletter that highlights the people, projects, and stories that define the Williams vision and mission.
How do you recruit and retain?
Show off the company culture.
Williams Plumbing’s social media presence has been a powerful recruitment tool and an important window for the community to see the human side of this growing company.
How do you make a meaningful plumbing brand?
Celebrate the trade.
The plumbers at Williams kept saying it: the trade doesn’t get the respect it deserves. In an industry where most of its workers are reaching retirement age, promoting the career advantages of the plumbing trade has become an urgent need.
Tell the company story.
Williams has served Montana for over forty years. Not enough people know that story. As part of a year-long campaign to celebrate Williams’s 40th year in business, I made this video — originally for broadcast — to tell the company’s history in a quick and playful way.
Educate others.
Most plumbing companies don’t bother with YouTube. We wanted to be different. Focusing on educational content, we honed in on the expertise viewers wanted and that we could provide.
The result: it’s been a hit. The channel has become a valuable resource for local customers as well as do-it-yourselfers across the country. And young apprentices everywhere have eaten up the more trade-specific tutorials — helping to elevate the trade while standing out as a top employer for the next generation of plumbers.
In two years, the Williams YouTube channel has gained 1.3 million views. At the start of this strategy, the channel had 100 subscribers. It now has over 16,000.
