01Challenge
Branding that undersold the work
An eight-colour logo and a clip-art mascot on a company with forty years behind it. The identity read as amateur next to competitors who were not as good at the job.
Plumbing · White Rock, BC · Web Design, Google Ads & SEO
140 extra service calls in a single month
A forty-year-old plumbing and heating company living on word of mouth, with branding and a website that said none of it. Rebranded, rebuilt on 343 pages, and defended against competitors bidding on its own name.
To replicate similar successResponse within 24 hours
About The Client
Hilltop Plumbing & Heating
Hilltop Plumbing and Heating has served Surrey, Langley and White Rock for forty years. The work and the reputation were excellent; almost all of it came through referrals and repeat customers, and almost none through the website.
- Location
- White Rock, BC, Canada
- Industries
- Home Services, Plumbing
- Services
- Web Design, Google Ads, SEO
The Challenge
A strong company with weak signals
Nothing was wrong with the service. Everything was wrong with how it looked online, and it was costing them work they never heard about.
02Challenge
A website built a decade earlier
Eleven pages, no mobile layout, and a design that converted almost none of the few visitors it got — which cost more than it sounds, because there were only a few visitors a day to lose.
03Challenge
Nearly all revenue from referrals
Sales came through word of mouth and community goodwill. There was no second channel, which made growth a matter of waiting.
04Challenge
Competitors bidding on their name
A search for "Hilltop Plumbing" returned rivals above them, offering a discount to a customer who had already chosen Hilltop.
The Approach
Rebrand, rebuild, then defend
Research first, because both the page count and the ad brief came out of it. Then the identity, because the website had to be built on top of it, then the pages, then the campaign that stopped competitors intercepting the traffic those pages earned.
Take the competition apart
Before anything was designed: the top competitors' site structures and marketing patterns, read page by page. The reports agreed on the same thing each time — the sites winning these searches carried a page for every service in every area. The 343 further down was measured off that, not guessed at.
Search their own name
A search for "Hilltop Plumbing" put rivals above Hilltop, offering a discount to someone who had already chosen them. Finding that is what set the brief for the ad campaign — defend the name first, chase new terms second.
Rebrand
Eight colours down to two. The mascot redrawn, a circular frame for the pipework, a modern serif for the name and a sans setting the founding year — forty years stated rather than implied. Applied across the trucks as well as the page.
Rebuild the website
Sitemap reconstruction, mobile-first layout, interface redesign and search optimisation, on the new brand.
Expand to 343 pages
A page for every service and every area they cover, so a search for "Surrey furnace repair" or "Langley water closet replacement" has something to land on.
Defend the brand in paid search
Branded ads built to score 10/10 on quality, so competitors would have had to pay $45–50 a click to outrank us. They stopped.
Project Highlights
What We Delivered
The identity, the site that replaced a decade-old one, and the campaign that made the brand-bidding stop.
01Highlight
The new identity
Old eight-colour mark beside the new one — two colours, a circular frame for pipework, and the founding year in sans.
02Highlight
Carried across the fleet
The identity applied to every truck.
03Highlight
Storefront and livery
Storefront and truck livery in the new brand.
04Highlight
The rebuilt website
Redesigned on the new brand guidelines so people actually request service after landing — and, this time, built for mobile.
05Highlight
343 pages, up from 11
One page per service and area. They cover seven service areas.
06Highlight
A 10/10 quality score
After the branding campaign — a 10/10 quality score made outbidding us uneconomic, and the brand-bidding stopped.
07Highlight
The text behind the review
The message that became the review above — Dustin, the month it landed.
08Highlight
The rest of the thread
May outselling the winter months, which had never happened.
09Highlight
Organic traffic after launch
Beyond the 140 calls by month three, organic traffic was compounding at over 20% a month.
“I think what you have been doing is working. It has been amazing — May might be the busiest month we have ever had. It has never been like this. I always said the winters are our biggest months, and now May is the biggest month. I am not kidding, it is insane.”
Dustin LefebvreOwner, Hilltop Plumbing and Heating · Surrey, BC, CanadaReady For Results Like These?
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