Originally published in May 2019. Last updated on February 7, 2025.
Marketing is the best way to grab the attention of potential clients and promote your pool service business. It showcases what you offer and why you’re a better option than other pool service providers.
Competition can be fierce in the pool cleaning industry, and a saturated market makes it hard to stand out. But you’re a pool cleaning expert, not a pool service marketing guru—so where do you begin?
We’ve put together a list of the most effective pool service marketing tips and strategies to help you start effectively marketing your business, find new clients, and grow.
1. Launch a referral program
When your clients are happy with your work, they tell others about you and send them your way as a referral. This is one of the most effective forms of pool marketing because all it involves is doing your work well and reminding your clients that you appreciate their referrals.
In fact, many experts who own pool service businesses recommend focusing on word-of-mouth marketing over anything else they’ve tried.
We’ve been doing this for 30 years. The best thing to do is just word of mouth.
So how can you get people talking about you? It often happens organically, but you might need to help it along with a referral program. Here’s how to build a pool service referral program:
Offer top-notch customer service
Offering above-and-beyond service is what keeps customers coming back and gets them. Here’s how to do it:
- Get to know your clients on a personal level. Learn about their family, job, hobbies, and other important things in their life to begin to build a lasting relationship.
- Be consistent in your service. Write a standard operating procedure so you’re giving the same service every time.
- Communicate with your clients. Send your clients appointment reminders, on-my-way texts when you’re heading over, and a customer service follow-up email to wrap up.
- Ask for feedback. Find out what your clients are happy with and where you can improve. Surveys and reviews can help you gather this feedback.
- Share your expertise. Educate your clients about the chemicals and products you use in their swimming pools and why you use them. Or, if they need services you don’t offer, connect them to other professionals in your network.
Give awesome customer service so your customers are happy and will refer you to their friends and other people looking for your business. Go above and beyond what is required.
Offer an incentive
Encourage clients to refer their friends and family by offering incentives like a free chemical treatment, free service visits, gift cards, or even pool accessories.
You can also offer discounted rates for repeat services, so your customers benefit from being regulars, and any new clients they refer could follow the same path.
Just make sure your business can afford it, especially if a client makes more than one referral and a large number of your customers are getting services at a lower price!
Focus on neighbors of current customers.
We have a referral program for our clients where they refer friends and neighbors that are close in vicinity, we give them a month free. That builds our client list while keeping our route tight.
Promote your referral program
When a client is happy with your service, always ask for a referral, whether you’re still on site or sending the pool service invoice. The client might not remember to refer their friends otherwise, but when you remind them, they’re usually happy to do it.
Jobber makes it easy to set up a successful referral program in no time.
Promote your referral program to customers with a professional email campaign that’s ready to send in seconds flat.
Then, reward your customers for bringing in new business by offering a dollar or percentage-based credit toward their next service for every successful referral. When a referral is made through a customer’s unique link, it’s automatically tracked.
The next time they use your service, their referral credit will automatically be applied to their invoice.
With a single glance, you’ll see how many referrals have been generated, the number of jobs earned, and how much revenue those jobs have brought in.
Keep your momentum going by promoting your referral program everywhere you advertise your pool services, like your digital ads, website, and social media channels.
2. Brand your business
Branding your business shows your clients that you’re a professional, and it provides a way for them to recognize your name, your work, and your reputation.
The most recognizable part of your brand is your logo. If you don’t have one, you can create your own or hire a designer or branding agency to do it for you
When that’s done, you can work with a local print shop or online partners like Canva or Vistaprint to apply your logo to all kinds of pool marketing materials:
Print business cards
Create a clean, simple business card with your pool company name and your business’s logo, name, address, phone number, website, and social media handles.
This allows clients to contact you in whatever way is most convenient for them.
Add decals and wraps to your company vehicles
You can order vehicle decals with your business’s logo, name, and website from many online partners.
If you want something bigger and flashier, you can work with a local shop to design and apply a full vehicle wrap with your logo and brand colors.
READ MORE:Find out how this pool service company grew 9x in just five years
Get matching uniforms for your team
A professional-looking company uniform makes it easy for clients to recognize you when you arrive at their home. It also promotes your business to anyone else who might see it.
This uniform can be as simple as a branded shirt and hat, but there are other options, too.
READ MORE: Hire qualified employees with a pool technician job description
Deliver flyers, door hangers, and postcards
Design traditional pool service ads like flyers, door hangers, and direct mail postcards. Then go door-knocking or send them out to a small service area with enough pools to make it worth your time.
Social media is not like Google or Yelp. It’s more about brand awareness. People want to be a part of your community.
4. Set up business profiles
Set up a Google Business Profile, a Facebook Business Page, and a Yelp profile to promote your pool cleaning services where users are most likely to look for them.
Business listings help potential clients find information about you, like your name, service area, hours, and contact information. Existing clients can also leave online reviews about your services.
With complete profiles, you’ll have the opportunity to show up in local searches across these platforms. The more information, photos, videos, and reviews you have, the more your listing will attract business.
We’ve had a lot of success with Yelp and Google.
Everything is linked back to our website. That leads to a lot of inbound queries and people asking us to stop by their pool to talk and provide a quote.
5. Join lead generation sites
You can also post about your pool cleaning business on lead generation sites and apps like Nextdoor, Angi (formerly Angie’s List), or Thumbtack.
These platforms help you connect with potential customers in your service area who are actively looking for your services. To stand out from other pool service businesses and strengthen your listing, make sure to post photos and videos and collect customer reviews.
Most of these platforms operate on a pay-per-lead or subscription basis and give you great exposure amongst other service providers in the pool service industry.
6. Build a website
A beautiful and user-friendly website is your home base for potential customers. Focus on creating a good user experience that makes it easy for clients to find what they’re looking for and contact you for more information.
Use a tool like WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix to build a website with a clean design, and clear service descriptions with photos, client testimonials, and contact details.
Many of these site builders offer the tools to optimize your website, including detailed guidance on search engine optimization (SEO) to be found in search results, as well as email marketing tools to generate signups and send out your email communications and newsletters.
You can also quickly get your business online and in front of customers with a simple, professional website, which you can set up in minutes with Jobber.
Simply provide Jobber with details on your pool service business and services and we’ll create a website that highlights what sets you apart from the competition.
To help you convert website visitors into leads, your website automatically comes with a quote request form. When you connect your Google Business Profile to your website, visitors will see exactly why you’re the business that they should be working with.
You can even measure your website’s success by tracking how many visitors your site is getting and how many requests are coming from it.
7. Run email marketing campaigns
Pool service email marketing through newsletters offers new and existing customers a closer connection to your business and your services. By collecting signups through your website and other marketing efforts, you’ll quickly build a list of people who want to hear from you on a regular basis.
Your pool service newsletter can feature highlights from recent projects along with special offers and promotions. This combination is a surefire way to provide exceptional value to your customer base.
When you use Jobber to create email campaigns, you can choose from premade templates that are built for specific goals and customers—and that includes your company branding.
After editing the email with details on your pool cleaning services, you can edit your client segments. This means you can choose what group of clients you want to email—like all clients or past clients.
You can even select clients using tags, job history, or by a particular service you provided.
Then, track your success over time from a simple dashboard. For every campaign you send in Jobber, you’ll see the number of customers who opened the email, clicked on a link, or converted into a job.
8. Produce educational content
Content marketing shows your clients and your industry that you’re an expert in your field, which helps build a reputation for your business. It comes in many shapes and sizes—blogs, podcasts, videos—but the point is to create informational content to share with your audience and foster that relationship with your community.
You can start a blog that answers clients’ questions, run a YouTube channel showing your services in action, or get on podcast like Pool Chasers to share your experiences.
“[With Pool Chasers podcast] we want to target other people in the pool business to talk about how we worked through our own early struggles in the business and interview people from the big pool builders and manufacturers”, says co-host Greg Villafana.
9. Run Google ads and social media ads
Online ads use all kinds of channels to direct potential clients to the properties listed above. For now, start with the basics and promote your business through Google Search ads, Google Local Services Ads, and social media ads.
Google search ads are text-based ads that appear at the top of search results when people look for pool services using the keywords you choose. You control how much you spend, what your ad says, and who sees it, helping you reach people who are actively looking for your services.
Google Local Services Ads also appear at the top of search results but include extra details like your contact information, online reviews, and service areas. Unlike Search Ads, you pay per lead instead of per click, which means you’re only charged when a customer contacts you.
Social media ads let you choose who sees your ad by targeting people by location, age, interests, and more—and you only pay for the leads you get. Using easy tools like Meta Ads on Facebook and Instagram, you can design eye-catching ads with pre-built templates, set your budget, and track your results.
Grow your pool service business with Jobber
Attract more customers with tools that make you look like the pro you are.
Jobber’s Marketing Suite helps you build a strong reputation that attracts more customers and secures more work with less effort.
Here’s what’s included in Jobber’s Marketing Suite:
- Reviews: Give your online reputation a boost by collecting more Google reviews through automated review requests.
- Referrals: Simplify the referral process with a fully automated referral program, making it easier for customers to send new business your way.
- Campaigns: Increase sales with a user-friendly email marketing tool that turns old customers into new revenue.
Pool advertising and marketing can be tricky. But these tips will give you a starting point to see what works for your business, attracts new clients, and helps you grow.
Frequently Asked Questions
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At the end of the day, leads coming in, booked jobs, and revenue are the best way to tell if your pool service marketing is working. You can measure by tracking how many people visit your website, contact your business, or request your services. Using tools like Google Analytics and customer surveys makes it easier to see which methods are most effective.
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Showcasing your expertise is a great way to engage with your community with content. You can write blog posts or make videos that share pool care tips and seasonal maintenance advice. Sharing before-and-after photos and customer reviews also helps build trust with potential clients.
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For the organic (or free) approach, having strong SEO is one of the best ways to be discovered in your service area online. If you’re paying for promotion and leads, running targeted Google search, Local Service Ads, and social media ads is another way to reach the largest audience looking for your services. For a more intimate digital marketing approach, sending out email newsletters with updates and promotions will help you attract customers in need of a little nudge.
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Special promotions are what get people clicking and calling. Create an exciting offer for new and existing customers, which can also include a strong referral program, and put it on all of your marketing assets—digital ads, website, newsletter, flyers, door hangers, and postcards.
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Growing your pool business means improving your online presence, offering excellent customer service, and using targeted local advertising. Asking satisfied customers for referrals and reviews can also help attract new clients.
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Top platforms include Google Ads for reaching people actively searching for pool services and social media sites like Facebook and Instagram to connect with local customers.
You can also send email campaigns to existing customers to encourage them to reinvest in your pool care services. Use an email marketing platform like Jobber Campaigns that prepares email templates and audiences for you to send effective marketing emails even faster.
3. Grow your following on social media
Connect with clients on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. You can use your profile to respond to questions and comments, ask what services they want to see, and share snippets of your day so they can see what you do.
It’s helpful for potential customers to see what you do and how you do it, so fill your pages with photos and videos of your work to get people excited about the prospect of hiring you.
Social media platforms give you the opportunity to build relationships with your followers and turn them into clients. You can also run ads for your pool cleaning services that appear in users’ feeds and reach wider audiences.