July 8, 2025

Sky High ROI: How outdoor advertising delivered a 255% ROI for William’s Plumbing.

Digital marketing dominates marketing strategies today because, well, digital dominates our everyday life. But when brands rely only on digital tactics, they often miss something critical. Awareness.

Williams Plumbing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, experienced this firsthand.

The Challenge

Williams Plumbing’s marketing strategy leaned heavily on paid search. While search is excellent for capturing demand, it only reaches people who are already looking for plumbing services.

There were no upper-funnel tactics in place to build awareness with homeowners who would eventually need a plumber but hadn’t started searching yet.

To grow the business, we needed to make sure Tulsa residents already knew the brand before the moment of need.

The Strategy

Our media strategist identified a high-visibility billboard location in the Tulsa metro with strong daily impressions and excellent traffic. Not web traffic, not digital ad traffic. Actual people-commuting-in-cars traffic.

Our creative team focused on simple promotional messaging, $89 drain cleaning, and a bold design to capture attention quickly.

Drivers only have a few seconds to absorb billboard messages (the saying is ‘7 words or less’ for a reason) so clarity was key.

The Measurement

Billboards present a classic attribution challenge as people don’t stop their car to write down a phone number. At least they shouldn’t.

So we introduced a simple but effective tracking method. Williams Plumbing’s call center began asking every caller: “How did you hear about us?” Responses were logged separately from digital tracking numbers, allowing us to isolate the billboard’s impact.

The Results

The campaign delivered measurable performance:

• ROI: 255.6%
• 74 leads generated
• 100% booking rate
• 68% of leads came from new customers
• 32% came from existing customers

The board didn’t just remind past customers about Williams Plumbing, it introduced the brand to entirely new homeowners across Tulsa.

Changes to the billboard creative produced a 57%–114% lift in service-line jobs, reinforcing that even in traditional media, the right offer and messaging can dramatically influence results.

Ready to build traditional media into your marketing strategy? Our traditional media experts are some of the best negotiators and strategists around. Let’s connect.