How to grow a plastering company? | Plastering Company Lead Generation

James Dooley and Kasra Dash explain how a plastering business grows by creating strong branding because clear online identity improves trust. They show that lead generation works when owners track acquisition costs because data reveals profitable channels. They highlight how SEO produces long term inbound demand because search behaviour aligns with plastering intent. They argue that networking accelerates referrals because joiners and plumbers already influence local construction workflows.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

James Dooley
So if I have a plastering business and I want a consistent flow of inquiries so I can generate more revenue every single month what would you recommend when it comes to marketing strategies?

Kasra Dash
So if I own a plastering company and I'm looking to grow a business the first thing I've been looking to do is have a professional website set up and a professional email and make certain that my branding online for the business name looks good online so make sure I've got loads of testimonials and reviews and I'm physically trying to rank for the main keywords that I think my demographic and my customers would want to go after so the first thing I would do is SEO and creating a branded website for my company. So with regards to growing a plastering company what's your thoughts on social media whether that's paid social media or organic social media?

James Dooley
So I've seen a lot of plaster companies I don't know if you've seen this where they upload videos and it is basically like the time lapse of them like plastering a wall it's quite therapeutic sometimes to actually watch those videos you big saddo.

Kasra Dash
Yeah so you can definitely go down that route and it can generate a lot of views it can generate like some of the videos I've seen they've got like millions of views but not all millions of the views would actually want your service so in some cases the 1 million views it might actually end up converting to like let's say five or ten different paying customers so that is a strategy that does work. One thing to bear in mind when you are doing any form of social media posting you're probably going to want to be more consistent don't just think I'm going to upload three videos and I'm going to get three million views on each video because it's not the case. But away from social media what about Facebook ads? So actually paying.

James Dooley
So Facebook ads could work definitely. Retargeting set getting a pixel set up on your website is important so that if someone's been on your website you're then retargeting them on social media mainly on Meta ads so that's on Instagram and on Facebook does work very very well. Cold Facebook ads for plastering I'm not certain because like trying to catch them at the exact right time where they need some plastering being done I'd say this is more of a search and click kind of based term so I'd say not really social media ads for this. I would say this is probably a niche because it's very specific of what they want where PPC might work okay if they know a specific demographic of what they're looking for so is it dry lining is it industrial kind of plastering what is it where is it they normally do a lot of plastering for like certain areas like is it plastering for hotels and stuff like that plastering for leisure centres plastering for gymnasiums and stuff like that so going down that route potentially if you look at the longtails could work okay for PPC. The downside to PPC it's expensive and there's click fraud so there's always that issue. What is click fraud just for anybody that's watching?

Kasra Dash
So click fraud is where sometimes it can be done by negative SEO where one of your competitors could be setting a bot up to come and serve and click on your ads and burn your whole day's budget and it's no customers are coming through and it's just fake traffic and you're then having to pay for each one of those clicks. You also have competitors not meaning to at times they might just want to see what's this ad and then one of your competitors is clicking on one of your ads to see what landing page and what offer that you have again you're paying for those clicks for your competitors to click onto your ad. So unless you know what you're doing then I wouldn't do PPC but if you're hiring a PPC agency it can be profitable it can work out if you know your numbers and if you're good at conversions. Another big part of PPC is if you are looking to go down that route is making certain you're loading in your negative keyword list so if you just turned around and went after plastering in London well you might start showing up for terms like plastering careers in London plastering jobs in London and it could be people applying to have a job with you as opposed to you trying to look for a client to win more business so that's also very important to make it certain that whoever's doing your PPC understands to load in a negative keyword list to make certain that all the clicks that you're getting specifically strategically is set up for you to try to get the best conversion for you to win work. But away from that so I'm talking about using a specialist what's your thoughts on lead generation companies?

James Dooley
Yeah so I think lead to be honest I think that a lot of plastering companies are already using lead generation companies but where I have spoke to a lot of plastering companies in the past where they kind of go a little bit wrong is they're not actually tracking and with anything you should be tracking your cost of acquiring a client some people call it CAC as well CAC and you should be able to say right okay if I'm spending £1,000 on Facebook it's costing me £100 to acquire a new customer if I'm spending £5,000 on PPC it's costing me let's say £50 if I'm spending X amount on SEO like you should just know these numbers and same goes with lead generation so if you guys are using let's say for example Bark or Checkatrade and stuff you should know that every single month you are spending a certain amount and it's costing you X amount per month to acquire a new customer for your business if you don't know that then you probably need to try and figure that out. But going back to what you were saying another strategy that you can go down is testing out different lead generation services so obviously you've got the Checkatrades of the world. Fat Rank is obviously another good lead generation method to go down because you don't need to pay them at all until you've actually converted that job and you've actually got the money into your business bank account until basically once you've completed the actual job that's when you pay Fat Rank so it might be a little bit biased here but it's probably the best strategy that I would go down if you do meet the criteria that is.

Kasra Dash
Yeah I think if you are a plastering company business owner and you are looking to grow something that Kaz has touched upon there if you head on over to Fatrank.com then fill in the form on there and you'll go through an onboarding process to see whether you qualify and what Fat Rank actually do is a no win no fee lead generation model to grow your plastering company. Now not all plastering companies are accepted we need to make certain that you've got a professional email a professional website that you're looking good online that you could be able to convert those leads into orders make profit once you make profit you just pay a percentage of the profit over to Fat Rank so it's a completely zero risk it's a no brainer for plastering business owners to do it. But I would still recommend you going out to a couple of other lead generation companies to have alongside Fat Rank. Fat Rank might not yet approve you they might say that you're not quite ready to take the lead you don't have a sales team to be able to respond quickly enough for the leads that's being generated and then from there then if you went to places like Bark or Checkatrade or Builder or Trustatrader they also might be able to generate you different types of leads that's coming in. The only downside to a lot of lead generation companies is that you're paying on a cost per lead basis and that might not guarantee you any profits. The Fat Rank lead generation model for plastering businesses looking to grow guarantees an ROI that's the big difference but go out and work out your numbers go and use two or three different lead generation companies like Bark Checkatrade Builder Trustatrader see which ones are converting best for you and also maybe try to start using Fat Rank with Bark as well as doing your own SEO to generate your own leads. The holy grail of a successful plastering company is if you can start to generate your own leads don't become reliant on a lead generation company. Now I'm doing myself a disservice because we want you as a client if you're good as a plastering company to come through Fat Rank and we provide you with your leads but what I'm telling you is if you can generate your own via social media ads or PPC or SEO that is what you're wanting to be working towards long term as well as then making certain that you're keeping busy and using some lead generation companies. So what's your thoughts then on anything to do would you ever do like any traditional type marketing TV ads radio ads billboard ads?

James Dooley
No again for something like plastering like if you went and ran like a 60 second ad on BBC or Sky or whatever it's just going to cost an arm and a leg you can't really track it as well how many people have visited your website or how many people have inquired from that ad everything that we've suggested up until now you can track the KPIs you can say right okay I've had 15 leads from my own website from the SEO campaign I've had 10 leads from PPC had two leads from Facebook ads I've had 25 leads from Fat Rank and this is how much it's cost me whereas with traditional like if you went and got like a big billboard near your house or wherever you don't know how many people have seen that and you don't know how many people have came from that billboard and same goes with radio and stuff. But what about networking events do you think that networking events could definitely?

Kasra Dash
So yeah I think networking events could be good because what I always like doing is shouldering niches so it's trying to say okay who might a plasterer get work from from a referral basis so what other tradesmen so I would naturally start to look at basically saying stuff like joiners bricklayers plumbers I want to befriend as many of them as I can because if that joiner is very busy they're on work that probably also needs plastering work so if you can basically saying look I don't mind all your joinery workers coming doing the plastering for you or for your client and they get referrals so for that season yes I would definitely going into home improvement type meetups and stuff like that trying to find as many different on LinkedIn connect with as many different joiners as you can connect with as many different plumbers as you can people that do AC installs as well sometimes they need to tear apart an entire wall to fit boiler but when people are moving a boiler and the damage behind there needs plastering and stuff like that so trying to think outside the box of who you could network with and then try to make sure I mean word of mouth inquiries are probably the highest converting jobs that you'll ever have the only issue is they don't come around often enough and that's why you need to try to get a consistent flow of quality inquiries coming in on a day to day basis that might not convert as well as word of mouth but you want to try and get all of these things for you then to be able to grow your plastering company. So with regards to if you are a plastering company looking to grow and you are struggling at present with regards to any sort of marketing leave a comment in the comment section or fill out a form on Fatrank.com not just for the lead generation but for some business advice or mentorship there might be some mentorship kind of coaching sessions that you might be able to do as well where someone can come go through your existing website and tell you where you're lacking in comparison to your competition as well I think that's also very important for you to do. Like I said the holy grail of a successful plastering company is to try to generate their own inquiries in house as well as getting that consistent flow from external sources. Is there anything else there that you'd have to grow a plastering company?

James Dooley
No I think that's it really I think we've covered everything. Obviously one added tip as well is if you guys do have like a bigger team let's say you've got a few vans on the road you can definitely go to property development companies as well and offer your services because if you've got let's say vans and they're building out 300 homes you'd very quickly be able to build trust and obviously you need the case studies and stuff so that's where the branding the website and stuff comes in but for the more established guys that is also another way of doing it. I think what you just mentioned there another big one for plastering companies would be just spending that extra bit of money on getting a good graphic designer to sort your branding out so it looks good and then go and get all your vans sign written go and get the name of the brand all over it so people know who you are when you go and pull up on a construction site they know who you are and then other joiners or other plumbers might see it or someone might be on the motorway behind you and get your number say oh I need a plastering company so that's free billboard advertising on a vehicle that you're getting everywhere you're driving someone seeing your brand and telephone number and website but making certain it looks quality don't just have a white van get it sign written up properly and get that branding bang on so then when someone does go search online as well the knock on effect from there is not only does it look nice to branding you've now got lots of testimonials and reviews and case studies to say that you are the best plastering company that they could choose for the works that they need to be done.