How Chris built Premier Gas from one man in a van to four vans, starting in 2024.
Working with Tyneside Marketing has been excellent. From start to finish Jeremy has been able to guide and advise me through the whole process.
Where Premier Gas were stuck
Chris had spent years as a gas engineer working for someone else. In 2024 he decided to back himself and start Premier Gas. He had the skills. What he didn't have was a website, any leads coming in, or a way to compete with the big national boiler brands and the long-established Gateshead firms already sitting at the top of Google.
There was a bigger reason behind the leap too. Chris wanted to build something of his own. A business with real value he could one day sell, or use to fund his retirement. To get there, he needed customers calling him every week. And he had to start small, because cash flow in year one of any trade business is tight.
How we built the pipeline
We started with a new website. Built from the ground up to show up on Google for the searches Chris's customers were actually typing, like "new boiler Gateshead" and "gas engineer near me". The pages are simple, clear, and focused on getting visitors to pick up the phone or fill in a form.
From day one we ran a small Google Ads campaign alongside it. That brought in leads straight away: people in Gateshead who needed a boiler and were searching for one that week. We kept his ad budget low to match what he could afford. The deal was simple. As leads turned into installs, we'd put some of that money back into the ads.
Each month we kept pushing the website up the Google rankings: adding new pages, fixing technical issues, getting his Google Business Profile in shape, and helping him collect reviews from happy customers.
In year two, with cash flow steadier, we added Facebook and Instagram ads, but only for winter. Most people don't think about their boiler until it stops working, and that's almost always between October and February. We switch the Facebook ads on in autumn to put Premier Gas in front of Gateshead homeowners before that happens. In spring we switch them off and let Google Ads handle the quieter months.
What changed
Chris has gone from one man in a van to a team of engineers and apprentices. The fourth van is about to go on the road. The work has grown with the team. Premier Gas now handles bigger commercial projects for property developers across Gateshead and Newcastle, alongside the residential installs and servicing it started with.
The numbers behind that growth: every new lead from advertising costs around £22. Once everything is factored in, Chris pays roughly £60 to win a new customer, and that customer is worth around £2,000 to the business over time. In peak winter months he gets 50 to 60 enquiries.
The biggest shift, though, is where his customers come from now. Most leads no longer come from paid ads. They come from people finding Premier Gas on Google for free, or from his Google Business Profile, where the review count keeps climbing. The website and the SEO work we did at the start is now doing most of the heavy lifting. The paid ads are there to top things up in winter, not to keep the business alive.
That's the asset Chris set out to build.
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