How Proximity Plumbing Turned Trust Into Its Biggest Growth Channel
Emily Demirdonder is the Director of Operations & Marketing at Proximity Plumbing, a Sydney-based service business built to fix one of the industry’s biggest problems: cost surprises and unreliable service. This interview is worth reading if you care about turning trust, operations, and local search into repeatable growth.
In this edition of the Ecommerce Authority Playbooks series, we dive into how
Proximity Plumbing grows, retains customers, and prepares for the future of search in 2026 and beyond.
The interview
1. What’s the quick origin story of your brand, and what makes your product or positioning genuinely different from other options in your niche?
Emily Demirdonder: I didn’t plan on ending up in plumbing. For years, I was a flight attendant with Virgin Australia, and when I met Will and saw what he was building, something clicked. The Sydney plumbing industry had a serious trust problem. Customers were blindsided by costs, tradespeople were unreliable, and nobody seemed bothered about fixing it.
So I came on board thinking like a customer, not a tradie. We built Proximity Plumbing around three things. Showing up, being upfront about costs and treating every job in the Eastern Suburbs like it genuinely matters.
2. Since launch, what have been the 1-2 real turning points for your brand-specific decisions, pivots, or experiments that noticeably changed your growth or profitability-and what did you learn from them?
Emily Demirdonder: The first real turning point was overhauling our pricing model. Customers weren’t complaining about the quality of our work. They were frustrated by cost surprises at the end. So we got radically transparent, giving people a clear picture of costs before anyone picked up a wrench. Within three months our five-star reviews doubled and word travelled fast after that.
The second was investing properly in our office operations. Tight scheduling, real communication systems and proper admin support transformed how customers experienced us from first call to final invoice. Most tradies underestimate how much the back-end shapes the overall perception. We stopped letting that slip.
3. Which 2-3 channels drive most of your revenue right now (for example SEO, paid social, email, marketplaces, influencers), and what have you learned about making those channels work in your category?
Emily Demirdonder: Three channels drive our business. Word of mouth, Google local search and follow-up. In the Eastern Suburbs, when something breaks at 7am, people text their neighbours before they scroll through ads. So every job we do is an audition for the next three. We’ve put serious work into our Google Business Profile because that’s where the panicked 8am search lands.
Follow-up is the one most tradies skip entirely. A quick check-in after the job costs nothing and keeps us front of mind for the next call. Here’s what I’ve learned across all three. In a high-trust, low-frequency category like plumbing, your reputation is your marketing budget.
4. How are you thinking about search in 2026 – Google, AI assistants like ChatGPT, and other discovery platforms? What, if anything, have you changed in your content or site to stay visible as AI search grows?
Emily Demirdonder: A few years ago, showing up on Google meant ticking predictable boxes. Good reviews, consistent details, a decent website. Now AI assistants are changing how people find services entirely. Someone doesn’t always search “plumber Eastern Suburbs” anymore. They just ask ChatGPT to recommend someone.
So we shifted our content strategy toward answering real questions our customers ask every day. What causes low water pressure? What should a plumber cost in Sydney? Stop writing for algorithms and start writing for the panicked person at the other end of the search bar. That person is your customer, and the visibility follows when you speak directly to them.
5. What do you do to turn first‑time buyers into repeat customers and advocates? Are there specific experiences, content, or community touches that work especially well for you?
Emily Demirdonder: Nobody wakes up hoping they need a plumber again, so we had to find a way to stay genuinely useful between jobs. The answer was education. We show up with content that helps customers look after their homes. How to spot an early leak, what to do when the hot water system starts making noise, which jobs are safe to DIY.
The Eastern Suburbs is a collection of tight neighbourhoods where people talk and recommend locally. So we show up like locals, not like a faceless company. We remember names, follow up when we say we will, and when something goes wrong we fix it fast and own it completely. Handling a problem well turns a frustrated customer into your most loyal advocate.
6. If you had to write a short playbook for an ecommerce founder one stage behind you, what would you double down on over the next 12 months – and what would you stop doing entirely?
Emily Demirdonder: Double down on trust infrastructure. Every touchpoint before, during and after a job is either building trust or eroding it. Most founders obsess over acquisition and completely neglect the middle and the end. One genuine five-star review from a real local customer is worth more than a thousand paid ad impressions.
Stop chasing every new platform. Pick the two channels that actually bring you customers and go deep. Stop treating existing customers like strangers too. The person who already bought from you is your warmest lead, and most founders spend ten times more money finding new ones than keeping the ones they have.
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