PIMS (Propane Insider Marketing Service) is a founder-led marketing department for multi-office propane delivery operators, run personally by Bill Stomp. It settles the hire-somebody-versus-hire-an-agency argument with a third answer: Your Marketing Department in a Box, built for propane and pointed at the miles you already deliver in. Five pillars run every month — Google Business Profile, citations and listings, review velocity, vendor blog, and a monthly report. The rate is one monthly price per office and is quoted on the demo call.
What PIMS is for
Three things, in this order.
More customers. Every motion below points at buyers inside the 30-35 mile radius each of your bulk plants can actually serve. Impressions in a county you cannot reach are not the goal.
Higher margins. The operator with the strongest reviews in the county does not have to be the cheapest bid to win the call. Reputation is what lets you hold your price.
Reputation defense. An unanswered one-star review sits on your profile in front of every customer who checks you before they dial. PIMS answers it, keeps new reviews coming, and keeps your side of the story on the page.
The five pillars of PIMS
Each pillar is a recurring monthly motion, not a one-time project. This is what runs in the background between the demo and your next deal.
1. Google Business Profile optimization
GBP is the highest-leverage local surface a propane operator has. Most operators have a half-filled profile: inconsistent name, address and phone, no services listed, no recent posts, no Q&A. PIMS audits each location's profile, fills the gaps, posts weekly in the operator's voice, seeds and answers questions, and watches the listing for unauthorized edits.
One thing PIMS fixes early that operators rarely think about: the service area on the profile has to match the radius you actually run, not the one you wish you ran. Set it wide and you buy quote forms from addresses no bobtail can reach. You pay for the lead, then you call the customer back and turn them down.
2. Citations and listings sync
Every location's name, address and phone has to match across Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing, Yellow Pages and the propane directories. Inconsistencies drag local-pack rankings. Each office keeps its own listing — multi-office operators never get merged into one. PIMS runs an automated sync layer plus manual review on the directories propane buyers and industry partners actually read.
3. Review velocity
Reviews are among the strongest local signals there are. PIMS runs the request automation (email, and text where the customer has opted in), the response templates for good reviews and bad ones, and a review process that stays inside Google's terms. The target is one new five-star review every two weeks per location, sustained.
4. Vendor blog
Two posts a month per location, published to your site in your voice. PIMS handles topic selection — propane price action, safety reminders, seasonal prep, local community angles — plus drafting, editing and publishing. Posts are written for propane buyers, not for ranking. They rank because they are propane-specific and locally anchored.
5. Monthly customer report
The end-of-month deliverable. A real PDF: profile impression deltas, ranking movement on your target keyword set, citation health, review-volume change, blog performance, and a plain-English "what we did and what is next." Bill reads every report before it sends.
How to think about the rate
One monthly price per office. Nothing is billed per module, and the number is quoted on the demo call against your real office count — because a one-office operator and a four-office operator are not buying the same amount of work. Book it at /pims.
How PIMS compares to the two alternatives
Most operators looking at PIMS are choosing among three options: hire an in-house marketing person, hire a generic local-SEO agency, or run PIMS.
| What you compare | In-house marketing hire | Generic local-SEO agency | PIMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs you | Salary, benefits, payroll tax and a tool stack — every month, fully loaded | A monthly retainer | One monthly rate per office, quoted on the call |
| Time to first deliverable | 60-90 days (hiring plus onboarding) | 30-60 days | 2 weeks (Day 1 kickoff, Day 7 preview, Day 30 first report) |
| Propane knowledge | None on Day 1 | None on Day 1 | Built on 25 years of propane operations |
| Profile, listings, reviews, blog | Bottlenecked by one person | Generic playbook | Propane-specific and integrated |
| Accountability | You manage them | An account manager you meet quarterly | Bill reads every monthly report before it sends |
| Propane-industry recommendations | None | None | Insurance professionals at Aegis, Nationwide, and eMaxx Assurance Group have recommended Tank Spotter to propane operators they work with — PIMS puts that in front of your local audience |
"We tried marketing before and it did not work"
Most operators who say that hired a generalist who did not know propane. Somebody posting on Facebook, or buying ads with nothing tracked. That is spending, not marketing. PIMS is the whole engine pointed at the radius you deliver in, measured against a starting line we document before we touch anything.
What Southwest Propane is doing differently
Southwest Propane is the first PIMS founding partner. The case study shows the starting line — what their Google Business Profile, citation health, review velocity and blog cadence looked like before PIMS started. Real lift numbers land on that page as the monthly reports come in. It starts in placeholder mode on purpose rather than fabricate them up front.
How to start
Book a 30-minute conversation directly with Bill at propaneinsider.com/pims. The call walks the PIMS landing page, the Southwest case study, and a real audit of your current profile and ranking state before it ends — including what the rate is for your office count. If it fits, you take a founding-partner slot in the current cohort. If not, no follow-up sandwich.
PIMS is Propane Insider's marketing-services arm. The operator-side software line includes Tank Spotter (the field app for inspections, work orders, tank inventory and NFPA 58 / CETP / DOT records), FuelSite.pro (modern websites), Custom Fuel App (white-label customer ordering) and Blink Fuel (counter-seasonal mobile fueling). Operators running Tank Spotter and PIMS together get the natural pairing: insurance professionals at Aegis, Nationwide, and eMaxx Assurance Group have recommended Tank Spotter to propane operators they work with, and PIMS is what puts that recommendation in front of your local audience.