Are you looking to grow your painting company but aren’t sure where to start?
It’s difficult to know what steps to take or where to invest your time and money. However, we have created a proven roadmap for you to follow that will help you 10X your painting business.
In part 1 of this series, we discussed how to set up a follow-up system on multiple platforms. If you haven’t already read it, you’ll want to start here.
After the follow up systems are in place, your next step is to increase your number of leads.
Step 2 – 2X (At Least) Your Number of Leads
In order to grow your painting business, you will need to commit yourself to taking the steps to get bigger. By doubling your leads (at least), you will have more work coming in than ever before.
This is where it gets tricky. People will ask us, “How exactly do I double the leads for my painting business?”
The truthful answer is this – you need to test multiple avenues and see what works best for you. In order to know what is working and what’s not, lead tracking tactics will need to be in place.
Let’s talk about a few ways (or combinations of ways) to double your leads.
Marketing Tactics To Try To 2X Your House Painting Leads
Tactic 1 – Facebook Ads
As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, Facebook Ads can be an effective way of attracting new clients. Video tends to perform better than images, so make sure you take a bunch of little videos at your next work site.
You’ll want to make two sets of videos. Set 1 should have videos that do the following:
- Answer a common house painting question
- Talk about prepping a house for painting
- Discuss when to paint certain areas and why
- Discuss how weather affects painting
Video set 1 should be videos that people would watch if and only if they were thinking about painting their interior, exterior, cabinets etc.
Video Set 2 should showcase your company and why they should hire you. These videos should consist of:
- Showing the quality of your work
- Cool before and afters
- How clean you leave the house
- Anything else that makes you stand out
Set 2 videos should also close with a call to action of contacting you or scheduling an appointment.
Schedule Video Set 1 to show to people in your area. To get your targeting a little more specific, we generally recommend the following settings:
Age – 40+
Gender – Female (Women tend to make the decisions)
Radius – Within 20 miles of your business
Then, after Video Set 1 has been running for a few days, you’ll want to schedule Video Set 2. These videos should only be shown to people that have watched at least 25% of one of the videos from Set 1. This way, you know that you are targeting people that are at least thinking about painting their house.
You can also show Video Set 2 to people that have been on your website if you have the Facebook Pixel setup correctly.
Tactic 2 – Google Ads
Google Ads can be a highly effective way of getting leads online. In fact, we have seen leads come in for companies that we’ve worked with for under $50/lead. However, Google Ads can be a bit tricky when it comes to the settings.
Let’s discuss a few of the common Google Ad “gotchas”.
First, you need to decide what type of ad you want to run:
- Search Ads are the text ads that you see at the top of the results page, before the map and the organic results
- Display Ads are the image ads that you see across the web when browsing
Both types of ads have their merits, but you should never create a Search Ad that also targets the Display Network and vice versa.
Secondly, you need to make sure that you are using keywords in the manner that you intended.
Google has multiple types of keywords:
- Broad match
- Phrase match
- Exact match
According to Google, a broad match keyword is one that “may show on searches that are related to your keyword, which can include searches that don’t contain the keyword terms”
For example, you may enter House Painters In My Area as one of your keywords. However, your ad may show for people looking for famous painters or automobile painters.
Rule #1 of not overpaying for Google Ads – DO NOT USE BROAD MATCH KEYWORDS.
Google defines a phrase match keyword as one where “ads may show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword”. To denote a phrase match keyword, you’ll need to put it in quotes.
To use the example above, you would define one of your keywords as “House Painters In My Area”. Now, your ad would show for someone that typed in that phrase. It also might show for someone that type in “Painters Near Me” or “House Painting In My Area”.
These are okay keywords to use (as long as you have a good negative keyword list, which we will discuss in a few moments).
The last type of keywords are exact match keywords. To denote these, you enter the phrase in square brackets. Google defines these as “Ads will show on searches that have the same meaning or same intent as the keyword.”
This type of keyword gives you the most control of when your ad is shown, but it also limits the audience. Using the previous example, you would enter one of your keywords as [House Painters In My Area]. Then, your ad would show to people who type in this phrase or something very similar, like with the same words in a different order.
After you enter your keywords, you will also want to create your list of negative keywords as well. This is a list of words and phrases that you give to Google that tells them – if this word is in a search phrase, do NOT show my ad. It allows you to weed out unqualified buyers.
Good negative keywords to use for your painting company:
- Any painting or store brand, like “Home Depot” or “Behr”
- “How To” or “How Much” (People searching these phrases are typically in the education phase of their searching and aren’t looking to purchase
- Automobile, car, auto etc.
- Boat
- Paint and Sip
- Etc.
If you think of words or phrases that are associated with painting, but not house painting, put them on the list.
Finally, you want to make sure that your keywords match what you say in your ads AND that your landing pages that you send people to match your ads. This is called “Ad Congruity”. If you call yourself a “house painter” in your keywords and your ads, make sure that the page that you send them to highlights the fact that you are a “house painter”.
NEVER SEND YOUR ADS TO YOUR HOME PAGE! This is a huge, costly mistake that we see painting businesses make all of the time.
Some Other Marketing Tactics
We wanted to review a few tactics in depth. However, there are tons of other tactics to try, like:
- Door hangers
- YouTube ads
- Radio ads
- Appear on Podcasts
- Networking
- Find non-competing partners
- SEO
- TV
- Get featured on the local news
- And more!
Important to Remember – Measure Your Results
In order to know what tactic or tactics worked the best, you have to measure your results. One way you can do this is through call tracking. Use a different phone number for each tactic type and see what number brings in the most leads. CallRail is one vendor that offers this service and makes it simple to set up.
You could try one tactic per month, although seasonality may affect these results a bit.
You could send each ad to a separate landing page. Then, your site analytics would allow you to know which ad had been the most successful.
However you choose to do this, you just want to be sure that everything is measured.
Let’s Return To Our Example Company With Double The Leads For Our Painting Business
Again, let’s see how powerful doubling the number of leads that we bring in actually is.
Remember, ABC Painting started with $40,000 monthly gross revenue. Then, we implemented a follow-up system, which will increase the leads by about 60%. This took the gross monthly revenue to $64,000.
Now, through the tactics discussed in this article, we have doubled our leads from 80 to 160 per month.
If that 20% close rate remains, this will result in 32 new clients and a monthly gross income of $128,000! We have already more than tripled the revenue using just 2 steps of the system!
Next week? Step 3: Work On Increasing The Closing Rate For Your Painting Business!
