11 Ways for Painting Contractors to get More Leads
Table of Contents
Show your value. Be trustworthy, fair and professional
- Sell your customers on the quality of your work. Many homeowners see painting as being more simple than it is. Let them know what they are paying for; the time that you put into prep work, the problems you will help them avoid such as bleed-through and adhesion issues, number of coats, and the quality of the paint that they are purchasing along with your hours of skilled work.
Show off your work!
2. Build your website with plenty of pictures of your previous work. With paint projects – color sells. It’s one of the most rewarding home improvement projects homeowners can have done because it so immediately rewarding and can change the feel of the room without having to break the bank.
Leave some paint behind, they’ll thank you later
3. Buy some empty 8oz containers or empty quarts and leave some paint of each color behind for your customers to do their own touch-ups. Get some stickers printed with your business name, phone number, and website and leave them on the containers to remind your customers how to contact you for their next paint project.
Don’t waste money on bad searches
4. When doing paid search advertising such as Google Ads, spend a lot of time on your negative keywords lists. Be sure to include the types of work you may not be interested in paying for: faux painting, scenic painting, stripe painting, industrial coating, power washing, deck staining. Be sure to also include negative keywords for all searches where the person is probably not looking to hire a professional, such as “how to” and DIY. This also includes people that are looking to purchase their own paint supplies so its best to include negative keywords such as “Home Depot”, “Sherwin Williams”, “Memorial Day Sale”, coupon, and “consumer reports”. This may depend on your business objects, but I recommend adding top competitors as negative keywords. A simple Google search and the Auction Insights tool within Google Adwords are great sources for finding your top competitors online.
Be prompt
5. Answer as many phone calls and emails as you can right away. If you can’t answer the phone right away leave a clear voicemail asking for your customer’s name and phone number and let them know that you return most calls within 30 minutes. Studies show that customers will be quick to get another estimate if they do not get an immediate response.
Utilize separate campaigns
6. If you do deck and fence staining, separate those adds into a different Google Ads campaign than your interior work. This will help you group similar keywords together as well as adjust your budget for seasonality and weather in your area so you can get the right customers at the right time of year for the lowest cost.
Ask for a review
7. Ask your customers for reviews after you’ve completed the project. This will help separate you from the competition by building social proof for potential customers, will help your Google My Business” ranking, and it lets customers know that you stand behind you work.
Know your service areas terminology
8. Use geographic keywords in your ad groups to find new customers. In addition to location targeting; there are a lot of people that will use search terms with zip codes and city names. Try “residential painter in Baytown”, “professional painter 52242” “licensed painter in the South Bay”
Use your “Google My Business”
9. Post your most recent projects in “Google My Business”, to increase your ranking in the search results for people are searching for painters in their area.
Mobile Friendly
10. Make your online business mobile-friendly. Make sure that your website is optimized for mobile devices and use Call-Only Ads so customers can quickly contact you from their mobile devices.
Dry vs. Cure time
11. Inform your customers as to the difference between dry and cure time. This serves two purposes. First, your customers will not ruin his or her beautiful new paint job by scrubbing the walls before the paint fully cures. Second, changing the color of the room can be a bit of shock for many people even when its for the better. Let customers know that colors can darken as they cure up to 72 hours after the paint is applied. This helps the new look settle in for a customer without sending them into a panic over their color decision. For many people it’s like getting a new haircut where they go through a period where they doubt their color decision before settling in and being happy with the results. Give them this time to not give themselves a chance to second-guess themselves and most will be happy with the decision that they have made.
If you need help spackling and priming over holes in your online business presence please contact us at Caelus Digital and we will be happy to help.