Digital Marketing for Painters: Brush Up Your Business
As a painter, you spend your days transforming spaces and bringing your clients’ visions to life. Now imagine this transformation for your own business:
- Your website attracts hundreds of visitors each month searching for professional painters, color consultations, or interior and exterior painting services.
- You consistently convert online leads into scheduled estimates, consultations, or signed painting projects.
- Your inbox is full of inquiries about residential makeovers, commercial jobs, and seasonal painting specials.
- Your calendar is packed with client meetings, on-site estimates, and confirmed painting projects ready to roll.
- You have complete visibility into how well your digital marketing is driving painting leads and revenue.
It may seem as though these results are out of reach, but they’re not! We’ll walk you through the proven process we use to build effective digital marketing campaigns for painting companies, helping you turn these goals into reality.
We’re a Marketing Agency Specializing in the Painting Business
The Houston Marketing Agency knows exactly how to drive business for painters. We have the experience to know what works and what doesn’t work for painting businesses.
Contact us today to schedule a complimentary, no-obligation initial consultation.
The Holistic Playbook for a High-Performing Painting Company Digital Marketing Campaign
We are proud to be one of Houston’s top-performing marketing agencies, using our clear processes and transparent strategies to get results for our clients.
Your digital marketing journey will focus on three crucial components:
- Setting up data analytics so you’re able to track your campaign’s performance.
- Driving inbound traffic to your website.
- Converting the inbound traffic into paid clients.
Sounds easy enough, right?
The process is pretty straightforward, but your results don’t mean much if they aren’t trackable.
Think about your current digital marketing campaign and ask yourself these questions:
- What is your cost per qualified lead from Google Ads?
- What is your website’s conversion rate?
- How many organic visitors did your site get from Google last month?
If you can confidently answer those questions, go ahead and skip to the end. But if you don’t have a clue where to even start, that’s okay!
We are here to walk you through each step of the process so you can understand exactly how it all works.
We are a digital marketing agency, but we are also a “data agency.” This means we can show you what works and what doesn’t, so you end up with a personalized, holistic, high-performing campaign.
Phase 1: Build Robust Data Analytics
Trackable KPIs
Data is the foundation of digital marketing campaigns for painters. If you’re not tracking your leads and website analytics accurately — or you’re making business decisions based on your best guess or instincts — you could be missing out on significant opportunities.
As a painter, tracking the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can help you understand what’s driving results and where you can make adjustments to increase your success.
Some essential KPIs for painters include:
- Jobs completed per crew
- On-time project completion rate
- Warranty and callback rate
- Workplace incident rate
- Customer survey scores
These are all important measurements for successful painting businesses, but they don’t give you an accurate reflection of your digital marketing campaign’s performance.
To understand how your marketing efforts are positively impacting your growth, you also need to focus on KPIs specific to your digital marketing campaign, such as:
- Number of website visitors by channel
- Cost pers by channel:
- Cost per lead
- Cost per qualified lead
- Cost per website visitor
- Cost per conversion
Data Fidelity
Unfortunately, many digital marketing providers fall short in providing accurate and relevant data. When we’ve taken over campaigns for painting companies from other agencies or freelancers and reviewed the numbers, we’ve uncovered issues such as:
- Double-counting conversions
- Not tracking every step of the funnel to clearly understand conversion and drop-off rates
- Tracking irrelevant conversions, like someone using Google Maps to search where your business is located
Our priority at The Houston Marketing Agency is accurate data tracking that is relevant to your digital marketing campaign.
Phase 2: Maximize Affordable Inbound Traffic
When considering digital marketing for painting companies, it’s important to first understand why homeowners or businesses are looking for a painter in the first place. For most clients, the decision comes down to one or more of these factors:
- They want to refresh their home’s curb appeal with exterior painting.
- They’re ready for an interior makeover that matches their style, colors, and design preferences.
- They need a professional finish and quality work that they can’t achieve on their own.
- They’re looking to protect and maintain their property with durable coatings.
- They want the credibility, reliability, and professionalism of a trusted painting contractor.
Knowing which of these motivations apply to your ideal clients can help you focus your digital marketing campaigns on the right strategies to attract high-quality leads at the lowest possible cost.
Google has become the go-to platform for online searches, making it the best starting point for gathering digital marketing data for your painting business.
Let’s see how Google data can help perfect your marketing campaign.
The graphic above shows that over 206,000 people per month are searching for “painters near me” or some variation of that keyword. That’s nearly 2.5 million searches a year.
Many people also search for painters using city-specific keywords. The above graphic shows that over 5,000 people per month are searching for specific keywords related to painters in Houston, totaling over 60,000 searches a year.
So why is this important to know?
Because if you’re not performing well in organic and paid traffic, you’re missing out on a lot of potential new client bookings and opportunities.
Organic
You can rank organically on Google for “painters near me” in two places.
First up is the Google Local Pack.
So, how do you get your painting business to rank in the Google Local Pack?
Well, a lot goes on behind the scenes with local SEO, but the basic idea is:
- Have an optimized Google Business Profile that’s highly reviewed.
- Have content on your website that’s localized to your business.
Under the Google Local Pack on the search results page is where you’ll find the organic results.
You’re probably wondering how you can get your business to rank in the top organic results.
As mentioned, local SEO is complex, but some things you can do to help boost your business’s ranking are:
- Create a comprehensive, content-rich website.
- Optimize your on-page SEO (title tags, meta description, etc.).
Paid
Not every paid advertising channel performs the same for painting companies. Results can vary based on factors like the type of services you offer, your target customers, location, and more. These are some of the platforms you may want to consider for your painting business’s digital marketing budget.
Google Ads
Google Ads are a paid option that boosts your ranking on the results page. These sponsored links will show up throughout the search results.
If your digital marketing agency utilizes these paid ads effectively, your target audience will click on your website, potentially leading to a client who schedules a consultation or booking.
We can test different types of Google Ads to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. These include:
- Search
- Display
- Performance Max
- And more
YouTube Ads
YouTube Ads for painting companies offer affordable, highly targeted visual ads. Homeowners or business owners who are ready to invest in a quality paint job are looking for a contractor that:
- Delivers professional, high-quality work
- Uses trusted materials and techniques
- Has a proven track record of past projects
- Provides excellent customer service
With YouTube’s targeting capabilities, you can create a professional video showcasing past work, highlight your expertise, and connect with clients who are actively searching for painting services in your area.
Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok Ads
When it comes to using social media as an advertising tool, it’s important to be aware of the different demographics that use each platform.
Of course, there will be some crossover between the different age groups and platforms, but for the most part, you can assume that:
- Facebook & Instagram While most popular with Boomer and Millennials, don’t think of these as just reaching boomer or gen x audiences.
Facebook & Instagram perform well for creative products and services, traditional products and services. One key tip is video is expensive.
So if you only have a limited budget, or what you are promoting can be represented as in a static image, motion graphic type videos, or technical/traditional presentations, then Facebook & Instagram often give the best return on investment.
- TikTok is popular with Millennials and Gen Z. TikTok is popular, but are you promoting yourself in the users expectations products that are largely experiential, extremely visual, and somewhat humorous?
The biggest challenge and limitation with TikTok is the heavy investment in video production.
Often meaning someone is always filming, or hiring influencers to film very creative videos, with very flexible brand standards. But in the unique User Generated Content style that works best on TikTok.
Having this information can be used to your advantage. For example:
- GenX may be established homeowners with more disposable income and are focused on quality and reliability over price for whole-house renovations and high-end finishes.
- Millennials may be first-time homeowners or flipping older homes. Their style may be more modern and trendy when hiring painters for room makeovers, kitchen or bath projects, or exterior updates.
- Gen Z may just be starting out and have limited budgets. They may prioritize eco-friendly paint options and value social proof like online reviews and previous project showcases of smaller, more affordable projects.
Phase 3: Increase Conversion Rates
So far, we’ve talked about how to drive users to your website. But this is just the beginning.
Our next task is to turn those visitors into paying clients.
To make this happen, we’ll use proven strategies to boost conversions and turn those users into paid bookings.
Use CRO Best Practices
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) has several different elements, including:
- Using masterful videos and images that are unique and set you apart
- Creating a website that is easy to navigate and mobile-friendly
- Adding reviews from previous clients to your website
There are numerous strategies you can use, and we’d be here for days if we explained every one; however, here are some we recommend that provide the maximum return on your investment.
Split Test Landing Pages
Split tests are a quick, easy way to determine if your website copy, design, or other elements on your page are increasing conversion rates.
But what is a split test? Here’s how to run them:
- Landing Page A is your control page.
- Landing Page B is your test page. Take Landing Page A and change one component.
- Example: Change the buttons on your page from saying “call today” to “schedule a free consultation.”
Comparing your control page to your test page will help you identify which components are attracting more users. Consistently running split tests can lead to an increase in conversions.
Clear CTAs
Calls to Action (CTAs) should be clearly visible throughout your website’s pages.
Examples of CTAs you could use for your painting business are:
- Get your free estimate today
- Request a quote now
- Transform your home today
- And more
The CTA you choose should be straightforward and easy to understand, so you can convert more users into paying clients.
Optimize the Funnel
There are steps clients take as they move from browsing for painters to booking a project. It’s common to see drop-offs along the way as they decide not to take the next step.
The good news is that you can use your digital marketing campaign to your advantage by understanding where these drop-offs are occurring. To do this, you need to:
- Figure out where exactly these drop-off points are happening.
- Use data-driven tests to optimize those drop-off points.
- Consistently monitor how your changes are affecting performance.
- Keep testing to improve conversions.
Increase LTV on Autopilot
Once a client books a painting project, your work isn’t over. For painting companies, there are several ways to increase the lifetime value (LTV) of that client. This part of the process doesn’t have to be time-consuming or complicated and can be done on autopilot. Some things you may consider doing are:
- Sending post-project follow-up emails or texts thanking clients.
- Scheduling reminders for annual or seasonal maintenance, touch-ups, or repainting.
- Offering recurring maintenance packages (yearly exterior repainting or touch-ups).
- Using email and text campaigns to promote additional services like cabinet refinishing, deck staining, or specialty finishes.
- Creating automated referral programs or loyalty programs with rewards or discounts for repeat clients or clients who refer friends and neighbors.
Digital Marketing for Painters Doesn’t Have to Be Hard
The Houston Marketing Agency has a proven track record of helping local and national brands of various industries increase their leads and sales using effective digital marketing campaigns.
We look forward to helping you increase your leads and paid bookings with our digital marketing for painters tailored to your business. If your performance doesn’t improve within three months, we will offer a 100% refund.
Reach out to us today for a fresh coat of marketing and start growing your painting business.