ProPainter   Advice   Blog

When you first start a painting business, there aren’t enough customers to fill the day, and it’s tough to make ends meet.  Over the years, however, word spreads that your work is good, your prices are fair and you do what you say you’ll do.  Customers come back and ask for more rooms to be painted, and they refer their friends and co-workers to you, often without you even knowing it.  Pretty soon, there aren’t enough hours to complete all of the painting requests you’re receiving!  That can be especially true in the summer months, when painting demand is at its highest.

To someone who just wants to do good work and keep customers happy, this is more of a problem than it sounds like it is.  You’re booked up for six weeks, and most people need work done before that – which means your calls aren’t bringing in new business.  If you answer every call that comes in, you’ll have even less time to paint.  But if you don’t answer the phone, customers may get annoyed and your reputation will suffer.

This is stressful, but it doesn’t have to be.  In fact, this situation should be exciting – because you can begin to choose your destiny at this point in your career.  Rather than taking anyone who will wait six weeks, only take the jobs you want – those with high margins and less manual labor.  If you’ve been in this situation for months, it’s probably safe to set a minimum job value.  Soon, your wait time will be down to two to three weeks – and more of your jobs will be good jobs that make you more money with less work.

Of course, you’ll go through patches of more or less work.  When your calendar is looking light, simply say yes to more work.  That’s the other value of having too many leads – during the winter months, too many can quickly turn into just enough.  But make sure that you’re always filling up your calendar with the best projects you’re getting, not the ones that call first or can wait the longest.  Because the goal of a business isn’t to stay booked out six weeks; it’s to stay profitable, and to keep you, the owner, happy.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help you generate more of the best leads for your business, call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

In many areas of the US, painting work is much more plentiful in the summer.  The biggest reason is that exterior painting isn’t possible during the winter months in very cold areas. Another reason is that many houses are painted right before or right after being sold, and house sales are more common in the summer, when people’s kids are out of school.

Due to the summer being busy, some painters believe they can scale down their web presence during the summer months. This is a mistake. If you don’t stay active online during the summer months, you’ll suffer the consequences during the fall and winter.  That’s because consistency is required to keep your website searching well.

Google ranks websites highly when they have two things over several months:  helpful content, and people who visit the site.  If your site isn’t online, it can’t do either of these things!  And because it takes several months to climb the rankings, if you establish a web presence in the winter, you won’t receive the full benefit from it until after the season has passed.

Companies that wait until the winter to establish a web presence do have advertising options.  But the advertising that provides instant leads, like postcards or Google Adwords, is expensive because it is a pay-per-lead service.  You pay for every postcard, and you pay for every single ad-click.  Websites are offered at a flat monthly fee, and if the provider is good at their job, your return on investment goes up over time as the site searches better and better.

That’s why it’s a good idea to get your website up in the summer, even if business is strong.  By the time the winter months come around, your website will be providing leads, and it will continue to provide more and more leads as the season progresses.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help your business earn more leads, call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

There are many ways to market your paint company, and you’re likely to use several of them to build your customer base.  But whether you’re preparing to put together a direct mail campaign, having a website built for your company, or getting yard signs made, there are three factors that you have to balance to make the biggest possible impact.

#1 – Price

Marketing is expensive, but some types of marketing are prohibitively expensive.  If you’re planning to target a big section of town with a postcard, it can easily cost thousands of dollars.  If you’re paying money for every lead on a site like HomeAdvisor, it can also quickly eat through thousands of dollars.  Before you jump into these commitments, figure out how much in profit you make from each paint job, and ask yourself how many jobs you would have to get from this marketing to even pay back the marketing cost.  Are you likely to get several times more leads than this?  If not, it probably doesn’t make sense unless you’re willing to lose money in the short term in order to get a brand new business off the ground.

#2 – Effectiveness

Just because marketing is cheap doesn’t mean it’s cost-effective.  Purchasing an ad in a rarely-read local magazine isn’t going to get the phone ringing off the hook.  The same goes for purchasing online ads for painting-related phrases that people rarely search for.  If you’re going to take the time and money to invest in marketing, it needs to yield a measurable result.  If not, you’re better off taking that time and dedicating it to in-person marketing, which costs little more than the flyer or card you’re handing out or dropping off.

#3 – Impression

The way your marketing looks sets people’s expectation of price and quality.  If your flyers are simply designed and printed out on a home computer, or your website has only one page of information, potential customers expect a lower caliber of service – and a lower price to match.  As a result, the high-paying customers won’t contact you, and your leads will expect you to be willing to haggle over prices.

On the other hand, if your flyers have pictures of very expensive houses and are a very thick grade of cardstock paper, customers will assume you have excellent service, and prices to match.  This can be great for business if you’re marketing in high-end neighborhoods, but others may be turned off by what they expect to be inflated prices and may not give you a call.

This is why it’s important to present a balanced look – one that identifies your business as professional and attentive to detail, but not aimed exclusively at high-end customers (unless, of course, you are).  For most businesses, getting this right requires at least some input from a marketing expert.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help you make a great first impression with an affordable, effective website, give us a call at 919-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.