Getting new leads is more important for contractors, such as painters, than for other businesses. These people don't have a set monthly salary, as their income entirely depends on the specific projects they work on.
Even if you have a lot of clients, they won't ask for painting services often. Generally, people need help with specific projects. Hence, contractors must focus on lead generation if they want a steady monthly income.
With so many painting companies in the country, how can new painters or businesses increase their leads? We are here to help.
Read on to learn how to get painting leads in 2024. The tips on this page are all useful. Test them and see which works best for your company. Our team can also advise on how to get garage door repair leads.
Quality vs. Quantity
Painting contractors must keep in mind that getting many leads is not always the solution to their problems. It does increase their chances of working on more projects, but sometimes, it's better to prioritize a few high-quality clients over others who may not pay for what you offer.
In the painting industry, you don't want countless leads who will never pay for your services. What you are looking for is qualified customers ready to work with your business.
Similar to other industries, the problem with painting leads is that many people will just waste your time. We recommend you develop and test a strong system to qualify your prospects before you offer them anything.
What are high-quality painting leads? It depends on what you see as an ideal customer. However, people with a clear idea of the services they want and the budget to pay for them are a great start.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't work to get more leads. What we say is that you must make sure that the clients who get to your company will invest in what you have to offer them.
Once you've developed a system to get high-quality leads, you can work to find more. It's not about choosing one over the other. Ideally, you should find a safe spot between the two. This page focuses on quantity.
Should Painting Contractors Buy Leads?
If you've been trying to get new painting leads for a while, you've surely found websites that "sell" them to you. How does this work? The website you sign up for sets a specific price to connect you with people who may hire your services.
On paper, this sounds like the perfect way to get new painting leads if you have the budget to pay for them. We don't recommend this method to find more customers, though.
The problem with these services is that they almost always sell low-quality "leads." When you pay for them, the website may send you a phone number or email of someone looking for, let's say, painting contractors.
First, offering you a list of phone numbers or email addresses is not selling you a lead. These people tell you to contact someone who hasn't expressed they want to work with your business in any way.
This system is closer to cold calling than directly getting leads, which is what it claims to deliver. In most cases, these people won't be pleased to hear from you and may even leave negative reviews on your website. You could try it if you really need it, but it's not a good lead generation strategy.
How to Get Leads for My Painting Business
We know how difficult it can be for a painting contractor to find new leads. Depending on where you live, there may already be many local businesses offering what you want to sell. Now, this doesn't mean you need to give up.
There are many ways for painting companies to find new leads and get a steady income. The options listed below are some of the most effective for contractors in 2024. However, you must find the one that best fits your business.
If these methods work, don't leave things there. Always try to generate painting leads; that means coming up with new ways to get more clients.
Even if you get exclusive painting leads, you still need to convince them to hire your services. Be ready to negotiate with them and add as much value as you can to your offer.
Create a Referral Program
The first option you should try to generate painting leads is to create a referral program for your company. This will encourage your existing customers to get more clients for you.
In this case, what you want is to offer special deals, promotions, or discounts to people who refer others to your company. It may seem like a waste of money, but everything will become profitable in the long run.
Apart from attracting more painting leads, referral programs will help you create a loyal customer community. People like it when you make them feel like you care. Clients will appreciate those special deals.
Use a tiered reward system in your painting company. Give people prizes depending on how many new customers they refer. What you offer your clients depends on your services and the things your target audience may like.
Word-of-mouth referrals are more effective than they seem to be. They will help you make a name for yourself in your community.
Networking
Rather than hiring a lead generation company to help you, one of the best ways to get potential customers is networking. Many businesses outside the painting industry could connect you to more leads.
Let's say a real estate agent just sold a house, and the buyer wants to paint it. The first person they will ask for a referral is the realtor they've been talking to for months.
By making a business alliance with that agent, you can get many painting leads from people buying new properties. Collaborating with interior designers could also help you join more projects.
We also recommend creating a network of other contractors, such as plumbers, carpenters, or electricians. Architects are a good option as well.
If you want those people to help you, do the same for them. Then, they will give you the exclusive painting lead you are looking for.
Networking could help your painting business in more ways than promoting lead generation. Home improvement stores will keep you tuned to industry trends and offer tools and materials.
Joining community organizations is an uncommon way to increase your leads. Doing it will pair you up with other business owners and clients. Homeowner associations (HOAs) often need people to work on painting projects.
Optimize Your Painting Business Website
If someone looks for painting services online, you want your website to be at the top of the results page. That's the first one they will click on, so it's a great opportunity to get more residential and commercial clients.
The problem with that is that you have to work a lot on optimization to be among the first results on Google when someone looks up your service area. We recommend hiring a marketing team and SEO specialist to help you with this. For more ideas, consider a painting contractor web design regarding your online presence.
Google's search engine ranks pages it considers authoritative, reputable, and relevant the highest. Improve the quality of your content to achieve that.
Creating a blog post to talk about painting projects is a good marketing strategy. Be informative and try to help people. Add backlinks, too.
Apart from working on SEO optimization, make sure your website is clear and gives clients all the information they need about your services. It's a good idea to include prices, reviews, and even pictures of previous painting jobs.
Creating a business page lets you share your contact number and email address with clients. Include a schedule for people to call you in case they want a free estimate for your services.
Online marketing has become highly important across the years. Not having a website that can rank highly on search engines means missing out. You could check what your competitors show on theirs and offer something better.
Unless you are an expert on the matter, you won't be able to do this by yourself. Hire web designers and developers to take care of everything if your budget fits it. This is an investment you will recover after you start getting new painting leads.
Create an Engaging Online Persona
Social media platforms have taken over the world. They are essential for any business trying to be successful online. Painting contractors are not the exception to that. You need to create an account on at least Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X. That will allow you to connect with people of all ages and give them a communication channel to contact you.
Use social media to show off your previous jobs to new painting leads, offer promotions, or interact with your followers.
The posts you make will depend on your target market. Develop a specific marketing strategy for your audience and the people you think may be interested in hiring a painting business.
Some social media platforms let you pay to show ads to other users. That's a good option, too, if you want to see results faster.
Hiring a community manager is a good idea. They know what to do to get other users to become interested in your products and how to promote them in innovative ways.
Before you post anything on social media accounts, do all the brandwork needed for your painting company. That means choosing the right colors for the business and the logo you will use for it.
Sign Up for a Google My Business Profile
Google My Profile is one of the most useful tools a painting contractor can use to get more online visibility. It will allow you to interact with your customers in new ways and use those interactions to reach more people.
When you create and optimize your Google My Profile account, you can improve how well you rank in search results. Similar to SEO, it will boost lead generation.
Business accounts on this platform appear on Google Maps. Thanks to that, users can know exactly where your painting company is located, how to get there, and your working schedule.
As for customer engagement, your clients can directly contact you from this website when they need to. Companies can add their phone number, email address, or username on social media platforms.
One of the most important parts of Google My Profile is that customers can leave online reviews of your services. When someone searches your account, they will see your rating based on what other users have said about you. That builds trust.
If there's a negative review or concern about your services, you can directly reply to what your clients say. The idea of this is to offer a solution and show others you are committed to customer satisfaction.
Besides that, Google My Profile has a Q&A section. There, your leads can ask you questions publicly. When you answer them, you allow new visitors to get additional information about your services and painting company.
This website works like other social media platforms. Hence, you can share posts and updates about new promotions or deals your audience should know about.
What makes Google My Profile different from many other services that focus on lead generation is that it has insightful analytics for your business. Through this website, you can track key performance indicators, such as website clicks, direction requests, or phone calls.
The way this platform promotes business growth makes it an essential tool for today's companies. It shows how your leads found out about your services.
You may think you must pay a lot to use Google My Profile. Don't worry about that. This service is 100% free.
Apart from having an intuitive interface, it features useful website integrations, such as Google Ads. Although using this platform is easy, we recommend studying its features before starting to use it for your company.
Add Value to Your Services
Make your painting contracts more appealing than what your competitors offer. It's fundamental to add as much value as possible to your services if you want more people to become interested in them.
We are talking about special promotions, additional services, or other benefits that may encourage your customers to pay for what you offer.
Some painters offer additional benefits, such as wallpaper installation. You could do them for free or give people a discount if they have hired paint jobs before.
Add more value by using premium materials. We mean top-quality paint that lasts more time and looks well on most surfaces. Buy the best brushes, rollers, and sprayers you can find on the market.
If you work with an interior designer, you can offer color consultation services as well, for example. The idea of this is to get to a wider audience and let them know you are an expert in this industry.
Technology should be your best friend when you promote your painting jobs. Offer virtual consultations to make the whole process faster for your clients.
Printed Marketing
The fact that digital marketing is now trendy doesn't mean printed options are not useful anymore. They are excellent marketing materials that could increase your physical presence in town. Invest in visually appealing brochures, flyers, and business cards.
You could even mix printed and digital marketing to get good leads and track your results. An example of this is adding QR codes to your flyers or brochures to check the effectiveness of the campaign.
Investing money in printed marketing doesn't mean forgetting about online efforts. The idea is to get the most you can of the two to maximize your chances of getting qualified leads. Yet, if you are short on budget, starting a physical campaign may be difficult for you.
Among the main benefits of printed marketing, you have that it offers long-lasting impact. These materials will stay there for a time, which is excellent for professional painters.
You can take printed marketing resources to industry events or just put them across the city. If you want this to work, go for striking designs that people will recognize easily.
Final Thoughts
Marketing is often difficult to understand, but it can be truly fascinating, too. The truth is that it's the key to getting more leads in your painting business. Hence, you must master it.
We recommend hiring a full team of marketing experts to take care of the lead generation efforts of your painting company. Nonetheless, you should still know how everything works in case you need to work by yourself at some point.
If you ask us, we think all the methods to get more leads mentioned on this page are essential for any kind of business. You can't expect to outsell your competitors if you don't work on your networking skills, for example.
Business owners don't have to try all of these things at the same time. Start with the ones you think will help you the most, and track the results you get.
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