Social Media Marketing Strategies for Painting Contractors

CONTRIBUTING MEMBER:
AUSTIN HOUSER, FOUNDER, BASE COATING MARKETING

As a painting contractor, you may have mistaken your business for a painting company. In reality, you’re actually a marketing company that paints. Think about it – without consistent, high-quality painting leads, you have no business.
In this article, we’ll review the importance of social media in your marketing strategy, and how you can leverage this medium to generate new business for your painting company.

To stay ahead of your competition, it’s important that you evaluate and invest in the latest marketing trends. If you’re not currently using social media as part of your marketing strategy, chances are your competition is and you’re missing out on easy business opportunities. With that said, it’s never too late to implement a social media marketing strategy to help build customer trust and establish yourself as the local industry expert.

Let's jump in.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is a method of using social media platforms to reach your target audience. There are two primary methods of generating leads on social media:

Organic Posts - This is probably the strategy you’re most familiar with. It requires no investment, other than your time, and can be a great way to engage your audience and generate new business.
Social Ads - Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have a lot of information about you, your information is their product after all. You can leverage this demographic information to target your desired audience at a low cost-per-click (CPC).

Why Is Social Media Marketing Important?

Social media marketing provides an affordable way to engage your target audience and build customer trust. Since social media platforms are typically based on visual assets such as images or videos, they are a particularly good fit for painting contractors. Unlike Plumbers and HVAC companies, your work can be photographed. Capitalize on this by taking quality before/after photos of every painting project.

As a painting contractor, you should be using social media to show off your work, share ideas, and establish yourself as a local expert. Social media is the space where influencers are born, stories are told, and problems are shared and solved. In addition to generating new painting leads social media can also be used for:

- Researching your competitors and the marketing strategies they’re using to generate new business;
- Creating industry partnerships with other local businesses such as realtors, property managers, general contractors, interior designers, and more;
- Increasing brand awareness and establishing yourself as a local industry expert; and
Connecting with your ideal customers at a low cost and with excellent ROI.

Which Social Platforms Produce the Best Results for Paint Contractors?

There are a growing number of social media platforms, such as TikTok and WhatsApp, with increasingly diverse audiences and impressive marketing tools that you can leverage today to generate new painting leads for your business.

So which platform should you invest energy into? Simply, it depends on your target audience. Since each platform appeals to different demographics, it’s important that you use the right channels to reach your ideal customer profile (ICP). Depending on your goals and target audience, we recommend evaluating the following platforms for your marketing efforts:

Best for Residential Repaint Leads

According to Statista, Facebook had over 2.9 billion monthly active users at the end of 2021. That makes it the most used online social network in the world. Period. The average person spends about 33 minutes on Facebook each day. So how can you leverage this free tool?

A good place to start is searching for community Facebook groups. Local groups are the best spots to find prospects and asking for painting referrals. Monitor these groups regularly and comment with a personalized response to anyone looking for painter recommendations.

Facebook Groups > Facebook Pages

Due to Facebook’s algorithm organic posts from Business Pages are suppressed on the News Feed, so groups tend to be more effective at generating new business. Why? Because Facebook wants you to spend money on advertising so they avoid giving away free publicity when possible.

With that said, consider starting your own Facebook Group. Private visible groups are the best choice for painting businesses as they have an exclusive feel, but are still searchable. Keep your group name vague, like “What’s Up [Insert Town Name Here]” – for instance, if you’re a painting contractor in San Francisco you may want to create a Facebook Page called “San Francisco Locals Only." To avoid spammers set the group rules to require that all posts are reviewed, and within a few months, you can have a custom audience exclusive to your painting business!

Facebook Ads

Do you have the budget for advertisements? Since the CPC on social media is much lower than paid search, it can be an attractive advertising medium, if implemented correctly. When advertising on Facebook, stay away from boosted posts. While they can seem attractive due to the ease of implementation they are not designed to reach a specific target audience. Instead, create a Facebook Ads Manager account to build your ads, then create a custom audience with your targeted demographics.

As mentioned, a big benefit to social media is the visual nature of these platforms. Instagram tops the pack for visual assets, making it the ideal channel for showcasing your work. It also has a very respectable number of users topping over 700 million.

However, this is not the platform for amateur shots hastily taken from your phone. You want to take high-quality before and after pictures that really show off your work. Poor quality shots are subconsciously associated with poor quality work.

Use your images to tell a story and show off problems you’ve solved. Leverage hashtags and geotagging to help local customers find your business. You can include 10–15 hashtags at the bottom of your post to attract people searching for painting advice, inspiration, and of course, your painting services. Keep your posts free of salesly content. Instead, let your work speak for itself.

Best for Commercial Repaint Leads

This is an obvious, yet often overlooked platform for commercial painting contractors looking to generate new business. LinkedIn is viewed as a corporate tool, but it is also a great networking tool for home service providers like painters. Commercial spaces need your services too, and this is the best place to show off your services and build industry partnerships.
In this space, you need to take a more professional tone to appeal to a broader commercial audience.

Photos are still important to showcase your commercial work. Adding a link to your LinkedIn Business Page on your website can help commercial visitors find your page and see your posts. Like Facebook groups you can also be more selective when deciding who you want to connect with to make the most of your marketing efforts, and your time. You can search profiles and reach out to the contacts that will help boost your business-like property management companies, local decorators, and realtors.

Two Platforms to Avoid

Because keeping your social media accounts up to date is important you don’t want to spread yourself too thin. The two platforms we recommend you avoid are also the second and third platforms users spend the most time on each day. So why would we recommend avoiding them? It has everything to do with buyer intent and your target audience demographics. Neither of these platforms convert well and/or the primary audience falls outside of your target demographics:

1. TikTok: You won’t find many homeowners or business owners on this platform as it is geared to a younger generation. As well, it is strictly video which is harder to create and keep up with for very little ROI. You also can’t get shares to other social platforms using this platform as both Facebook and Instagram actually suppress video with a TikTok watermark so you can never “go viral.”
2. Twitter: This is more of a news feed than anything else – not ideal for reaching your target audience.

How Often Should You Post?

As a painting contractor and business owner, you probably don’t have a lot of free time to spend on social media. However, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn only require 3-5 posts a week to stay relevant. Also, because LinkedIn is a business platform, you can give yourself a break on weekends.
In all cases, the best strategy is always quality over quantity. If you really have nothing to share, then simply don’t post.

However, you do need to keep a constant drumbeat to keep followers engaged and encourage more shares. The easiest way to do this is to create a social media marketing calendar. Some tips to set up your calendar include:

- Choose an adaptable format: Excel and Google Sheets are easy tools to create a calendar. You can also use tools like Trello or Base Camp or invest in content calendar tools such as Loomly or Later.

- Understand the types of posts to share – There are a few types of posts you can slot into your calendar:

- Repurposed content: To make life easier, consider content you can repurpose such as YouTube videos and blog content
- User-generated content: Look for opportunities to slot in some user-generated content, such as a happy customer’s post about their new space.
- Seasonal content: Posts such as images of peeling paint on a home exterior in the spring, a deck in need of new stain in the summer, or a dreary room that could use some sprucing up before the holiday entertaining season are good examples of seasonal content.
- Commercial vs Consumer: When targeting both B2B and B2C make sure you are including both each day.
- Inspirational: You can also share posts of inspired spaces you love, online articles about trending colors, or how businesses can increase customers with a fresh coat of paint.
- Educational: This refers to posts with a helpful tip, advice, or showing how you helped resolve an issue for a customer. Video clips are good for these types of posts, or links to a blog, video, or recorded podcast.
- Invitational: Invite people to contribute comments on a topic such as their interior DIY disasters, favorite colors, or sharing dream kitchen images.
- The promotion: As mentioned you should avoid coming across as too salesy, but when you do have a worthwhile promotion to share such as a spring makeover, these posts are excellent incentives to get people scheduling quotes.
- Projects: Slot in the dates you expect to complete projects so you can share before and afters.

These are the basics of setting up your calendar, as well as some ideas for posts to get you started.

BONUS: Use Messenger, and Respond to Inquiries Promptly

Social media also offers an excellent way to keep in contact and respond to potential customers. Use Messenger to make it easy for leads to reach you and be sure to respond promptly as leads go cold in less than five minutes.

Conclusion

Social media is a medium that should be used by every painting contractor. It’s free, has highly targeted demographic information, and is a great way to build trust and local authority. If you’re looking for a hands-off approach to your social media marketing strategy reach out to Base Coat Marketing. Our team of certified social media marketing experts have over a decade of industry experience, and they even have a lead guarantee!

About the contributor

As founder of Base Coat Marketing, Austin is a data scientist and digital marketing expert with over a decade of lead generation experience within the professional painting industry.