CONTRIBUTING MEMBER:
AUSTIN HOUSER, FOUNDER, BASE COAT MARKETING
Every commercial painting business needs a steady stream of high-quality leads to be successful.
Unfortunately, many businesses struggle in this arena until they invest in lead generation and grow, or they simply remain a small business perpetually. For businesses in the latter category, commercial projects will come in trickles—if ever.
As a successful commercial painting business owner, it is important to understand your role within the company, starting with the fact that you are not a marketer. You may know how to promote your business and close commercial painting jobs, however, the consistent lead flow required to build a multiple 7-figure painting business requires years of industry experience and a unique marketing skillset.
With that said, there are several tried and tested methods for generating commercial painting leads online. This guide will review some powerful tips that can supercharge your lead generation in a relatively short period of time.
Let’s jump in…
Build a High-Converting Website
Take a look around you. All successful commercial painting companies have functional, professional-looking websites. This is something you need if you want to make it easy for prospective customers to contact you.
For example, a prospect shouldn’t have to scroll to find your contact details. As a rule of thumb, you need to ensure all the pages on your website have the following:
-Your phone number
-Your contact form
-Physical mailing address
-Email address
-Live website chat
The idea is to give prospective customers as many options as possible if they want to contact you.
Your website should also feature elements and content that set you apart from other commercial painting contractors.
Do you offer warranties and free estimates? Are you licensed and insured? Do you have any special hiring process?
Highlight every little detail you can, and you may give your business an edge over the competition.
For example, many commercial painting companies will do background checks before hiring an employee. However, only a few of them will mention it on their website. If you boldly display this information on your website, you will come off as a more professional company in the eye of prospects.
Embrace Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Your website can only help generate leads if it is attracting traffic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a combination of techniques that will naturally increase your brand’s visibility on the search engines without investing a penny into advertising.
There are many angles to cover when it comes to SEO, but here are a few things you can do right now to improve your results:
-Pay attention to your site speed. Most people will exit your website if it doesn’t load in under a second. Check the speed occasionally and explore ways to increase it if necessary. Image compression is usually a good place to start.
-Create a unique page for every painting service you offer. You need a page detailing each service in each location you serve. Aim for 750 to 1000 words per page here. This is where you should invest the bulk of your time as the content on your website is the most important aspect for ranking better in Google.
-Use alt tags for images. Search engines will crawl your images too, including alt tags give their bots context for ranking and serve a valuable accessibility role.
-Create unique content. Don’t reuse body text, meta description, and headings on multiple pages. Duplicate content can filter out those pages from search results.
-Create content regularly for your website. With your website up and running, it’s time to publish blog posts. Sharing valuable information on your website will make you stand out as a commercial painting authority. Aim for at least one post per month.
A consistent stream of organic traffic will increase the number of commercial painting leads you generate. It will also impact the rank of your Google Business Profile on Google Maps.
If you don’t have a profile already, you’re missing out on more free traffic. Be sure to claim your profile and optimize for buyer intent.
Use Google Ads for More Targeted Traffic
Organic traffic is great for attracting new retail painting leads. However, most B2B painting companies also incorporate pay-per-click advertising (PPC) using Google Ads.
PPC ads are the paid listings you find at the top of search results just before the organic listings. The leads generated from these ads are 50% more likely to become paying customers compared to organic visitors. This is due to the fact that you can refine your ads to only target the terms with the highest buyer intent.
However, unlike organic traffic, PPC ads require more nuance. For example, you must know the right keywords to use in your Google Ads and on your landing pages.
People searching with these keywords already know what they want, and they will choose a business that best fulfills their needs. With the keywords identified, you need to set the maximum bid price. This bid is the amount you’re willing to pay every time someone clicks on your ad.
Your ad placement will come down to your maximum bid and quality score. If you haven’t managed a successful PPC campaign in the past, you’ll want to consider hiring an expert to avoid wasting ad spend.
Adopt an Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is a powerful lead generation tool with a massive ROI. We recommend breaking up your contact list into three main campaigns:
-Prospects – Those who have not engaged you for painting services yet.
-Customers – Try generating referrals or repeat business from these.
-Industry Partners – Use this list to build relationships and land new jobs.
If you’re sending from a new domain/subdomain be sure to use an email warmup service for the first 30-90 days, otherwise expect your emails to hit the junk mail folder instead of the inbox.
We recommend sending to each of these lists once a month. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings have the highest open rates, so plan ahead each month and schedule your email sends accordingly.
Become More Active on LinkedIn
If you’re operating in the B2B space in any capacity, visibility on LinkedIn can help you reach your target audience and build authority, fast. Staying active on LinkedIn will put your commercial painting company in front of millions of stakeholders who can recommend or directly hire your business.
With over 185 million active users, this is a platform you can’t afford to ignore. Taking advantage of the algorithm is a sure way to create new opportunities for your painting business. A good tip is to aim for at least one new post each week. For best results be sure to include images, links and relevant hashtags.
An easy way to generate a weekly communication cadence is by simply resharing excerpts from your blog posts or by discussing project case studies.
As your audience grows, you can consider running a paid campaign. With LinkedIn Ads, you can reach more qualified leads in your service area for a minimal investment.
Strike Partnerships with Key Players in Relevant Industries
Developing industry partnerships in the B2B space is a great way to generate commercial painting leads without the need for advertising. Plumbers, electricians, real estate agents, roofers, and others like them know and interact with your primary target audience on a daily basis. Entering into partnerships with these key players is a great way to ensure they recommend your business when the opportunity arises.
The best approach here is to offer monetary rewards for their recommendations. You can also offer discounts for bulk projects, using the balance as an incentive to pass on.
Register with Your Local Chamber of Commerce
The Chamber of Commerce is there to help businesses like yours grow. Therefore, you shouldn’t hesitate to join your local chapter and take advantage of the local networking opportunities.
Create some marketing materials to hand out at meetings. Make posters for designated spots around the local Chamber of Commerce’s building. It’s a sure way to put your business name in the minds of more local business owners.
Make contact information as clear as possible in your marketing materials. Use legible fonts.
While interacting with other members can yield leads, establishing a relationship with the leaders in the local chapter can deliver even better results. They are more connected, so they can help you land quality leads without ever meeting the stakeholder.
Final Thoughts
Generating commercial painting leads online is difficult, but with the proper strategies in place you can create a predictable lead generation funnel that will help your business grow for years to come.
Do you need help with your commercial lead generation strategy? Get in touch with Base Coat Marketing today. We have over 14 years of industry experience helping commercial painting companies like yours generate high-quality, exclusive, consistent monthly leads.
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.
