Questions painting contractors ask about marketing

Enough to beat the three companies you show up beside in the map pack. Across 88,392 painting listings the median is 11 reviews and 46.1% have fewer than ten, so the bar is lower than most owners assume. In a real metro the crews winning the map pack usually sit above 107, which only 10.8% of painting contractors clear. One review per completed project, asked for at the final walkthrough, gets you there in a year. The scripts are in the reviews guide.

Because the homeowner is collecting three bids and yours arrived by email into a folder they will not open again. Painting is a considered purchase, not an emergency, so the winner is usually the contractor who presented the number in person and then made contact three or four more times. Most painters make one. A five-touch sequence over 30 days typically lifts close rate by ten points or more. See the follow-up guide.

In most US metros, $60 to $180 per lead for interior and exterior repaints, and $80 to $220 for cabinet refinishing, which is more competitive than owners expect. The painters who lose money are running broad match on "painters" and paying for people looking for painting jobs, art classes and DIY tutorials. Tight match types, a real negative list and call tracking fix most of it. Details in the Google Ads guide.

Yes, and it is the single best margin in the trade. A kitchen refinish runs $3,500 to $9,000, takes four to six days, needs two people instead of five, and happens indoors in January when exterior work is dead. It also has its own search demand, its own before and after photos, and homeowners who never think of it as "painting." Give it a dedicated service page and its own ad group.

Not on price and not on polish. The franchises win on process: the estimate arrives the same day, the paperwork looks professional, someone answers the phone every time. Copy those three things and you beat them on everything else, because the homeowner would rather hire the owner who will be on site than a rotating subcontractor crew. Say the owner's name on the site, show your own crew in the photos, and answer within an hour.

They are the most reliable winter income in painting, and almost nobody works them properly. A property manager with 60 doors turns over 15 to 20 units a year, and every turnover is an interior repaint. What they want is a fixed unit price, a 48-hour turn, and one invoice format. Bring a one-page price sheet, not a brochure, and ask for one trial unit rather than the account.

The data says the serious companies do both. Painting contractors with a website carry a median of 18 reviews; those without carry 3. 27.1% of painting listings have no site at all. The site is also where a homeowner sees the before and after work that turns a price shopper into a booked estimate, and where Google and the AI answer engines confirm what you do and where.

They are the product. Shoot every job from the same corner before you tape and after you clean up, on a phone, in the same light. Those pairs feed your Google profile, your ad creative, your website gallery, and your Instagram, and they are the reason a homeowner picks a $4,200 bid over a $3,600 one. A crew lead who shoots two photos per job produces a year of marketing material at no cost.

Earlier than feels natural. Homeowners start searching for exterior painting six to eight weeks before they want it done, so in most of the country the money goes in from late February through August, with a hard drop after the first cold snap. Interior and cabinet campaigns carry October through February. The month-by-month plan is in the seasonality guide.

It is public listing data collected at scale, so read it as accurate within a point or two, not to the decimal. Listings are deduplicated by Google place and refreshed monthly. Some painters file under general contractor or handyman and get missed, which pulls the counts slightly. Google does not publish these figures itself, which is why we compute them. The method is on the about page.

Public Google Business Profile listings found through Google Maps searches for painting contractors in every state, 51 in total. We keep only the public business fields, never reviewer names or personal details, and recompute the whole set each month.

Any one of the services we run, or several at once: Google Ads management, Meta ads, AI search optimization, local SEO and Google Business Profile work, website design, social media management, review generation, missed-call text-back and estimate follow-up, email and SMS campaigns, bookkeeping, and cold-call appointment setting. Setup, management and reporting are included. If you choose to run ads, the spend paid to Google or Meta is yours and stays on your card.

You decide. Keep the service at the monthly price quoted before the trial started, switch to a different one, or stop. Nothing renews on its own, nothing is charged during the trial, and everything built during it stays in accounts you own.

No. There is no card on file at any point during the trial. We ask for access to the accounts involved and about twenty minutes on a setup call. Most services are live within 48 hours; a new website takes about a week to first draft.