PCA Articles

Marketing is a critical aspect for businesses across all industries, but it’s particularly essential for painting businesses that constantly need to attract new clients, expand brand awareness, and grow sales. Digital marketing, in particular, is critical to staying competitive in today’s painting industry.

Although many painting businesses recognize the value of digital marketing, few implement it effectively. Most struggle with their digital marketing efforts and often commit mistakes that hinder the attainment of the desired results. You can hack it and take charge of your digital marketing campaigns if you avoid these common pitfalls:

Not Knowing Where to Spend Your Resources

Digital marketing can be overwhelming for digital marketers. There are dozens of places you can spend your marketing budget, but therein lies a landmine. Your campaigns will amount to nothing if you don’t know where to spend your money. The rule of thumb is that you should only be in the channels where your target customers are.

The surest way to optimize your digital marketing expenditure is by knowing who to target. You’ll avoid wasteful branding and marketing. Often, painting contractors fail at digital marketing because they spend a ton of their budget getting their name out there but aren’t specific on the exact market they want to attract. When this happens, quantifying the number of leads they get can be challenging.

When marketing your painting business, just getting your brand name out there is a waste of resources. Not to mention that your painting company’s resources could be limited. Getting your brand name out there isn’t bad for business, but you need to focus more on targeting people with the intent to purchase your products/services.

Before you spend money on a campaign, you should ask yourself these critical questions about the target customers:

• Where are they?
• Do they intend to purchase my services/products?
• Are they looking for painting services in my geolocation?

When you understand your target customers, it will be easier to put yourself in front of that audience and optimize your marketing spend. As a small painting business, an easy way to convert the relevant audience is by leveraging platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads to target local customers. Conversely, larger painting businesses should be omnipresent because they primarily rely on a broader market.

Difficulties in Converting Leads Through Digital Marketing

Lead conversion is critical to a digital marketing campaign’s sustainability. You should generate high-quality leads for your painting company to keep making sales. However, that can only happen if you have a proper digital marketing campaign.

To generate and convert leads, your painting company must maintain strong visibility. Remember, you’ll have to compete with more established brands and fight for your space in an increasingly competitive digital landscape. Failure to get enough visibility makes it harder to attract new prospects and push them further down the sales funnel.

A major reason small painting companies struggle to generate leads and convert them is their inability to create a brand identity that properly resonates with consumers. As a result, their digital marketing campaigns will be akin to groping in the dark. Here’s what you can generate and convert leads if your painting company has a limited digital marketing budget:

• Get featured on local websites like Yelp.
• Improve your visibility on search engines.
• Create content that speaks to your target audience directly.
• Leverage social media marketing to reach your target audience.

As you look to overcome the typical difficulties of converting leads through digital marketing, don’t forget to align your sales and marketing teams. According to a recent Act-On report, businesses with a robust marketing and sales alignment are 67% more likely to convert leads. A lack of alignment could mean your leads slip through the cracks and the marketing team’s work is wasted.

Failure to Picking a Market—And Owning It

When undertaking digital marketing, most people try to be everywhere. Indeed, this may seem like the easiest way to gain visibility, but it’s detrimental. Don’t try to do everything or be on every platform because you’ll be stretched thin. Worse still, you’ll never learn how to refine your digital marketing strategies.

Rather than targeting everyone, pick your ideal market. It could be schools in your locality that need a paint job or even new construction sites. Picking and owning a nameable market will make it easier for you to focus on only a few things.

Lacking a Content Strategy

Content is the bread and butter of digital marketing. Good content can help your brand stand out in a crowded marketplace. Good content is driven by a mix of relevant keywords that help your painting company create the desired digital presence and search engine rankings. Nonetheless, few businesses have a structured content strategy, so they miss out on an opportunity to optimize the benefits of digital marketing.

Even as you look into creating relevant content for your site, it’s best to have a proper website design. Remember that your site is the first point of content with customers, thus the need to make an enduring first impression. Your content will amount to nothing if you have a clunky, outdated, or poorly-designed website. Such websites look unprofessional and could potentially turn away customers.

For this reason, it’s best to create beautiful, user-friendly, mobile-friendly, and comprehensive designs that showcase your painting company’s strengths. In addition, have a functional website that’s easy to navigate. You can gain more traction and attract long-term clients by eliminating the pitfalls between your company and your customer’s buy-in.

Grow Your Painting Business Today

Painting companies must be on point with their digital marketing. However, most painting businesses struggle in their marketing efforts because they commit mistakes that affect their success significantly.

As a painting company owner, marketing the business could be overwhelming. One option to save yourself some of this stress is partnering with a full-service digital marketing agency that deals exclusively with concrete coatings, painting, and power-washing contractors. These experts can help implement and execute your marketing strategy while you focus on your business.

If you’d like to learn more about growing your painting business, check out the resources available at PCA.