Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast, the show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over 103 million in annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular PCA Educational Series to grow marketing for painters. In each episode, I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in North America and learning from their experiences.

In this high-impact episode, Brandon Pierpont lays out the proven marketing and sales strategies painting contractors need to thrive TODAY. From evolving SEO and Meta Ads trends to current buying patterns and consumer psychology, learn how to dominate your market and scale with confidence.

If you want to ask him questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so in our exclusive Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum on Facebook. Just search for “Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum” on Facebook and request to join the group, or type in the URL Facebook.com/groups/PainterMarketingMastermind. There you can ask them questions directly by tagging him with your question, so you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company.

Dominate your market. So the marketing strategy built to print profit. Again, it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. My background’s in finance, I did investment banking, I did private equity. I, I did not come from if there is a traditional route to being a, a marketing expert, I didn’t come from that traditional route, usually it’s sales or, or something like that. I came from finance. So for me, The numbers, at the end of the day, the numbers are what matters. The return on investment is what matters.

So that was my whole career. Spent 5 years in that, that fast finance, Wolf of Wall Street type track, ended up saying, hey, this isn’t for me, but I brought those learnings with me. So that’s why this whole event is focused on profitability and scaling your business and making it a, a something that serves your life versus you serving it, which is, which is rough to see. Uh, a little bit about me, I’ve run the painter marketing mastermind podcast. Can I, can I just get a one in the chat?

If you, if you listen to the podcast or you’ve at least listened to one episode, I would love, love to get a little positive reinforcement there, uh, for the podcast. If you haven’t listened to it yet, check it out. So wherever you stream podcasts, you can check out Painter Market Mastermind podcast. You can also go to Paintermarkingpros. com and see our, our podcast episodes there and then we’re gonna put up a link to our YouTube channel. So check this out. We’ve been running this for 3.5 years. As I mentioned with Maggie, she was one of our first guests.

We’ve done, I should know this number, I truly should. 180, 190, I don’t know, a lot of episodes. There’s a lot of stuff, we have a book about it. I mean, it’s a big thing. So plug in, and I could say it’s a big thing. I can say that uh as humbly because it’s not me sharing the information. It’s, it’s a whole lot of really successful people sharing the information. So, plug in, check that out. I’m a PC ambassador, so I’m a member of a lot of their committees.

I’m on their bureau of speakers, ran an event, a marketing event for Sherin Williams last month in Boston, that was a a really good time. And then I’m a brand ambassador for the PC as you can see I’m passionate about it. If they want to label me a brand ambassador, cool, I’m gonna do this either way. The, I’ve written two books, a sale system playbook for painting contractors, all about, that’s it, that’s a really in-depth dive into marketing, might be more than you want to know. It’s pretty technical, but you can check that out.

You can find it on Amazon and then Painting Millions, which is a number one Amazon rated bestseller, so I’m very, very proud of that. That was an anthology of some podcast episodes, so that was a really good one. And then I’m a proud member of the Florida Army, a proud veterans, excuse me, of the Florida Army National Guard. So served National Guard, proud of that. This All right, Victor, Currently listening to this live in the back of a crew van. Let’s go. Grind, don’t stop. Yes, Victor, that’s the attitude, brother.

Appreciate you, man. Grind, don’t stop. I, I wanna, I don’t want to get derailed. I get derailed sometimes. But, but based on Victor, just following up on Victor’s comment right there, grind, don’t stop. I wanna just, I give you guys a piece of inspirational advice. I don’t know where each of you is at. But I know that some of you are grinding. Some of you don’t necessarily have the team you want, some of you don’t necessarily have the profit that you want. I was there, I’ve been there.

I was there for years. Here’s the deal. I, I started with a, with an auto detail business. I, I, I struggle with that. I eventually learned how to market it, eventually learned how to sell. I didn’t know those things. And then I was able to grow it, I was able to exit it, and then I, I moved into a marketing career cause I fell in love with that, right? So that was my path, but I struggled for a while. Here, here’s what I told myself. The only way I fail is if I quit, and I will not quit.

It’s that simple, right? The only way I fail is if I quit and I will not quit. I burned the boats, and I said I’m just not gonna quit. There is no other option. So, and I know that I am not, I am not so incompetent that if I do this forever, I’m not so incompetent that I won’t succeed, right? If you look around at all the people who have succeeded, if I just commit and I do not quit, I will succeed. It is inevitable. So if you’re grinding, if you’re struggling, if some days are hard, remember that.

The only way I fail is if I quit, and I will not quit. Get it tattooed on your forehead if you need to. This is a picture of me riding a bull, has nothing to do with anything, I guess, except for it was at the commercial contractor conference last year for the PCA. So cool stuff happens when you go to these events. This was a cool thing. Jesse Ramos, uh, he is a friend of mine in the space. He’s a wild, he’s a lunatic. Absolute lunatic. I’ll say it to his face, so if he’s listening, it’s OK. He said, uh, Brandon, I’m, I’m gonna ride a bull.

And, and I, I said, cool. You know, at 1st, 1st thing I saw him, that’s what he said at the commercial conference. I thought he was joking, he wasn’t. Um, I had said, yeah, I’ll do it too. Again, still thinking he was joking, but once you kind of, once you lay it out there like that, you can’t really take. Back. So we did go to an amateur bull riding event. There were 53+ people that paid $40 each to come in and watch 8 amateurs ride a bull, and, and it wasn’t a super affluent area.

It’s not like this, we’re not in Beverly Hills, California, so it was out in Arizona. So I thought if these people are willing to pay money. To, to, if this many people are willing to pay money to watch non-professionals, then probably those non-professionals are gonna die. Somebody’s gonna die, something really bad is gonna happen because, you know, it’s like a gladiator type situation. So, uh, ended up, everyone was OK, I think one guy, one guy got like, didn’t seem OK, two guys didn’t really seem that OK, but I went first.

My bull was fortunately not, was one of the tamer ones. I had no way of knowing that. I’m pretty sure I basically blocked out from fear, but I said, if I survive this thing. I’m just gonna say it all the time whenever I present. And that, that was my commitment to myself. So nothing to do with anything, but there you are. Painter marketing pros, we have been in this space for over 5 years now. We have generated over $200 million 200 million dollars. That’s a lot, guys, from our leads.

$200 million in revenue generated for the painting contractors that we partner with. We have worked with over 350 painting companies. We have generated over $250,000. Leads and our average cost per lead, we do a lot of different channels. It’s a holistic program, uh, website, SEO, Google Ads, Facebook ads, uh, local service ads, the email marketing. So across all the different channels, our average cost per lead for those $5003,000 plus leads is under $60. All this is to say when I’m sharing this stuff, I do have some experience to draw from. So, so.

This is not theory that I’m teaching you guys. The, a little bit about Pan American pros today we have a A column in the APC magazine. Go to PatMag. com, register for that magazine if you’re not, it’s free. It’s called the Painter’s Playbook, so check that out. It comes out each magazine. We’re gonna, we’re gonna drop some knowledge on some marketing for you guys. We are a frequent contributor to In Paint magazine’s Ask a pro section. And then this is, I think, for me, for me, for my team, it’s our crowning, it’s our crowning achievement.

Even with all the leads, even with all the companies that we’ve helped. We were awarded PCA Industry Part of the year for 2024 and 2025. This is an award. It was given at PCA Expo. It was in front of over 1000 people. This is, there are probably 70 partners of the PCA. It’s not just marketing agencies. Marketing agencies, it’s paint manufacturers. It’s everyone who’s associated with the PCA who pays them to be a vendor, pays them to be a partner. We won that award two years in a row. So, massive testament to the quality that my team delivers, massive testament to the reputation they’ve been able to establish.

So I’m incredibly proud of my team. I’m grateful to them. And that is, that’s for me, that’s my entrepreneurial, I’ve sold the business, right? And that, that’s still is a bigger deal to me. And then we, we again have worked with over 350 painting companies, some of the biggest, biggest names in the space. All right, I think we should be good. Sorry about that. Looks like the mic got disconnected. We’re back. Things happen, we keep moving. That’s business. OK. All right, so what we’re gonna cover today, we are gonna move pretty quickly.

I’m a little behind on the, on the presentation, uh, on the, the whole event. So I’m gonna fire. If you have questions, put them in the chat. We’re gonna hit some of those questions at the end, and then you guys will be able to send me an email follow up if you need to, if you have additional questions. So, we’re gonna cover second half of 2025. Marketing landscape. We’re gonna go through what is working right now. Marketing evolves. It’s not the same all the time. It’s not, hey, do direct mail all the time.

Hey, it’s Facebook ads all the time. Marketing changes, guys, this stuff fluctuates. Trends and shifts that we’re seeing, both in tech and the market, winning with omni-channel marketing, that’s the That’s the alpha play. That’s the ultimate play is that you don’t just have one channel, you’re hitting, you’re hitting it from all angles, and it’s exponentially successful. And then we’re going to go through tech stack and analytics, as I mentioned with Mighty Stack. The tech stack is a big part of how you scale. It’s a big part of streamlining your operations, and then ultimately we’re gonna have some Q&A.

At the end here. So, the current marketing landscape, what we’re seeing, cost per lead, we’re seeing cost per lead has risen across most paid channels in the market. And we’re seeing the buying cycles are a little bit longer, meaning that when you go and you present the, I like the word proposal, a lot of people use the word estimate. When you present the estimate or you present the proposal, you present the quote, a lot of times it’s taking longer for, for the buyer, for the homeowner, particularly, to make a decision, right?

If you’re doing residential, and, and that’s because customers are a little more price conscious right now, they’re doing more research. Can I just get a one in the chat from anyone who’s noticed. That shift. You are we good? Brandon, we’ve just lost your video a little bit there. Now the video’s off. This is entrepreneurship, guys. Let me know if we’re good about. Eval, how are we doing? Uh, still not back? Can you hear me? We can hear you, but you can’t see the slides. We can see the slides just can’t.

That’s OK. That’s all right. Hopefully I come back at some point. As long as we can see the slides and you can hear me, then we’re ready to rock. All right, so let’s get a one in the chat. If you guys are, if you guys are seeing that, let’s get a one in the chat. That’s what we’ve seen across the market. Not for everyone, not for every market, not for every painting company, but just as a theme, we think the, the tariffs, we think a lot of the stuff that’s going on, it just makes people a little squirrely.

Right, so when, when stuff like this happens, it’s really important to double, triple down on what’s actually working. So, key strategies that are producing results in today’s market, SEO huge on the SEO. So search engine optimization, it’s a buzzword. That’s the part I hate about it. It’s so, it’s so easy to To get manipulated with this. It’s so easy to get sold by a scammer on this, and that’s why it has such a bad reputation. But what SEO is, is, is positioning your company to dominate Google.

So the people again, time, finite resource, if people are investing their time, they’re almost always willing to invest their money. So when people are investing their time into looking at Google and other search engines to find the right company for them, this helps you show up and helps you dominate those companies. So, It helps you dominate those results, helps get you really high quality leads. So SEO database reactivation. When cost per lead goes up, when things are tougher, when it’s taking longer for buyers to make a decision, it’s really important you monetize your list.

So this being everyone who you, you’ve worked with, so your past clients, this being everyone who’s expressed. Interest in your company who you didn’t work with, but you have their contact information. Maybe they requested a quote, maybe you, maybe they ghosted you, or maybe you did provide the quote, but you, they didn’t move forward. That’s still valuable, right? So reaching out to that list strategically, we’re gonna walk through that. How, how do you turn that into essentially free money, meta ads. Man ads do work. For anyone who, who’s tried it or heard they don’t work, they do work.

We, we’ve proved it with over 350 painting companies. Local service ads, how do you win on that, have some cool, some cool stats to show you guys on that. Pay per click is strong for commercial. It’s, it’s never not been strong for commercial. It did go away for residential. We’re, we’re gonna talk. about the changes that we’re seeing there now. And then CRM and cross-selling, how do you make leads more valuable, convert leads and grow your jobs. So SEO reliable, scalable growth. Here’s why it continues to perform in 20253.

When a, when a homeowner is doing more research, when they’re more price conscious, when they say, hey, I wanna, I wanna get some more quotes, they’re gonna be going on Google to get those quotes. They’re gonna be doing their homework, they’re gonna be doing their research. You have to be there. Even if you get them through a paid ad, so say you run a meta ad and, and, and, OK, then you go out and you conduct the estimate. When, where do you think they’re going for the other two quotes, right?

They hear, oh, I need to get 3 quotes. That’s a standard advice. Where do you think they’re going? They’re going on Google. So if you’re running a meta ad and then they go out and you book the estimate, you book the quote, and then they go on Google, and then we hear all meta ads don’t work. That would be one of the reasons because you’re not investing anything into your Google. So you’re just a ghost, right? And so then they go on Google, and now they have these other companies that look fairly authoritative that are competing with you.

So then you have to have a pretty killer sales process, which we’ll get into a little bit here. uh, Jason Phillips, Mark DiFransco, a couple of other people are going to cover that. But that’s part of the reason and people don’t realize that. This stuff’s all related. The SCOA, they, they consistently deliver leads for the best cost per acquired job. Takes time, you invest into this in the future. Once you get that engine running, the qualified leads, they tend to set and convert at a high rate.

So they, they tend to keep their appointments and then they tend to close at a higher rate. So trusted by partners. Growing into a million and beyond an annual revenue. If you’re at 100,000, if you’re at 250,000, don’t do this right now. It’s not a fit for you. If you’re at 500,000, you’re, you’re scaling toward a million and up, then start really focusing on this because that’s, this is what’s gonna carry you. This is the asset for your business. It builds credibility, it positions you as a local expert. Again, if you think Who are you gonna trust most if you, if you’ve done business with a, with a painting company before, so you’re a repeat customer, you trust that painting company because you’ve worked with them before and they didn’t screw you, if we’re being blunt, right?

They didn’t screw you, they didn’t steal anything. They, they did quality work and so you have a much reduced risk if you just choose them again. Next level down is repeat business, or excuse me, referral business, so your, your friend, your neighbor, your family member, they worked with. Company, you know that they have your best interests at heart. You know, they’re putting their name at risk because anytime you recommend anything or anyone, which is what I was saying with the sponsors, uh, and me putting my name behind these sponsors, you are putting your reputation at risk.

So when they actually invest and make that move, then you, you have a fairly high level of trust. Below that, below repeating referral is SEO. So that, that’s how that, that’s how that, uh, that’s how that list of leads, of new leads works, right? So, focus on that. It, and then SCO compounds over time. So you’re building equity, you’re not renting attention. And if you ever have ambitions of selling your painting company, something like that, this is, this is an asset. If you can show a potential acquirer, hey, we, we dominate Google for all these different search terms and we’ve done it for a long time and we’ve built it, we didn’t hack, we didn’t, we didn’t do something that Google is eventually gonna just come shut us down for.

There’s stuff like that. I won’t dive super. that today, but we’ve built over time and you can show that, well, then that is valuable to a potential choir. So some SEO metrics that matter, if you’re not in the marketing space, you just probably don’t know these metrics. So SEO leads on average, when, when somebody searches and they go to your site and they either call you or they fill out the form, those tend to set at 90%, right? So those tend to actually hold their appointments. Uh, website and conversion lead.

So when people go to your website, they’re gonna go for all different kinds of reasons. They’re not always going to request an estimate 3 to 63%, right? Some people go and they’re just gonna read stuff. It depends also on the traffic that you get, on what keywords you’re ranking for. There’s a lot that goes into that, but that’s a metric, just a marketing metric for you guys. Year over year, organic traffic growth, what we’re seeing with our partners. Again, part of this is because we’re good at what we do, part of it is because people are really doing their homework right now.

So we’re seeing a 25% growth across the board year over year for our partners on average, right? So people are searching. It’s really important that you be ranking. Over 70% of visitors are using their mobile phones. So if you haven’t done this. Take out your, your phone, search your website, go to your website, see how it looks. It needs to load quickly. It needs to be optimized for mobile. It should be easy what to do, what’s called a CTA uh call to action should be top right, whether it’s call or whether it’s fill out a form.

That thing should be mobile first because the vast majority of people are using mobile. When they’re searching, and then top ranking pages are typically sent service and service area pages. So that is a big part of how you rank focus on your search intent, and then make your valuable, make your content helpful. So we’re gonna get into some AI stuff and what you do want to do and what you don’t want to do. So we’ll get into that. Database reactivation, this is monetizing your list. So these are those past clients, those past customers, those people who, who raised their hand and then they turned into Casper or you went out and you presented the estimate and then they didn’t close.

This is all of those people. So they’re still valuable. They’re still there, and one of the biggest mistakes I see painting companies make, and you should listen to this because this is my, my business is generating leads. So if I’m telling you this, which would see sort of contrary to generating leads, you should probably believe me. So the, when you get a lead, that’s your most expensive lead. A new lead is your most expensive lead. The leads that you already have, the repeat referral business. Building off that list, that is your most inexpensive and efficiently.

So when you have this list and the CRM is how you’re gonna do this, Paint scout, official CRM sponsor. When a CRM is how you’re gonna do this, these leads, they already know your brand, they already trust you. We, we, we find that the conversion rates are higher than new leads. And then what we do, and we do this for all of our partners, we do it every quarter, it’s this effective. So if you’re on, if, if we’re just running paid ads for you, if we’re doing a holistic program, if we’re just doing SEO for you, whatever it is that we’re doing, we run this every quarter because it just works.

So we will take your list, we’ll, we’ll put it into typically a 2 week sequence. So this isn’t just one blast. This is send an email, blast the list, and then just sit back and see what happens. This is a full marketing campaign. We find when you, when you tie really 5 to 7 to 9 touch points, email and SMS create some kind of offer, and then you build, right? So you send an email, then you send a text. Hey, first name, CRM. Hey, John, um, you know, Jack with with ABC House Painting Company, just sent you an email.

Let me know if you got it. Right? So, you do these things and you tie them together strategically and you’re gonna get a much higher response rate and you’re gonna get a much better outcome. So, actually running a full marketing campaign versus a newsletter or something that’s sometimes confused for a campaign. Uh, Meta ads, the fundamentals still win. I’ll talk with my team and I I. I, I like new stuff. I like engaging stuff. It’s part of the, the entrepreneurial curse. We always want to do new things, uh, kind of the ADHD thing kind of going on.

But the fundamentals still win, you know, that’s just what, that’s just what rocks. And so I’ve talked about this stuff before, but at the end of the day, the core formula is winning. So a clear offer, a strong call to action, what’s their next step, make it easy for buyers, and then a relevant. Creative and the this, this idea of behind the scenes. So if you can show like a little video of your crew kind of working, or if you have an office, people love this stuff, man.

If you have an office, you kind of show your, your admin. You can be your admin answering call. People just want to see authenticity, you as a picture of the owner, people love outdoor photos, people love dogs, like just this random stuff that seems native to the platform. But people crave authenticity. And if you think about all the AI and the, the deep fakes and everything we have going on, when we see something, and we think, man, that’s real, that’s a real thing. I’m actually getting a peek behind the curtain.

What, what, why do you think these are reality TV shows and everything are so popular? Feel like you’re getting a peek behind the curtain? Are you really starting to know and connect with that company, it becomes this emotional connection and sales is emotional. Right, so the more you can do that stuff with your ads, the better, the gimmicky, the hacks, hey guys, we did this and it works. Sometimes you can ride a little bit of a wave with some of those stuff, but it doesn’t last. Ultimately, it’s human psychology, it’s how you run ads, that’s how you win.

So meta has some AI tools, you have to test but verify. We run some of these, sometimes they work, usually they hurt the performance, but we’re always testing. So advantage plus targeting, this lets meta find your best audience based on the behavior and insights. Advantage plus placement. So there are all kinds of things. If you haven’t run the ads, you don’t necessarily know this. You can post it in the feed, you can post it to your stories. There’s like a million different places that you can post your meta ad.

Don’t do audience network, never ever do audience network. It’s terrible. So we’ve seen some of the other agencies do audience network. It just never has that ever worked. So don’t do audience network, but letting, letting meta do that, it sometimes works about 2, 2/3 of the time it doesn’t improve performance. And then AI generated variations, this is just cringe. I, I never let meta do this, some of the stuff they put together is, is just not very good. And then the simplified setup, if you say, hey, just simplified setup meta, you just do it all for me.

Anytime there’s an easy button, it’s not your best play. If it’s an easy button, everybody can hit that button, everybody’s not crushing it, right? So then you’re just gonna go to the mean, which is not really that good. This local service ads, this was, this was a a little bit of an experiment we ran, and it was really interesting because Usually you’re not gonna, usually, if you guys are running local, put a one in the chat if you’re running local service ads, I’d love to see how many of you guys are, you know, a fair amount of you are, but Google’s usually not going to use your whole budget.

One of the things with local service ads is you want to spend more because these are actually a paper lead source versus, or excuse me, a paper, yeah, it’s a paper lead source versus Google Pay per click, traditional Google ads, if somebody just clicks on it, you pay. So they might click, it might be a bot, they’re not gonna go down that path, like I could do a two hour webinar and paper click, but it might be a bot, it might not even be a real person, and you pay.

Google local service says it’s actually legitimately that you’re paying for, and usually you don’t spend your whole budget. Again, every one of these topics, guys, I could, I could do like a two-hour lecture on. So, I’m gonna keep going. But at the end of the day, jack your budget up. So here, these are weekly budgets, these are 103 different partners that we had $500 100, 338, and $448. And we just took their budgets and we You can see that top one, we took it from $500 to $15,000. They’re not spending $15,000 a week. They’re not even spending $23 a week.

But their growth, they got 49% more local service at leads after they did that, right? So each of the times that we jacked it up, we have one partner, I think he’s got a million dollars a week. It’s a million or maybe a month, Daniel Stroud, Daniel for listening. He’s he’s, he’ll go for it. He’ll say, and this is one of the reasons he’s, he’s crushing it with us. He’ll go for it. If we say something, he’ll almost take it to the extreme to the point where I start to sweat a little bit.

Like, OK, we’re really going to test this theory right now. He doesn’t spend a million dollars a week on local service ads, but, but he gets a lot of local service out of leads. So jack your budget up and you’re gonna get more leads from LSA. Uh, pay per click roll 2025. So this is the traditional Google search ad. The cost per click here, it really wasn’t a good option for residential painting companies in the last couple of years. It’s starting to become a good option again. Again, the stuff ebbs and flows.

You have to keep testing it. Right now, the cost per click has come down. Uh, the conversion rate has gone up and as, as the cost has gone up in some other channels, Google Ads has started to look attractive again for residential. For commercial, it has stayed attractive. Those jobs are just a good enough size that you can pay more for the lead and it can be worth it. So, That’s Google Paper click, strong sales system cross cross selling. Here’s a concept I want to get across to you, to everyone listening.

The the lead that you get is is different values for everybody. So, if I’m in a market and you’re in a market and you know, option C is in the market, and we’re all running a painting company, and we each get the same John Doe lead, each get the same exact, it is worth a different amount of money to all of us. Right? Because if, if, if I’m calling that, if I’m calling John within a minute, and I’m getting John on the phone, well, my odds of set of actually setting an estimate with John are higher than somebody who’s not, right?

And then when I go out, if I’m sending messages, CRM, Paint scout, if I’m sending messages that are building value before I go out, if my estimator or project. Consultant, as Jason Phillips would call him, if they’re sending a little selfie video to John before he goes out. So John knows we’re going to show up. He’s already learned about our company. He’s learned about our process before we even show up. I have a higher odds of closing John than somebody else. And not only that, I have a higher odds of closing them at a high, at a higher price.

So now my, my odds of set are higher, my odds of close are higher, my profit margin, anticipated profit margin is higher. And then after I complete the project, Uh, if I have a really awesome process for getting a review from John, so a 5-star review, which, which I’m gonna, I’m gonna set that expectation up front, by the way. I’m gonna say, hey, John, you know, my goal is to knock it out of the park for you. Uh, I, I wanna make sure that we, we, we do, we, we, we make this one of the best experiences you’ve ever had with a contractor, and I’m gonna try to earn a five-star review.

Is that OK with you, John? Of course, he’s gonna say yes. He wants me to, he wants me to do a good job on his house. He’s gonna say yes, then I’m gonna circle back. We have a verbal contract at that point. Hey John, did I do it? Was I able to do it? This will be your PM doing this. Was I able to do it? Um, what do you mean? Well, if you remember, at the beginning of this project, I said, hey, I want to earn a five-star review.

I want to crush this. Did we meet your expectations? Did we exceed your expectations? How was the experience? Yeah, you guys did great. It looks great. You do this after the walkthrough. Man, John, you know, I, uh, would you be willing to leave us that review? Yeah, of course. One thing we find, John, sometimes it’s confusing, some Google makes things so hard. Can I actually just walk you through this right now? Can I, can you, can you just bring out your phone? Can you scan this QR?

Can I just walk you through it right now? He’s gonna say yes. So then I’m gonna get the five-star review. And if then the lead is more valuable to me than someone else, I’m gonna then present John with a repeat business, with the referral business program. So I’m more likely to get repeat clients. I’m more to have John work with me again because I’m going to keep in touch with him through the CRM, through strategy, and I’m more likely to get. For Elton John’s neighborhood. I’m also gonna have canvas the neighborhood.

I’m gonna have a yard sign out front. So there’s so many things that I’m gonna do that I’ve now tripled, quadrupled the value of John Doe for me versus another company that’s doing none, none of that stuff. Just let that set in, right? Because every company thinks, I need more leads, I need more leads. Maybe you need to take better care of your leads. Maybe you need to better monetize your projects and make those leads more valuable. So then there’s cross-selling and upselling, which I didn’t even get into, which is on the slide, which maybe If it’s an interior, maybe we sell the exterior, right?

Maybe, wow, this really looks great, man. I, I saw the exterior could use some work. We’re already gonna be out here, we might be able to do it at a little bit more affordable rate. Do you wanna take a look at this, right? Cross, cross-selling, upselling, right? If you offer another, if you offer siding or, or um flooring or whatever, right? So just having a good sales process, repeat business and referral here, here’s an example of a, a little Of a little flyer we put together for one of our partners, we find that, that something tangible, something physical that you can hand them is a lot better than, hey, do you know anyone else who needs a painting project?

OK, can, can you give them my card? Mmm. It’s got to be an official tangible thing, and then it’s got to be followed up with automated messages through a CerRM and manual. But again, let that John Doe, let that John Doe example set in for you guys, cause that’s gonna make a huge difference. And when when leads, I wanna back up, I don’t wanna have anything on the side right now. When leads are more expensive and when leads are taking longer to close, it’s not just about getting more leads, it’s about making every lead the the most valuable that it can be.

I hope that in the spring, I hope that, that the political turmoil settles down. I hope that the cost per lead goes down. But here’s an ugly truth. And here’s also why you need to be raising your prices. The cost per lead always goes up forever. That’s an ugly truth for you guys. Think about inflation. It’s, it’s only going one way, right? So the cost per lead, it just goes up over time. So we’ll hear painting companies say, man, 5 years ago, I could, I could get. Leads for XYZ, that will never happen again, right?

If there’s a new platform, if some competitor Google comes out, maybe, maybe there’ll be a blip there where you can kind of work that before other people get in. But as a general rule of thumb, cost of lead goes up. That’s why you need to be raising your prices. That’s why you need to have a strong sales system. And that’s why you need to have a way to monetize those leads a lot more than the competitors in the example that I provided you guys before. Economic shifts, we’ve covered this, buying cycles are lengthening.

And we’re seeing this, this second point I want to hit on, it’s so, we’re seeing an 8% drop in conversion rates from estimates to close jobs. Here’s the thing about that. These jobs are still getting done. They’re still getting done. So when you see this, this drop in conversion rate, we think, oh well, the, you know, people just aren’t moving forward, or they’re moving forward with a competitor. They’re taking longer to move forward. So if your sales process, if your follow-up is only for a week, right, and we have, OK, people are typically taking about 8 days longer to close right now.

If your follow-ups only for a week or for 2 weeks. What about if they close in week 3? Now they’re just closing with somebody else, but they, they could have and would have closed with you if you’d followed up. So, View your leads and, and view your close rates on a rolling 90-day basis. Don’t say, well, I got 33 leads this month and I closed this many, so this is my close rate. View it over the past 90 days, every month, so the past 3 months. What are all the leads you got and what, what’s your close rate?

And that’s gonna set a more appropriate time frame for you guys. Google’s algorithm, they’re still prioritizing EEAT, so experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. What this means for you guys is real content. So real content, Google’s been flooded with AI. Do not just spin up a bunch of articles. Don’t hire one of these companies that say, hey, for $100 you’re just gonna give you a billion things through AI and you’re gonna rank all over the place. You are not. I promise you, you are not. If you do, you’re then gonna get destroyed by Google, because Google’s looking for this stuff and they’re looking to crack down.

So real content again, the, the tying to the same concept as the meta ads, real stuff, behind the scenes, uh, pictures of the owner. Things like that. Omnichannel marketing. So I gave a little bit of an example of this with John Doe. When I say we’re gonna canvass the neighborhood, right? We’re gonna, we’re gonna door knock around there, we’re gonna have a repeat referral program, we’re gonna keep in touch with our list. We’re gonna do all this stuff. If, if the, when buying takes longer, when people are guarding their dollars a little more closely.

Then they need a higher level of trust to pull the trigger. The, you have to touch them multiple different ways. One of the ways you touch them is through that CRM, through the, the text messages, through the emails, through the the automated and manual phone calls. You can do voice drops. There’s all kinds of cool stuff you can do. A lot of you guys probably receive a voice drop from me for this event. So there’s really, that’s, that’s through a CRM. You guys are receiving stuff right now from me, but I’m here talking to you, right?

So that’s through a CRM. So the, there’s a lot of cool stuff you can do, but the meta ads example is a good one. You go on, there’s an offer, there’s a cool ad, it looks authentic, so they, they put their information, but now they’re like, well, I know I need to get more quotes. I liked Jack, but I, I know I’ve I Jack might take advantage of me. I’m not sure. I have to get more quotes. So then they’re gonna go on Google, right? Then they’re gonna ask their friends.

You gotta be in all these different places, that’s how you win. Uh, meta ads, so meta is still working, again, focus on real. I would much rather you guys have some not very good, not super high quality photo from your phone than this really polished, awesome looking photo or video that basically makes you either look fake or, or like some big corporation and people don’t want to do business with that. So there’s this Misconception as a, as a smaller business owner that you should try to look really big.

You should try to look really professional and official when that’s actually not what people want. And that’s been something I’ve, I’ve kind of learned as I’ve gone, and a lot of stems from insecurity, kind of this fake it till you make it. What people want is authenticity. So focus on that with your ads, some execution tips for meta. They are, it’s a colder lead than SCO. Again, there, there’s repeat business, there’s referral business, and then there are Google leads, and then there are meta leads, right? Google, because Google is another form of recommendation.

You go on, we trust Google, that’s why we use Google, and we don’t fully trust Google, but we think Google has good information. And so we go on, so when Google puts it at the top, we think, well, can’t be that bad, can’t be that bad of a company, it’s probably decent, right? Meta, we know that they just paid to be there. So, that means you have to work that lead more. The lead is just as good as the same person that’s looking on Google, but they just don’t trust you as much.

So that’s where the speed lead, that’s where the building the value, that’s where sending, sending some messages, that’s where a manual phone call within that first minute, that’s where all that stuff comes into play cause you’re building value. Our target costs there are $60 or less. Start with over $2000 a month for your budget. We’ll start with like $400. There’s just, it’s just not a large enough sample size. You, you don’t get anything from that. Uh, use an engagement program, so one of the things we do at Painter Marketing Pros, which you rolled out early this year.

we have, we have an AI plus human, but for every comment that somebody leaves on an ad, you’ll see all these comments, we respond to it, right? So we respond to it at various intervals of time, usually between 5 and 15 minutes, we respond to it. And if they’re negative comments, we hide them. And what we see some other companies doing is they’re running ads and then just all, all the comments are just left. And sometimes the comments negative, and I, I assure you that’s killing your ad performance.

And if it’s positive, like, oh, this company’s great, yeah, John, he took such good care of us and you don’t respond, kind of looks like you don’t care at all about that person. It’s, it’s not really phenomenal. Uh, thing that you want to portray. You want to reply. So make sure when you’re running ads, you guys probably don’t have a full AI, we have a full AI technical team here, but if you’re running ads on your own, pay attention, make sure you respond to those comments, and some people ask questions.

It’s a lead. It’s not just the lead that actually fills out the form or goes to your website or however you’re running that ad. Some people say, do you service XYZ area? Do you offer XYZ? That’s a lead. Hit that person, right? Because then your, your cost is gonna go down. So, local service ads, they still matter. This is the future of Google. This is where Google is putting their investment dollars. If you’re not running local service ads, make sure you start running those. Again, jack up your weekly budget on LSA leads.

You’ll get a lot more leads. Google Pay per click, set up dedicated campaigns. This will probably be a little beyond the scope of this conversation, but don’t just run painting company campaign. There will be an exterior painting company, the interior cabinet refinishing, and break it up by service, break it up potentially by service area, and then you have landing pages. So you don’t just send them to the homepage of your website, you create custom landing pages, and if you’re next, next, next level, potentially custom what’s the workflow.

It’s, it’s the automated messages that come from your CRM, potentially custom workflow for each of those different campaigns. So if someone comes into the exterior painting, they want to get an exterior painting quote. Well then maybe those messages and those little testimonials you’re going to send out are all exterior painting. So it’s about being hyper-focused, hyper target, a paper click budget, have at least $3500 a month for your budget there. You are going to need to have a heftier budget. Uh, call extensions, call only campaigns, those work really well for pay per clicks.

So bid more on those because they’re just convert higher than form fields. Build trust before that click. So, Google, they give you this opportunity to build all these extensions to take up more of the page, do it, and then speedily their matters. Reactivation campaigns, these are those emails, those SMS campaigns to your list that I mentioned. Make sure you have those spread out over a two-week period. Make sure you have an offer that you’re building, and then build urgency and scarcity. So urgency being, hey, this month only, right, you got to book, book for this month only, or scarcity being 43st 5.

We have 5 opportunities, 5 slots, whatever. People need a reason to take action, people will naturally be apathetic, so you have to, you have to prompt them, you have to push them to take action. Kind of like the way I’m doing with you guys with the bribes. I know you should be here, but you might be too apathetic to stay the whole day, so I’m giving you an additional reason to stay here. Uh, reactivation contains have a value proposition, uh, 2500 to 22025 weeks and then potentially segment by pipelines by pipeline stage, that’s kind of next level where depending on where they’re at in the pipeline, you might change the messaging a little bit.

This is just an example that we did for this can help a lot with seasonality, by the way. So this can reduce seasonality. We do it strategically, we build it around certain holidays, we try to fill up Q26 this way, and so you can do, there’s Black Friday, there’s a back to school special, things like this. So, so choose your timing strategically and then build the messaging sequence around that. Here are some examples. Again, we have a $210 offer, a free offer, get 22% off. We have uh upgrade to a premium paint.

I like upgrades more than the percent off, the percent off easier to run, but I like upgrades more. Uh, here’s an example of an email. So just stuff right there. CRM have the messaging built in there again, Paint scout is going to be a really, really good option for you guys. Very excited for this. This is an example of omnichannel marketing. So you can see we have SEO. We have social media. By the way, in our programs, we do social media posting. It doesn’t generate a lot of leads.

People think, well, you, I got a post on social media. I got You know, 23 times a week I should be posting, or 203 time a week I should be posting on social media, kind of, kind of, you should be, but you should be, not for the reason you think so. It’s not gonna really generate a lot of leads for you. The reach won’t be that high, but what it’s gonna do is again, when people do their homework, when if you’re running a paid out on meta, where do you think they’re gonna go?

They’re gonna go look at your Facebook page. If you have zero posts, or just personal posts, please don’t do that. Or your last post was 220 years ago, it doesn’t breed a lot of trust. Your set rate, your your close rate, those things are going to decline. So all this stuff’s about having this, it’s brand building is what it is. This professional brands that we post 220 to 22025 times a week on socials, uh, the content that you put out, have it be high quality, don’t have it be AI content.

Use AI strategically. but it’s really more from an ops perspective right now. The offline activities, the door knocking, uh, canvassing, the flyers, the rap vehicles, all that stuff. You want to hit it from every which way. Tech stack analytics, I’m gonna fly through this stuff, guys. We’ll have, I want to give you guys a couple minutes to ask questions. We use a CRM called Go High Level. I don’t recommend you self-implement that. We use it because we Built out a process for our, uh, for our partners.

You’re much better off going with the CRM like PaintScout if you’re going to self-implement, right? So we use this CRM. This is an example of somebody, a lead comes in, we’re going to tag where that lead came from, and we’re gonna have a bunch of automated messages as well as internal tasks for the team to make sure that we’re treating that lead with the utmost respect. We use a software called What Converts. Uh, for this is for tracking where the lead came from. So people say, well, all leads come from Google.

How do you know? Well, they said, I asked them where they, they heard about us, they said Google. OK. Well, number one, they very likely are potentially lying. So 30, 40% of the time it’s not even right when you track it, people are either gonna say their friend referred them because they think you’ll treat them better, or they’re gonna say Google because they don’t remember and they don’t want to feel stupid. So when you put in tracking numbers, there’s the ability to actually track whether they came from Google, whether they came from meta, whether they came from a yard sign, wherever they came from.

And then Google can mean like 4 different things. Was it Google Paper click, was it Google local service side? Was it Google organic? Was it a direct website visit? So just know your data. We use a software called What Converse. Here’s a software called Agency Analytics. You can, you can put it over different times, you can figure out how many leads you got, where those leads came from, what your cost per lead is, what your website traffic is over time. The whole point of this story here for you guys, you can figure out what search terms people are actually finding your website.

Some, some search terms are better than others. Yeah, whether it’s a do it-yourself search term, like just an educational informational search, or what’s called a commercial intent search. So somebody best painter near me, that’s high in commercial intent, they intend to hire a painter. So stuff like that. This is a software called Bright Local tracks your ranking over time. This is a software called Local Falcon, tracks your Google Business profile ranking over time. You guys aren’t gonna probably self-implement all this, but I just want to lay it out there and show you the kind of data we’re looking at, because very few painting companies we see are looking at this level of data.

But if you want to go to 1 million to 5 million to 10 million, you have to know your data. You have to know this stuff. AI and automation, use it for uh use it for ideation, don’t, don’t just outsource, don’t just have your, have AI do your work for you, not yet. So you can use it to draft, draft emails, but then check those emails. You can use it to brainstorm ideas for your content, but then you need to actually write the content. So don’t let AI overextend right now, uh, stay ahead by emerging these, these trends.

Guys, we have an offer right now, it’s absolutely killer offer. So the 203st 55, scarcity, right? So what I what I just taught you guys, so scarcity. We have the, we also just don’t want to offer it to everybody. So the 1st 5 partners that on board with us, that end up partnering with Painter Marin Pros from this event, you’re gonna get a free onboarding. Um, so we, we typically charge $500 as part of the onboarding setup, you will get it for free. Go to PMP2025. com, schedule a strategy set.

With us, worst case scenario, you learn about what you need to be doing in your marketing because we’re gonna do a deep dive with you. You walk away with an action plan, that’s your worst case scenario. Best case scenario, you partner with Pa American Pros, you get free onboarding, and then we scale you to the moon, uh, and really unlock the growth potential in your company. So, let’s see if we have a couple questions and then I want to keep moving. On this event. A question came and a question went.

At what point do you prioritize hiring someone for social media engagement? Not super high, not super high. So that’s from Katie Donovan. The I care much more about a lot of the others. I would not hire someone just to do social media engagement. That person needs to do a lot of other stuff. Social media engagement is not a full-time role, and if they’re sitting there spending 6 hours putting together a pretty post, that is a complete waste of your time. So there are tools we use Social pilot, we, we schedule stuff, we have a social media team that creates it in bulk, and then we, we send it to the partner and sometimes there’s a turn, sometimes not, and then we schedule it out for a month in advance.

You can really systematize this and make it very efficient. But if somebody, if that’s their whole job, unless you’re like a $10 million dollar company, that should not be a job. Do you measure ROI and lead expenditures? Absolutely, Dave. So that’s where the, the set rate, right? So how many of those a lead is just you have their information. A lead can mean a lot of things, but for me a lead means somebody raised their hand and they expressed interest. So them raising their hand and expressing interest, there’s still several steps to go until money has come into our pocket.

Right, so what’s the set rate? What’s the close rate, and then what’s the profit margin on that project? It’s not revenue, it’s profit that I care about. So absolutely, Dave, if you’re not measuring ROI then that’s a problem for sure. Is there a special way a website should be designed, especially for our trade from Shelton? Yes. So the service areas and services. So if you serve, so I’m in, I’m in Saint Petersburg, Florida. So I would, if I were running a painting company here, I’d want to serve Tampa, Saint Petersburg, Sarasota.

I’m gonna build pages for each of these. We’re gonna call it service areas on the website, because the way Google works is, is that you basically want to have one or two, what’s called a keyword phrase. A keyword phrase is just something whatever people are searching in Google. You only have one or two main keyword phrases per page, that’s it, that’s it. So you can view your website as basically a series of individual pages linked together. And people have this misconception that everyone’s going to, to your main page, to your home page.

They’re not. So you want to have a page that’s built for each service area. So if I’m in Sarasota and I search Sarasota Painter, if I’m in St. Petersburg and I search St. Petersburg Painter, those are going to be different pages. If I do exterior painting and I do interior painting and I do cabinet refinishing, I’m going to have different pages for those as well. So service area and service pages. Amanda said, it’s taking a few weeks when it used to take me a few days. Yeah.

Yeah, Amanda, we’re seeing that in a few days to convert. It’s taking longer. Then turn that from a negative into a positive for all of you guys. Turn from a negative, because a lot of, guess what, all of your competitors, almost all of your competitors, they’re not here right now, right? If you think about the hundreds, probably hundreds of painting companies in your market, maybe there’s another, maybe there’s one more here. Everyone else isn’t. So when you’re getting this information about the longer buying cycle and they’re over, over there living in the dark thinking, man, people just aren’t buying anymore.

You know they’re buying, but you know they’re taking longer. So you’re gonna structure your process and after they drop off, awesome, amazing. I’m glad they’re taking longer to buy cause now my close rate will be higher because all my competitors quit after a week, or after a few days, like Amanda said, used to take a few days. And now 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks later, I’m still doing a killer follow-up process and my close rate has gone up because I have information and I have a process that my competitors do not.

Uh, are flyers illegal or a bad idea? It depends, uh, uh, they’re a great idea. They’re never a bad idea. It depends on your area, uh, whether you can go, go to a home and, and door knock or do fly, you have to check your local laws on that one. Usually it’s OK. HOA communities, some areas it’s not. Paul said that is true. All AI does polish well, but it can lose authenticity, yup, and being true to your voice is important for, for building a following and trust.

Absolutely, Paul, great point. Alberto, what’s a good, uh, take home profit percentage for owner? Ultimately 20% is, is kind of the gold standard. I’m gonna defer to Daniel Honan, he’s gonna run profitability. He’s coming up here early afternoon, so stay tuned for him, Alberto. But if you can make a net income of your painting company of 20+%, it’s killer. So guys, schedule a call there. We’ll put the link in the chat, PMP2025.com. You can get a free onboarding. So go ahead and schedule that. Oops, go and schedule that chat, or schedule that strategy session.

We look forward to connecting with you guys. OK. All right. Hopefully you guys learned something there. If you could do me the same honor that you did, Maggie, if you could just put in the chat something that you learned from that, that would be awesome. It would make me feel good about myself. Appreciate you guys.

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Hey there, painting company owners. If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Give us your feedback. Let us know how we did. And also if you’re interested in taking your painting business to the next level, make sure you visit the Painter Marketing Pros website at PainterMarketingPros.com to learn more about our services. You can also reach out to me directly by emailing me at Br*****@******************os.com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business. Until next time, keep growing.