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.

Join Brandon Pierpont as he delivers high-energy insights from the PCA conference on scaling commercial painting businesses. In this episode, he discussed insights from industry experts’ actionable strategies—from leveraging digital channels and consistent branding to mastering sales systems and effective follow-up—to navigate market volatility and drive growth. Packed with real-world stories, practical tips, and lessons learned, this episode is your blueprint for transforming challenges into opportunities and propelling your painting business to new heights.

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.

Who’s having a good PCA expo so far, right? Yeah, PCA Expo. I do a lot of events. Uh, post, post a lot of stuff online. You guys have probably seen some, some of, uh, my endeavors, my travels. PCA Expo is bar none my favorite event for obvious reasons. Who here is a first-time attendee? That’s a lot. You guys enjoying it? Who here Scarlet letter, who here is a first time attendee who’s not a member? OK, so see me after. I’ll I’ll kinda hound you, uh, and we’ll get membership.

You guys are gonna have a really good opportunity to get PCA membership for half price the first year. You see what this is, you see the, uh, the community that’s here and the information that you get. So if you’re not a PCA member, please join. You will be doing your business a huge favor. Who here thinks marketing is important? Maybe, right? Maybe. Uh, so my, my background, I’ll, I’ll get into a little brief story for you guys. My background is not in Marketing initially it’s not, not in entrepreneurship.

I was actually at a a very different path so I went to Notre Dame University of Notre Dame, go Irish, almost, almost, uh, almost clinched it this year, got close, and then I, I went into finance. So my parents wanted me to be a lawyer. I did not want to do that. Lawyers stink, uh, but finance people maybe aren’t much better. So I went into finance. I, I went into investment banking, uh, did that for 3 years, the private equity for 2 years, and then was the CFO of a software company for 1 year and a half and then basically went off the reservation.

I was like, this is not a fit, not gonna work for me. I’m way too weird and and controlling and, and, uh, ultimately not gonna, not gonna do finance. You know what would be amazing? If I had the clicker, maybe this is it. That’s pretty cool. That’s epic. OK, so we have the clicker. That’s awesome. Um, I said I’m not gonna do finance. I’m going to be an entrepreneur. I’m, I’m I’m smart. I’ve, I’ve, you know, I know business, uh, in private equity we’re buying companies, selling companies, fixing them, how hard can it be?

These guys start businesses, they grow businesses. How hard can this thing be? So. I had a lot of ideas. All the ideas, uh, either they were already being done or I wasn’t, you know, particularly competent in that. I had paralysis by analysis, so many different ideas. And then my wife, my lovely wife here, she is actually handing out our books. So if you’re here, you’re hopefully gonna get a book. Uh, she said, do you think you can figure out how to detail a car? Probably, you know, I’ve washed a fair amount of cars.

I’ve never really done a, a professional detail, but I could probably figure it out. So she’s like, start an auto detail business. OK, Star an auto detail business, put up the proverbial shingle. You know, hey, we’re, we’re up for business. I did a Wix website cause that’s where I was at at that time, didn’t know anything about marketing, didn’t know anything about uh SCO or anything like that. Put up the Wix website, publish. The, the, the leads are gonna come. We’re good, we’re golden. The hard part’s done, except then they didn’t.

And so I realized everything I thought I knew did not matter because I didn’t have leads. I didn’t have leads, I didn’t have sales, and therefore I didn’t have a business. So what I ended up doing was I took a very deep and a very long dive into marketing. And I fell in love with it. Hence why I’m now a digital marketer. I fell in love with it. Apparently that’s not abnormal for finance people, uses the same parts of the brain, uh, ROI, if you, if you geek out on finance, apparently it is normal to geek out on marketing.

I didn’t know it at the time. I deep dove, right? But then at the end of the day, I learned the importance of marketing. And I learned that I really wasn’t in the auto detail business. I was in the marketing and sales business and as you scale, as my good friend Jason Phillips will say, phenomenal keynote, by the way, how good was that keynote from Jason? Yeah, it was actually too good. I was getting, getting a little, you know, the, the cat in the cradle thing, Jason, you gotta stop doing it, buddy.

It’s like the 3rd time I, I would have been bawling. I’m not joking if, if I didn’t need to put on a presentation, you know, because there are other human beings in the room, I would have been absolutely bawling, uh, but that hit close to home. But as Jason says he’s not in the painting business, he’s in the sales and marketing business and then ultimately in the people business. So I think it’s important to recognize what business we’re actually in. We’re all in the sales and marketing and then ultimately the people business as we scale.

Uh, so I’m gonna introduce myself, painter marketing pros, a little bit about who we are, some of the qualifications that, uh, I think make me qualified to be up here. And then we’re gonna get into marketing road map and we’re actually gonna do a hands on exercise. So the PCA for the first time and I have the luxury of being the first one, so hopefully you guys don’t hate it, hopefully it’s a good experience. We are running workshops, so these are a little bit different from the breakout sessions.

The breakout session is gonna be kind of a lecture or presentation. You’re gonna learn a bunch of phenomenal phenomenal information from great speakers, industry experts that you’ll learn from. The idea of the workshop is that you get a lot of information, but you also have something tangible to take home, right? So it’s a lot of times at these events, it can be information overload, it can be, man, I met so many people. I’m so excited. I have so many ideas. And then you get back. And you don’t do any of them, right?

You probably maybe fell a little behind on some things with your business. You go back, you open up your email, death by email. And then you realized you didn’t end up actually moving forward with any of those initiatives. You come back the following year. And it’s like, oh, I didn’t actually do anything and you kind of repeat this cycle. So the PCA is wanting to always add more value, is wanting to always level up. And so this year they said, what if we do some workshops and we almost do the work right now, right here and give it to you, so you implement right when you get home.

So that’s the goal. You’ll be getting some in-person workshops. Ultimately this is meant to be done digitally. So if you have a computer, great. I see a lot of you don’t. Sweet. Uh, I thought that might be the case, which is why we have a whole lot of workbooks that are gonna be going around. All right, this is me. Uh, I am very active in the PCA. I feel, uh, very blessed to be up here speaking with you guys. I’m, I’m a member of quite a few committees.

Uh, I’m a, a member of the Speaker bureau. I’m a brand ambassador, very, very big advocate of the PCA. I believe strongly in what they do. And then I run a podcast called The Painter Marketing Mastermind podcast. I’ve been running that for about 3 years. Who here has listened to an episode of the Painter Market Mastermind podcast? About half of you guys. All right, the other half, I still love you, it’s OK. But you should check it out cause you might enjoy it. If you go to paintermarketingpros.

com, you can see or hear some episodes of the podcast. It’s also on all major streaming platforms. I am a bestselling author, so I’ve written two books on scaling painting companies, uh, sales systems playbook for painting contractors, and then Painting Mills. Painting Millions was a number one Amazon rated bestseller, so I’m very, very, um, proud of that. And then I’m also a proud veteran of the Florida Army National Guard. Painter marketing pros. So we put together these stats. My team pulled these earlier this year. And we had actually never done that, and it absolutely blew me away.

So we’ve been in this space operating for 5 years. We have generated over 903,000 leads for the painting companies that we partner with. We have served over 350 painting companies at an average cost per lead through all the different channels through SEO, LSA, meta ads, Google Ads, everything else of under $45. All of that has equated to booked projects of over $200 million in revenue. So that is why I feel qualified to be up on the stage talking with you guys about marketing. We have a Marketing column in the APC magazine.

So I know Andrew Dwyer, he’s here with APC who is a subscriber to APC? It’s, it’s free. Awesome. Yeah, I get it delivered to to my inbox because I’ll forget to go online. So I, uh, I get it delivered to my house. It’s a phenomenal magazine. Uh, we have written, uh, a couple articles there and there will be a lot more coming. So keep a lookout for that. We contribute to In Paint magazine’s Ask a pro section. Andrew, don’t hold it against me. And then this slide we had to update.

I am pumped about this slide because we won the, we won the PCA Industry partner of the year last year. It was a phenomenal honor and surprise to win it again. So we have won it 2 years in a row. To me, that’s a testament to my team. It’s a testament to the reputation we have, the value we have in this industry. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, we have partnerships with some of the, some of the leading. Lead leading, um, companies in this space, so Academy for Professional painting Contractors.

Brandon Lewis, he’s been Brandon Lewis, Terry Riley, the entire team. They’ve been working in this industry for a decade. Uh, he’s absolutely phenomenal, so we work with a lot of the same partners. We are the corporate marketers for Frescoat Partners. They painters, they are one of the largest painting franchises in the country. Uh, we do their corporate marketing and then work with over 60 other franchisees, and then we have some testimonials here from some people you may know. So we got Brandon, uh, Michael Chaney. And then uh Pat Boy, you guys might not know Pat.

This has nothing to do with anything. I will be completely transparent with you guys. Absolutely nothing to do with anything. I will tell you another story. I went to the commercial. Contractor conference of the PCA in October and it was out in Arizona and you hear Wild West and I would always think kind of old Wild West. I didn’t know that that it’s still wild west and so I went out there and Jesse Ramos, uh, TJ’s painting, who here knows Jesse? Yeah, it’s unfortunate for you guys.

So I know Jesse as well. And, and Jesse, we’re playing pickleball with Chris Elliott, Maggie and everyone, and, and Jesse comes running up, he says, I’m gonna ride a bull. Cool, me too, Jesse. I don’t actually think he’s gonna ride a bull. Turns out he was, right? He’s gonna actually ride a real bull, and then I said I was. So at that point I was pretty locked in. So Jesse and I went to a rodeo that you could pay $45. They give you a waiver. Jesse’s like, Should we read it?

I said, What do you think it says? We’re riding a bull. You don’t need to read it, just sign it. So we signed it, sign it, and we actually rode a bull and I said, if I survive this, Jesse, I’m going to bring it up in every presentation that I give ever because I’m just going to do that. And that’s what I committed to before I did it and now I bring it up. I still haven’t found a way to make it make sense except maybe PCA events, crazy stuff happens, so.

So just so you guys know what we’re, what we’re about to dive into, we’re going to, there, there’s so many different marketing channels. Who here gets confused about what marketing channel you should use when? And how much money you should put behind it. OK, that’s more honest. I thought, man, you guys know even more than I do. Uh, there’s a lot, there are a lot of marketing channels, right? Should I do, should I be running Facebook ads? Should I be running Google local service ads? Uh, should I be running Google Pay per click?

What’s even the difference between Google Ads and and Google local service ads Should I be running Facebook ads? I, I hear they’re not any good. So what we did is we actually took all of the most, most common, most prevalent, what we find are the most successful marketing channels for painting contractors, and we broke them into. Uh, essentially revenue size, right? So if you’re at a certain revenue size where you should focus your energies, and, and I’m gonna run through those quickly, and then we are going to actually do a diagnostic.

So in that diagnostic, you’re gonna fill out some questions about what your current marketing. It is going to send you a report. It’s gonna be a very detailed report. It’s going to identify opportunities for improvement. It’s also gonna tell you where you’re doing really well and ultimately if you pair that with this roadmap, which is also on the digital report that you’re gonna receive, it’s also on the book if you have a physical book in front of you, uh, you pair those things together, it’s going to give you a phenomenal start to your 2025.

The other thing that’s both in the digital book as well as the, as well as the physical book is I think we have like. 30, 103 pages of best practices. So Google Business profile, Facebook ads, local service ads, social media postings, CRM door hangers. We have tons and tons and tons of best practices. So all throughout the book. We put a lot of work into that book. I think, I think you’ll find it valuable, but you’re also gonna receive it digitally. So always marketing. I call these this always marketing because you should be doing it regardless of what, what channel, regardless of your size.

2024, especially second half of 2024, who found that more challenging than maybe second half of 2023? You, you guys are like borderline dishonest, I think some of you, but that’s OK. I’ll let it go. Uh, 1.193, 1.183nd half of it was challenging. I, uh, that’s what we saw. We saw on the market. Some companies absolutely crushed it, but overall, the cost per lead went up. We had an election. Election always causes uncertainty, especially in today’s political age. We had persistent high interest, persistent high inflation. And then we have a lot of global global turmoil and Discretionary purchases do not like any of those things.

Residential painting It is largely a discretionary purchase unless you live in an HOA or there’s some reason you actually need to get your house painted, it’s usually optional, right? So who here noticed? So if your cost went up or if your costly didn’t go up, who here noticed a longer buying cycle? So, so you went, and it took people longer to make decisions. Yeah, so the there there was a pause, right? Anytime there’s an election or uncertainty people pause because they don’t necessarily wanna part ways with that money because they don’t know what’s gonna happen.

So these always marketing channels, what they’re designed to do is take every lead that you have and make it more valuable, right? The lead is, is kind of the foot in the door. The lead is the, the first transaction, but, but it should be one of many. Right, and you should view each lead as essentially creating an ecosystem for you. And a lot of painting contractors, they view leads very transactionally. It’s a lead and it closes or it doesn’t, and that’s it. But that lead has a whole lot with it.

So a strong sales system, super critical when people are taking longer to make buying decisions, when people are, uh, when the cost per lead is higher, that lead cost you more money, you need to be closing. And you need to be closing at high rates, door hangers, yard signs, so 1.173 round, 1.163 around, making sure with permission that you’re always putting up attractive yard signs with tracking numbers and a QR code so you can actually track that, uh, the the number of leads that are coming from your yard signs, wrap vehicles or door magnets, you know, depending on where you’re at in your business, uh, proactive repeat and referral, how many of you guys actually have a really, really proactive repeat or referral business program?

You guys have something dialed in. That one, I believe you. I believe that very few of you do. So if you think about the, the growth in word of mouth, how many painting companies grow by word of mouth but actually don’t have a system or a process behind it. Imagine if you do. It, it’s incredibly powerful, right? And then effective review generation process, our target is every one. Sorry, for every 1.153 projects you complete, you secure at least 1.143-star review. That’s the barometer that I would want you guys to take away.

Uh, and then a professional social media presence, really a professional digital presence overall. If you’re just starting, if you don’t have money, do what I did, create the Wix website, just put up a page, right? Do use one of these Wix or GoDaddy, just a a website, but pull up something professional so that when they see you out and about when they you hand your business card, you have something backing you online because people are gonna do their homework. So this is stuff that you guys should always be doing.

Who in here is maybe missing one of these things? A lot of people, right? A lot of people, especially the product of repeat and referral. So when you’re missing this, you’re, you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot. Every lead, every, every new project you complete, it could be more valuable if you implemented this stuff. So going back to the systems that Jason was talking about, put some systems behind this. Free channels starting out 1.133 to 1.123K. I’ve talked with a few of you who are new to the industry.

Some people just started their companies. There are a lot of first time attendees here. That’s awesome. Congratulations on the new venture. It’s exciting. And then reality hits and other stuff happens, but maintain that optimism and it can stay exciting. When you’re starting out, it’s sweat equity. Who here pushed through sweat equity? Who, who built the business with some sweat equity? I did. I did, yeah, so it was actually my wife and I were detailing cars together. She is an animal. I was, uh, humbled because I would be, I mean, detailing, who’s who details cars?

And you guys have experienced detailing cars? I mean, painting is hard work, painting is hard labor. Detailing cars is hard labor too. I didn’t understand how difficult that is when you go into a 1.113 hour detailed Ferrari. It is. But she’s a, she’s a beast and so I learned that and that was a good experience for us and I’m not. So I also learned that. So that was humbling, but you either have sweat equity or you have paid, right? You’re gonna do sweat equity, you’re gonna do, you’re gonna do paid.

I’m right here assuming that you do not have this, this large. A store of capital that you’re gonna put behind your business. I’m assuming it’s about equity, so you leverage things like local Facebook groups, posting local Facebook groups, posting a local next door groups. It takes you a little time. A lot of times you’ll get really high quality leads from it. You’re going to reach out to your personal network, friends and family, door knock. Who here has door knocked? That sucks, right? Door knocking is not fun, not fun at all.

Door knocking, uh, cold calling. Who here has cold called? I’ve cold called a lot. I’ve, I’ve been called some things that I would, you know, I can’t tell you up here, but if you’ve cold call, you’ve been called them too, uh, local networking groups and then professional referrals, so realtors, adjacent trades, chambers of commerce, BNI, professional referrals that consistently refer you new business. When you move to 1.103 to 2115K. The focus needs to be free plus short term, so you still have to be doing that free because you don’t have that much money.

And the number one rule of business is don’t go out of business. So when you’re between 211000 to 2115K, continue to lean in everything that you were doing with the free channels, but now you can start to do social media ads and Google local service ads. Those are the two kinds of paid ads that I would really prioritize between 21000 to 21270K. They’re shared lead providers. Right, they, they might be in the room, so be careful. um, there’s Google Pay per click. I don’t recommend doing those yet. That is a common mistake.

Well, I can just sign up for Angie. I can just sign up for Thumbtack. They’ll just give me leads. How lazy is that? I’ll just sign up and I’ll just buy leads. They’re getting leads the same way. They’re doing SEO. They’re running Google ads. They’re running ads, and then they’re repackaging that lead that you could be getting by yourself, and then they’re marking it up and then they’re selling it to you and 21000 of your closest friends at the same time. And because you have this company that’s between 21270 and 21600K, you also haven’t built a really strong sale system.

You don’t know how to sell, and you think you know how to sell because you were talking with your friends and your family and your neighbors and and really warm connections because you were doing all the free marketing. You’re like, man, I’m great at selling. I have a 211.1 1.1% close rate. I’ll kill it. And then you get your, your teeth knocked in, right? Because you do angie you do thumb tack. I say not yet because I say come back to that when you’re in a stronger position. 5000 to a million short term plus long term.

So here the, the focus actually moves away from the free. It moves away from the free, but you can continue to do it, but it’s what I call paid free. So you’re not out there knocking on doors anymore, right? You need to level up. You’re not out there knocking on doors. You’re not actually cold calling, you’re not doing that stuff, but you can hire a team to do it. You can hire a team to be out there canvassing for you, absolutely. And then the referral networks, never forget those.

Those, those go with us forever. We never let go of those. And now ultimately the the Chamber of Commerce, BNI those meetings, maybe you don’t attend anymore, but maybe someone from your team does, right? We never, we never get rid of the referral networks and if we’re gonna do free, then it’s gonna be paid free. We’re going to prioritize the paid ads. We’re gonna invest more into. We’re between 5000 and a million. We have money to invest. We’re gonna make sure we’re monitoring our results, make sure we’re tracking our ROI, and we’re gonna lean heavily, heavily into the paid social and the Google LSAs, and we’re going to start building the long term assets.

So we’re gonna start doing the SEO. We’re gonna start doing the local SEO through the Google Business profile. We’re gonna start doing stuff. That is actually going to matter to us 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years out, but we’re gonna do it strategically. We’re not gonna overly invest in that. We’re gonna know our numbers. We’re gonna have a certain amount that we know we can set aside a month and we’re gonna put it behind that. But you know we do a lot of SEO that’s a core part of our business.

I didn’t bring that up until here. Number one rule of business is don’t go out of business. So when you’re first starting, you need that ROI to happen faster. Hello 10003 figures, a million dollars to 3 million. Who hears over a million dollars a year in revenue? Congratulations. That’s a huge accomplishment. Yeah, when I, when we broke a million dollars, it was, uh, anyone, anyone been to Miami? Good Lord. OK. Some people I’ve been to Miami. It’s like, wow, this is a weird group. Um, so Miami, there’s this restaurant called Joe’s Stone Crab.

Anyone heard of that? Couple of people, Joe Stone Crabs, a lot of actors. Jason likes a lot of actors go there. When we broke a million dollars, we took our two little kids to Joe’s Stone Crab. I think they had no idea what was happening, and it was the most expensive meal I’d ever bought. I think it was like $700 750 dollars for me. That was the peak, and, and our, our, however old he was, he was pretty little, just put a whole just kept putting king crab legs in front of him.

It’s like bigger than him. That was a big deal. So if you’re over a million dollars, congratulations, never, never lose sight of that, right? If you’re at $5 million. 10 million, $15 million you’re Dave Scaturro, you’re over $20 million it’s a big deal. You gotta celebrate those wins, pocket them and keep them. I know I do. Uh, so when you pass a million dollars, you’re gonna now go into prioritizing your long-term marketing. Now you have more money, you should be focused on the longer horizon. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna prioritize my SEO.

I’m gonna prioritize my Google Business profile, local SEO. I’m gonna prioritize this stuff because I know 235 years from now it’s going to be an asset. I know it’s much less likely to change overnight because Meta decided to update their algorithm. I know SEO changes a lot more slowly than that if you do it right. If you abuse AI, that’s a whole another conversation and that can be a bad thing for you. Uh, but I know if you do it right, it’s going to be there over the long haul, and I’m going to build an asset that’s sellable.

I’m gonna build an asset that I can pass off to my kids. I’m gonna build an asset that’s going to continue to generate leads for me, and I don’t have to pay for every single one of those leads. So I’m gonna start prioritizing that, but I’m still gonna run paid ads. So as long as the ads are profitable, I’m going to continue to run them. And then I’m also going to consider Google Pay per click. So if I’m running Google Pay per click, there’s a difference between Google Pay per click and local service ads.

If I’m running Google Pay per click and I’m running it the right way, and we won’t go too far down this, but I’m doing search versus display, I’m going to want to have a budget of 3000 or $103 a month at least, right? I’m gonna want to have that budget at least or I’m not going to run Google Pay per click ads. Right, and then the paper lead sites I’ve dialed in my sales system. I use the CRM. When a lead comes in, I am contacting that lead within 30 seconds because it’s automated.

I have a speedy lead. It’s calling me. I’m calling them out. I’m forcing an outbound dial. We’re on the phone within 30 seconds. They don’t answer. I’m sending them a text. I’m gonna send him an email. I’m gonna send him a self-booking lead. So now I’m ready to play in the shared lead space. Go ahead, Angie, go, go ahead thumb tack. I can play in this space because I’m going to beat the other people, and it’s not going to be this race to the bottom because I’m gonna be on top of that lead, and then I’m gonna actually build value before I show up because that’s the kind of company that I run now.

So I’m going to approach you from a position of strength. I’m not gonna approach you with my hand out and have you just steal all my money when I’m small. And then you can explore direct uh male advertising. Uh, and print ads at this point, right? Print ads, you have to just, you have to just test it. Direct mail, 10,000, 10,000 pieces at a minimum every 6 weeks. Uh, make sure you’re targeting specific areas, hit them a couple times. Seasonality plays a big, big piece. The offer plays a big piece.

You have to have some money to test. And then finally scale of the moon 3 million plus. Here I’m actually going to flip back. To short term being my priority. I’m going to continue with the long term. But I’m going to flip back to short term because there’s only so much money you can actually put into this stuff. There’s only so much money you can be putting into SEO. You can’t, you can’t arm wrestle Google and make it put you at the top of, of Google. You can’t.

So you can’t be like, I’m gonna put $10,153 a month into SEO and I’ll show Google. I want to crush their algorithm. It just doesn’t work that way. So you’re gonna continue to make that investment, but you’re gonna shift back to the short term and you’re gonna entertain some offline ads. So now we are going to shift, so I, I give that to you guys because for me it, it, it is a phenomenal way to break down and think about the different channels and when it would make sense to use them and kind of the pros and cons of those channels based on the based on the size of your company.

So we’re not going to pull up the diagnostic, right? So this is this is an interactive portion here you guys have a workbook, you have a lot of information already. We’re gonna walk through this together. So if you can go to that. URL diagnostic.paintermarketingpros. com or you can scan that QR code and you can do it on your mobile. Alright, so we’re gonna pull this up and, and I’m gonna walk you guys through it. Again, you are going to receive an email with a breakdown of what you’re doing well, what you, you could use some improvement on, and then the action steps to take to improve it and why.

Right, so I have a, I have a technical team. I’m very fortunate to have a good technical team that coded this whole thing. I have absolutely no idea how it worked, but I can tell you they didn’t sleep for a little while. So if you click that, that button down there, I have to put that so you guys don’t sue me. uh, we’re gonna click that button and then click start assessment. So for this, we’re gonna, we’re gonna just fill it in as we go live again.

This is a workshop. It’s a little bit different from a standard presentation. So you just put in your name. Uh, put in your email address. Phone number? Business name? Website address. Is there anyone missing a book? Who doesn’t have the hardcover, hard copy of the book. This area Yeah, you guys, OK, so that table, I think one person back there. Nice. So website. What areas do you serve? So, you know, maybe your city and, and the surrounding zip or surrounding radius or if you, you do it by zip code.

Annual revenue So what you did last year, 2024? And then what your goal is for 2025. And then your goal for 3 years from now. Average project value. So if you don’t know this, if you guys don’t know some of the answers to some of these things, then that’s also uh something you’re learning, right? That you should know that. So average, average project value, what’s the ticket value of your, of your standard uh project? Then how many leads are you currently getting per month? A lot of companies don’t know that.

Set rate. So what is your set rate? So for the for the leads that you get through all the different channels, if you average it together, what do you, what percentage of those leads are you conducting an estimate for? What is your close rate? Total marketing spend per month. So anything online, anything offline, if you’re, if you’re purchasing swag, if you’re participating in home shows, count all of that. If you had a particularly big month, average it out roughly you’re spending how much per month on marketing.

Are you currently working with an agency? You don’t have to. I didn’t when I had my auto detail business, but I took a long time to learn it. So if you love it, learn it. You can come be uh, you guys know there’s more than one like marketing agency for painting contractors. Did you guys know that? It’s insane. You guys can learn it and you could come be like my forty-fifth competitor. All right, what’s free and always marketing channels are you using? So we got a whole host of stuff here, select whatever you’re currently using.

These are the free and the always marketing channels. And then what short term marketing channels are you, are you actively using? By the way, I wanna, I wanna explain why I call that short term. So when I talk about paid ads. I call it short term, but then I said you should keep doing it. You should keep doing it as long as it, as long as it’s creating a positive ROI for you. The reason I call it short term is because those algorithms switch a lot more quickly.

So when you’re investing in SEO, things like that, it takes, it takes a lot longer to see a return, but once you do it, if you do it the right way, it’s a lot harder to dethrone you. Companies like Google reputation is very big. Domain age is very big. There’s a lot of factors there. Uh, Facebook ads, Google ads, they’re much more likely to. You wake up one day and the the ad was performing great, now it’s not performing great and you can’t connect, right, that stuff just changes faster.

So that’s why I focus on it being short term. OK, what’s long-term marketing channels are you currently working on? OK. OK, this is Google Business profile. So are, are all your business details accurate and verified? So your, your, your phone number, your address, are you sure it’s verified? Your, your hours of operation is your website? Are you linked to all your social media? Do you have links built in there? Is everything 100% up to date? If you haven’t looked at it in a long time, it’s a very strong chance that it’s not.

How often do you post updates on your Google Business profile? Cheat tip, it should be weekly, at least. How many 5 star reviews do you have? Cheat tip, you want to get over 50 and then ideally over 100. Do you rank on the first page for all relevant keywords? That’s a tough question. Odds are very good that you do not know what percentage of your website traffic comes from organic search? So people going to Google or Bing or Yahoo, 90+% of it will be Google, and then actually typing in, you know, painting company near me best painter.

What percentage of your website traffic comes from that? Do you invest in SEO? Do you do it yourself? Do you have a contractor? Do you have an agency? Do you just not do it? Is your website mobile friendly? So when you load it on your phone, is it fast? Does it, does it fully fit the phone? Does it work correctly? Uh, when you click on a button, that is it kind of janky, you’ll know if your website’s mobile optimized or not. Does your website have clear calls to action?

So does it tell you what to do? Hey, book here, hey, call here. When you’re scrolling down, ideally there’s multiple calls to action. It just keeps telling you what to do. Cause you ultimately your website is a lead generator for you. How often do you post on social platforms? So on your Facebook, on your Instagram, on your LinkedIn, how often are you posting on that? How engaged is your audience? How often are people responding? Uh, do you use paid social media? So you’re running, running ads on really Facebook or Instagram, it could be TikTok, it could be other things.

Who runs your meta ads? Are you doing it yourself? Do you have a contract or agency or are you just not running it so it doesn’t apply? What do you invest monthly into your meta ads? What is your average cost per lead from your meta ads? If you’re running meta ads and you don’t know that, again. Another sign, something we got to work on. Are your ads consistently delivering leads? Should be getting leads at least, you know, a few leads at least a week. Do you run Google ads?

So when I say that, Google Ads, I’m talking about paper click. So when you, when you search on Google, there’s local service ads, that’s the green check, the Google guarantee, and then there’s something that says sponsored. That’s what they’re asking here, Google Paper click. OK, you’re targeting the correct keywords for your business. Decent chance that, that we’re not sure. What is your average cost per lead from Google ads? You can see that the, the numbers here are quite a bit different from the ones in meta ads, from the ones in PaSocial because Google pay per click ads tend to be a lot more expensive leads.

This is the Google local service ads. If you’re not running LSAs, start running them. Doesn’t matter if they’re, if they’re winning for you right now or not waiting for you, run them, answer the phone, get in touch with that lead because that is the future of Google. I’m not going into that right now, but make sure you’re running Google local service ads. What’s your average CPL from Google Local Service ads? Do you give feedback to Google on each lead? When you run a local service ad, Google asks you the quality of the lead.

Play Google’s game. If Google wants you to fill something out, do it. If Google asks you a question, answer it. If Google wants you to pick up the phone, pick up the phone. It’s Google’s world, we’re just living in it. Do you have a formal referral program? You track and reward referrals. If you don’t do that, you probably don’t have a formal referral program. How often do clients refer you to others? Have we tracked that? Do you use yard signs or door hangers in your marketing? Should be a large percentage of you probably do that.

Do you track leads from these activities, a very small percentage of you probably do that. So actually having a specific tracking number QR code and actually knowing where that lead came from, how frequently do you distribute the door hangers? Ideally, you’re, you’re doing like a 5 round, right? Or more on your project. So it would be weekly. Uh, how quickly do you follow up with new leads? You see how there’s a sub 10003 minute there? That’s not because you’re just on your phone all the time, it’s because you use automation, you use a CRM.

Do you use an automated dialer? Again, that would be through a CRM. And then do you have a CRM for lead nurturing? So when a lead comes in. You wanna you wanna own that lead and that leads ecosystem and then the friends of the friends you wanna own that forever, right? You don’t want to just view it transactionally and then ultimately are there unique, are there specific unique selling propositions? Is there, is there some reason that they should pay you more money? It’s always, it’s always crazy, uh, because painting companies, well, you know, they’ll they’ll get a lead and then they won’t, they might call might take them a while to call a lead, they schedule the estimate.

They don’t communicate with the homeowner or the the the property owner before they show up. And then they show up, they don’t have any particular strong sales process. They don’t really have compelling reasons except they provide quality service and quality work. I, I have yet to talk with a painting company that says, you know, our work is pretty mediocre and our service, quite frankly is not very good. Will you hire us? So it’s all quality. So basically you’ve done nothing to differentiate and then you wonder why people are, are, you know, chucking a truck is such a threat.

And then do you sell on value rather than price? You have to give people a reason to pay you more money and still choose you. All right, so we’re gonna go through all that. So it looks like we submitted it now. So we’re gonna basically get our report that’s gonna get emailed to us. And I’m gonna run you through what this looks like. Can I take a selfie with you guys? Is that right? I do like to do that. I’m a mark do you guys know I’m a marketer?

Thank you guys. This, uh, I don’t get nervous speaking that much. I almost threw up before this. This is the, um, it’s candid. I got really nervous. This is like 4 times bigger of a room than I’ve ever presented to. Thank you. Uh, let’s pull up the diagnostic results. So I’ll show you guys what, so this is what it’s gonna look like. It’s somewhat similar to the book that you have. It’s gonna go more into more depth based on what you submitted. So there’s gonna be the, you know, little, little business summary marketing road map.

So the marketing road map that I walked through, you guys are gonna have that digitally in addition to this book. This is our, our fill out, right? It’s got my name, ABC Painting Company. We put $500,000 for our revenue last year and a million for, for our goal for next year, uh, and then $2 million for the goal for 3 years from now. We can keep going. And here’s our marketing road map, so you guys will have this again. Uh, very few of you guys are gonna be at the zero mark and probably not a time will be the 0 to 100, but you can see the always marketing channels and my goal with this was as you scale and grow your company, you can reference it and you can, you can use it as a guide to figure out what kinds of marketing channels you maybe should or should not be focused on at that point because it is so confusing.

Uh, the diagnostic question, so we said we’re getting 50 leads a month at $4000. Um, we got our set in our close right here, 153 $40 and $6000 average project value. So those are, those are our inputs. Who here has this? Who here has received it to their email? I was, I was going to be concerned if no one raised their hand. Um, and then you can see we actually have our answers sent to us here, right? So, so based on what we filled out, so you guys can actually look at this and then here’s where we get the results of what we did.

So we have a, a set rate, we put a set rate of 60%. I went and established something that I’m gonna call the professional standard. We, we were going to put industry benchmark, but the industry benchmark is hellacious for this, right? If we did the industry average, none of you would want to achieve that. So we went and, and we said, what are the best painting companies doing? What are the ones that are actually winning? What are, what are their metrics look like? So we put 80% of the set.

That’s from all different lead sources. If you’re running meta ads, your set rate if it’s 65%, 70%, 60%. That’s good, right? That’s solid. You’re probably using a CRM and you’re doing things the right way, but you’re also gonna get leads from repeat business. You’re gonna get leads from referrals. You’re gonna get, um, all kinds of other leads. So we say 80% across the board as a set rate. Close rate 40%, because if you’re much higher than that, then your prices are too low. But just because you’re at 0003% doesn’t mean your prices are high enough, right?

You have to have a killer sales process and then be at 40%. Average project value we just put 6000. Um, obviously that varies wildly. We got Zach Kenny over there. He’s, his average project values I think 6 million. So really, you know, it just depends. It’s not 6 million, but it’s very high. Um, then we have the, we put the annual revenue, ignore those, ignore those strengths and opportunities headers that was, that was off. Uh, we put annual revenue for 2024 $500,000 for 2025, a million. This question of what should I invest in my marketing is so, is so common.

What’s the default answer? And no one shouted out, default answer. 10%, 60%, yeah, put 10% in your marketing. Who here is investing 10 or more% of your revenue into your marketing? Jason Phillips is Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that weird that only one person in this room raised his hand. It’s the guy who runs like a $15 million painting company and gave the keynote speech, and he’s the guy who’s investing over over 10% of his revenue into marketing. That’s weird. Right? So what we did here, uh, it wasn’t oversimplification. I could stand up here for 4 hours, talk to you about how I, how I think about that, but you want to look at what you’re getting already and then the incremental difference.

So for this mathematical formula, we did 5% of whatever we did last year and then 15% of whatever the incremental gain we’re trying to do. So when you have your, your, um, marketing budget in this example we said 5% of 500,0003 from last year and then we’re looking for a 500,000 delta. So it’s 15% of that because we wanna gain that business. So that’s how we came out to this number. So whatever number you have, that’s, that’s the math behind that. Let’s keep going. And then where, where can you improve? So here’s where you’re getting the detailed feedback, right?

So we, we filled out a lot of stuff intentionally here wrong or not wrong intentionally not best practice, right? Stuff that we shouldn’t be doing so that we could see some, some, uh, real constructive criticism if you will. But if you’re doing it well, it’s also gonna tell you you’re doing well. So here at Google Business profile, have you filled out your profile completely, including product cards? Who here knows what a product card is on Google Business profile? It’s like 3, so, so any time, any time Google Business profile or Google rolls out a new service or, or a new component to to the Google, play the game again the the name of the game here is play the game, make Google happy appease the Google gods, right?

So Google has has these things product cards on the Google business profile. Very few painting companies fill it out because they say we provide a service. We don’t sell a product it’s not relevant. Do something called productize your services, right? So the, the product. Becomes interior painting and you build out product cards. It’s little things like this playing Google’s game that will set you apart if it’s you and another painting company and your review profile is the same, everything’s the same, doing things like that is going to rank you above them.

So that’s where we say, Have you filled it out, uh, completely, including product cards? We said no. Uh, the key insight is an incomplete profile can lead to missed opportunities and reduced credibility. Basically we’re not gonna rank as high. When people are searching for the for the different things in our service area, we’re not always gonna show up in what’s called that map pack those 3 results in the in the little map we won’t show up. We’re saying we’re gonna miss some opportunities because we didn’t fill this out.

So the action step is complete your profile, including product cards to ensure customers have full accurate information about your business. It also ensures that you show up. So there this is how the the questions, the key insight, the action steps are going to show up. Let’s just kind of scroll down. So we have it for Google Business profile. We have it for your SEO. We have it for your website. I think there are a number, maybe 5 pages of this social media ads or social media. So when we say social media we mean organic posting.

So if it’s just social media we just mean you go on and you post, not an ad, uh, meta ads, by the way, I ran the achieving a high ROI with Facebook ads, Bramil table. If you are doing a post and then you’re boosting it, that is not a that you’re not running Facebook ads. That is not Facebook ads. Don’t do that. There are, there are probably a couple of people in here who are succeeding on that very rarely do I hear that being a real win.

That’s a trap. Uh, Google ads, local service ads. We can keep going. Uh, referrals you are signed, so this goes for, uh, I think a few different pages. Let’s kind of scroll through it. Alright, here’s the marketing road map and graph graphical form. So we want you guys to have that graph form, um, I guess infographic, and then here is the, you know, just a, just a plethora of information I think we’re on page 22 of 60, so there’s like whatever that is. Right, 38 pages of basically data on Google Business profile.

What is it? Why is it important? Best practices website, um, what, what kind of lead volume are you gonna get from there? What are some best practices on your site? So guys, use this stuff, reference it, you fill out the form, you got some individual feedback on what you’re doing well, where there’s room for improvement. This isn’t gonna cover everything in the world, but it should certainly give you a very good overview of marketing. It should give you a great way to to kind of decipher the different channels and decide what you want to invest in and.

And when and how to best approach those channels. Who’s got questions for me? I wanted to leave some time for questions. So if they take your Google Business profile down, that’s the question, so they suspend it, disable it. Yeah, figure out why. Sometimes it does happen for no good reason, right? So who did anyone lose reviews last year? Did anyone have some reviews get taken? Yeah, there’s some there’s some nightmare stories about Google’s algorithm going insane. So Google right now is combating AI they’re combating spam. They rolled out more updates last year than they have in a very long time and, and unfortunately a lot of small businesses are facing are are basically being unintended casualties of that, right?

So if you get your Google business profile suspended, you need to file a case with Google you need to figure out why. And then you ultimately need, need to try to get it reinstated. There’s there’s no silver bullet there, but the first thing, a lot of times the reason a Google business profile would get suspended would be due to an address change that’s the most common or some kind of mismatch. Like if you move locations, if they basically think it’s an algorithmic thing, so if they think that you are potentially fraud or spam, that’s how you get suspended.

There are things you can do intentionally that would cause that, but I, I doubt you did that. Who else has a question? Yeah. Advertising budget, yeah, the agency and the management fees are gonna vary wildly we see and that’s a super good question. So I would that in when you’re thinking about it, so there are agencies that write $60 3000 dollars, $4000 a month. If you’re spending that kind of money and you’re not, and you’re only running ads, let’s say, and then your ad budget’s like $500 or $215 to me that doesn’t actually make any sense.

So make sure if you’re, if you’re moving forward with an agency, make sure you’re putting at least around as much money into the ads as you are into the agency. Cause otherwise a lot of your money is just sort of being sunk and it’s not getting you leads so run, run the ads and pay for the marketing when you’re ready. I mean 21000 or 215X there are, there are not a lot of painting companies running over $2000,2270 of me ads a month, but there are some running 2000 $6003 dollars a month, right?

So I think the way I think about an agency is basically an in an in-house marketer because that’s your alternative. You guys can hire an in-house marketer, right? So if you can hire a good in-house marketer for $2600,21.1. What are they gonna do that maybe the agency isn’t gonna do? Are they gonna be good enough? Can you qualify them? So if you’re if you’re spending $23 a month on a marketing agency, that’s about as low as you’re gonna get. Anything under that you should honestly run because it, it’s definitely not good.

1000 is about as low as you’re gonna get. You just gotta make sure the ROI makes sense. So for you factor that in, you factor the cost per lead on your ads. I like to see at least a 1 to 1, if not more, in terms of how much I’m putting on the ads. Some agencies, we do, we oftentimes do a lot of stuff, right? So we might be running the ads, but then we might be doing SCO and social media posting and some other things. So factor that in what else they might be doing.

But if they’re just running the ads, I’m gonna at least want to invest as much into the ads if not more, then I’m paying that agency. But also if you’re running the ads and and you’re going to run it yourself. Don’t burn money just because you don’t want to hire an AC then figure out how to actually do it, right? Take a course or do something. Yeah, Chris. Man, cool question. So biggest upcoming trends that we see. Who, who’s been following kind of the TikTok debacle, the Mark Zuckerberg stuff with social media.

OK, so, uh, a couple trends I gave a whole, whole presentation on this, uh, a lift off. Tenors event, the um. So Google is combating AI. There, there’s a plethora of content entering Google’s ecosystem because you can just have AI write a bunch of pages where you can send out 1000 blocks. Uh, don’t do that because it won’t work and it will get your site penalized greatly. Um, so Google, but, but again people are losing reviews. Uh, there are a lot of unintended consequences by how many updates Google’s rolling out to try to protect the search engine.

If you think about Google’s business case, Google needs to be Google’s the best search engine. We trust Google because the results are good. If I went and I looked for a painting company and I called them and they were terrible or they didn’t answer the phone or God forbid they show me electricians, they’re not even showing me painters, I’m not gonna keep using Google. If this is the kind of experience I continue to have, I’m not gonna keep using Google. So when Google is, is when there’s all this spam rolling out, Google’s having to try to use their algorithm to cut down on all this stuff, uh, and it’s causing some stuff to go haywire.

So that’s going on with Google, TikTok, who here runs TikTok ads? Yeah, we, we’ve tried them. You can actually, I mean, they, they can work well, it’s just the wrong, it’s the wrong customer avatar typically. Someone younger they usually don’t have a ton of money. Uh, TikTok might go away, right? So platforms come, platforms go. Obviously got, if you guys aren’t following it, it, it went dark, it got banned, and then it came back live and now it’s in this kind of 90 day grace period because there’s concerns that it’s, it’s basically a spying mechanism for the, for the Chinese Communist Party.

So. That’s kind of crazy. The, uh, Mark Zuckerberg, who, who hears anyone following that? What’s going on with Mark Zuckerberg in the algorithm? So there, there were like all the fact checkers, right? The fact checkers, some people are like, yes, excellent fact check, get rid of this disinformation, get rid of this hate speech. Other people like this is censorship, this is terrible. So regardless of what side you are on, it’s kind of swinging, uh, to, to being more open so doing away with fact checking. Uh, doing away with, you know, what, what you would define as censorship or what you define as, you know, however you view that and the reason that matters to you is because even though that stuff is really focused on political stuff, uh, not really relevant to painting, it’s changing the algorithm so it’s changing the algorithm anytime you have any time you’re you’re focused on weeding out information you’re actually making the algorithm worse.

So again, regardless of your political affiliation, you’re making the algorithm worse. So when they say, hey, we’re gonna let people post what they post, we’re gonna be a little bit more similar to X, uh, in that way, then the algorithm for your Facebook ads should actually improve. So that’s the good news regardless of where you stand on that. Any more questions? Yeah. So you’re saying 10 to 1.13k is what you’re putting into ads. I mean, you have to figure out your ROI by channel, right? Again, for Google Pay per click, I wouldn’t go under 3500.

For me, I, I, I would not go under 1000 when you’re talking 10 to 15, you’ll be above that, but I wouldn’t go under 1000. For me, I want to see what my cost per lead is, and then I want to see what my set rate is, and then I wanna see what my close rate is by channel. And then ultimately the the profit margin should be consistent. But at the end of the day, revenue is vanity, profit sanity. So I’m gonna see by channel what what is my ROI when I’m looking at profit.

And then I’m gonna allocate my resources effectively if if one is outperforming the other but they’re both positive, I’m not gonna cut the one. I’m gonna prioritize the resources, but again, ads change, algorithms change. I’m gonna keep them both running, but I’m gonna shift the resources because that changes might be the the paper clicks doing phenomenally and meta not so much, and then next month it might change. It’s about, but, but it’s knowing your data. A lot of companies don’t track this, right? I believe. Well, how, how, how, how’s your SEO?

Oh, that’s great. We, we run a report. It’s terrible. Well, no, everyone says they found us through Google. Oh, how, what’s your costly through Google? I don’t know. The ads are working great, so you have to actually know what’s going on to know where to assign your marketing. If you’re on a 15,000 marketing, I’m assuming you’re tracking that, that, that’s pretty healthy, healthy amount. How how I’m sorry, I missed that. How frequently should you be measuring? As I mean you should be looking, you should know it daily, right?

But in terms of deciding whether or not you’re gonna reallocate or make shifts. Weekly, weekly to monthly, yeah, and then you have to factor in seasonality. The one, the one caveat I’ll say with the weekly is, is we’ll be working with painting companies and the meta ads is, is killing it and then all of a sudden it’s like Thanksgiving week or, or like the kids all got out of school this week and and the med ads aren’t doing so oh we gotta stop the med ads so you’re more likely to be overly responsive.

than you are to wait too long to make a change. A marketing strategy that we’ve implemented for our clients that working exceptionally well. Daniel, are you? OK, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna spotlight Daniel, his wife Kirsten, they’re very outspoken, they’re kind of arrogant, um, they like the spotlight. Now they’re amazing, humble people. Uh, they joined us, and I think they’re at 270,000, 270. And their goal was like 600. They got to, I think 1.1 million last year. They’re now looking at 3 million. I’m proud of it because we helped generate a lot of the elites.

But a lot of what we did for them we’ve done for a lot of companies what they did was they focused on the sales process they focused on maximizing the value lead through repeat referral through surrounding the neighborhood so I’m most proud when I work with a company like that. I make a massive change, um, but a lot of it won’t have to do with me. It’s not magic that I did. We just, we ran the, we ran the same playbook and they ran the playbook, right?

Marketings are done with you, not a done for you. Yes, marketing and sales. It’s done with you. Guys, that’s it. I think my time is up. I appreciate you guys. Thank you.

—-

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 Brandon@PainterMarketingPros.com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business. Until next time, keep growing.