How Much Should a Painting Company Spend on Marketing?

Novem­ber and Decem­ber are my two busiest months for help­ing my clients plan for the fol­low­ing busi­ness year (when it comes to mar­ket­ing). Most of my clients have a busi­ness coach who helps them with the over­all busi­ness plan for each year, includ­ing a mar­ket­ing bud­get num­ber. The bud­get num­ber that the busi­ness con­sult­ing firm(s) gives to a paint­ing busi­ness can and does vary quite a bit based on a num­ber of factors.

It Depends

Many times, I am asked what bud­get num­ber I’d invest in the mar­ket­ing as well. I like the way busi­ness con­sul­tants often give sev­er­al ideas of what to spend. How­ev­er, in gen­er­al, many of the painters I work with spend any­where from 3 to 5% on over­all mar­ket­ing based on total rev­enue. So if a sea­soned paint­ing con­trac­tor is bud­get­ing to do $1.5M in rev­enue, he’d be set­ting aside any­where from $45,000 – 75,000 in mar­ket­ing cost. If a paint­ing com­pa­ny is fair­ly new in busi­ness or is new to mar­ket­ing his/​her brand, chances are you might need to spend more than 5%. I know about painters who spend more than 5% on mar­ket­ing because they want to increase their rev­enue goals and expand their ter­ri­to­ry too. So it real­ly just depends on your busi­ness goals and the risk you are will­ing to take in order to grow. 

What If I Don’t Have That Kind of Money?

The mar­ket­ing bud­get ranges that I gave you above are pret­ty stan­dard based on painters I have known and worked with over the past 6 years. How­ev­er, there are times that I am doing busi­ness with a younger com­pa­ny or one that does not have enough cap­i­tal. In this sit­u­a­tion, your best wager is to spend more of your time mar­ket­ing your job through net­work­ing, con­tent mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ty events. These three things should always be part of your mar­ket­ing plan. Grow­ing one’s busi­ness will either be done through hard work (invest­ing your time) or by budgeting/​spending mon­ey on oth­er forms of adver­tis­ing: online, offline, cus­tomers and so forth. If you are ques­tion­ing how to get more help grow­ing your clien­tele and have a ques­tion, please feel free to reach out to me. I am glad to refer you to a good busi­ness part­ner that assists with painters.