How Painting Companies Can Use the Internet to Get Dozens of New Clients

Guest Blog­ger: Zeke Camu­sio, founder of The Out­sourc­ing Company

The Num­bers If you think that peo­ple don’t use the Inter­net to find a great paint­ing com­pa­ny, think again. In 2009, over 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple used Google, LinkedIn, Face­book and Twit­ter to find a com­pa­ny to paint their hous­es and offices. So, What? What does this mean to you? It means that if you’re not online, you’re leav­ing sev­er­al thou­sands of dol­lars on the table. Just to be clear: by ​“online”, I don’t mean just ​“hav­ing a web­site”. Who doesn’t have one of those these days, any­way? What I mean is: 

• You’re on the first page of Google when peo­ple search for ​“paint­ing com­pa­ny” in your local area.
• You earn the trust of your com­mu­ni­ty through Twit­ter, Face­book, YouTube and community.
• You have a web­site cre­at­ed by mar­keters and web design­ers (as opposed to web design­ers alone).

How You Can Use the Inter­net to Mar­ket Your Paint­ing Com­pa­ny These are some great ideas to use the Inter­net to gen­er­ate dozens of hot leads every month. 

• Less Is More Make sure your web­site is clean, orga­nized and easy to navigate.
• Give Some­thing Away for Free Have a free­bie for prospects who aren’t ready to be sold yet. Not every web­site vis­i­tor will become a client. Some are just ​“look­ing around”. Give them some­thing for free, such as a free guide on how to choose the per­fect paint­ing com­pa­ny (be com­plete­ly unbi­ased) or a pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tur­ing some ​“before and after’s” from your pre­vi­ous clients. This will result in two things: 1) You’ll build trust with your prospects by giv­ing them some­thing of val­ue for free and 2) You’ll get your prospect email address in exchange for the free­bie. This will allow you to fol­low up with them after they leave your site.
• Use Tes­ti­mo­ni­als Your prospects will always have some reser­va­tions about work­ing with you the first time they vis­it your site. When you meet prospects in per­son, it’s real­ly easy to over­come their objec­tions. But, when it comes to your web­site, the best way to over­come objec­tions is to show your prospects that oth­er peo­ple just like them had the same reser­va­tions they now have, decid­ed to trust your com­pa­ny and now they couldn’t be hap­pi­er they did. Try to get video tes­ti­mo­ni­als if pos­si­ble. Oth­er­wise, just a few sen­tences on why exact­ly your clients love work­ing with you will be great.
• Have a Blog Write great home improve­ment arti­cles and post them to your blog at least every oth­er week. Share this con­tent with your com­mu­ni­ty using Face­book, Twit­ter and LinkedIn. Also, add a ​“Share” but­ton to your site so your vis­i­tors can share your con­tent with their friends with just one click.
• Increase Your Reach The more peo­ple you reach with your con­tent, the more clients you’ll get. Be proac­tive about get­ting more qual­i­fied prospects on Twit­ter, Face­book and LinkedIn.
• Be First on Google When you search for some­thing on Google, do you click on the first results Google shows you or you go to the 7^th page to see the results there? Of course you click on the first results! That’s what your prospects do too when they search for a paint­ing com­pa­ny in your area. So, you need to be on the first page of Google (prefer­ably at the very top of it).

The Mil­lion-Dol­lar Ques­tion Every day, hun­dreds of prospects are using the Inter­net to find a paint­ing com­pa­ny in your area. Are they find­ing you or your competitors?