6 Secrets Every Painter Must Know About Internet Marketing

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Copyright (c) 2013 Painter Marketing Solutions

It wasn't until 1992 that it the internet became available for public use. Fast forward to 2005 in the residential painting industry when "just be there and customers will come" was the marketing strategy of most residential painters. Many painters had websites, most didn't. The websites that most painters did have were basic in nature and would be laughed at today. Initially only a handful of painters made the leap into Internet marketing.

These days Internet marketing is all anybody really talks about. When you need advice you likely turn to the internet. When I started talking to painters about marketing online, painters were telling me the internet didn't fit their local business or it didn't apply to painting.

The primary point of this article is to clear up the most common myths and misunderstandings I hear as I speak to painting contractors on the topic of marketing…especially Internet marketing.

Secret #1: Never Measure Results By Tracking Cost Per Lead/Click.

Warning: to really teach this section properly, it requires that I be honest enough that it will likely make me unpopular among certain crowds...but that's fine since my purpose is to educate you, the residential painter.

One of the most costly beliefs is that you should measure your internet marketing success by focusing on Cost-Per-Lead. Cost-Per-Lead is calculated by taking your total investment in your marketing campaign and dividing it by the number of leads. If your Internet marketing company brags about how low your cost per lead is, you should consider whether they have your best interest at heart. Here's why: leads aren't worth anything to you. Leads don't hire you to paint their home, customers do. Which would you rather have of the follow two scenarios? #1: An insanely low Cost-Per-Lead generating 5 customers from 25 leads, who average $1000 in services, or…#2 A Cost-Per-Lead triple that of #1 that generates 15 customers from 25 leads, who in turn average $3500 in services? Cost-Per-Lead is one very small piece of the equation.

Here's an ugly truth: most Internet marketing companies take 15% of your Pay per Click (PPC) budget as part of their fee. The more you spend on PPC, the more money some Internet marketing companies make. They have little incentive to evaluate more valuable metrics.

PPC campaigns are set up by bidding on keywords and key phrases. In our industry, you definitely want to bid on "house painting ". It's wise to bid on many, many keywords and different phrases as consumers use different search patterns.

Here's where many painters are getting ripped off by their Internet marketing firm. That click mentioned in the previous paragraph is counted as a lead in most tracking systems. Since residential painting is such a localized market, it's a waste to bid on keywords and phrases that aren't in your real target market. You can see how easy it is for an Internet marketing company to tell you your cost per lead is great, asking you to increase your PPC budget and add 15% to their bottom line.

Fortunately, this problem is easily solved by focusing on the most important marketing tracking metric of all time: COST PER CLIENT ACQUISITION. Clients pay you money, leads don't. As long as your cost per client acquisition stays acceptable, it's fine to increase your PPC budget.

Secret #2: It Doesn't Take Forever To Get on the First Page of Google.

You can have your company listed in two places on the first pages of major search engines as fast as a couple days and certainly within a couple weeks. The two, very visible and effective areas you can be on quickly are the local maps (Google Places) and the Pay per Click (PPC) portion of the search results page.

Your Google Places listing, will be located as a push-pin marker in the map you see when you search locally. This is the prime search engine real estate and gets a lot of traffic since Google has become the default search engine. It's FREE! Google doesn't charge anything for that listing, though this might not be FREE for long, so I suggest you take advantage of that if you haven't.

The second area you can be listed on the first page of Google is in the PPC sections, on the very top and right of the page called "Sponsored Links". Most painters know what PPC is and, if your marketing firm knows what they're doing, it should take days, not weeks to get you listed and receiving customers from PPC. You can lose a small fortune if you attempt setting up a PPC campaign without knowing what you're doing. Anybody that does their own PPC campaign is likely wasting at least as much money as it would cost to hire a firm that knows what they're doing.

The third area which should also be focused on is called Organic or Natural Search Engine Optimization, an area that does take time. In some markets it doesn't take too long, in others it can take months.

You should be happy to know you can begin receiving traffic from the first pages of even Google, in a few days when you work with somebody who knows what they're doing.

Secret #3: The Internet has not Killed Yellow Pages.

How many times have you heard "the Yellow Pages are dead, get out of them, etc."? Here's the truth: Yellow Pages are dead in some markets but alive and well in more markets. In surveying painters in almost every market across the United States, some of them get a greater ROI on their Yellow Pages than the Internet.

Here's another shocker: there are many markets in this country that still don't have enough Internet search traffic for professional painting that only FREE Internet marketing pays off.

I've seen more than 50 painting contractors watch their income and number of jobs drop like a rock because they decided to get out of the Yellow Pages, advice that was almost deadly and has become expensive to fix.

The Internet is extremely relevant and should be tested for almost every painter. But, in many markets the Yellow Pages are still the number one source of new jobs, next to referrals.

The most honest advice I can give you is to rigorously test every marketing medium you use and make decisions based on what works for you in your market.

Secret #4: If You Have An Internet Connection and Can Read, You Can Generate Quite A Bit of Traffic From The First Pages of Search Engines Without Hiring an Expert.

In secret #2 I mentioned "local maps" and a tool called Google Places. These are currently free and you don't need to hire an agency or marketing specialist to set these up. Studies have shown these free maps can receive more traffic than PPC and natural/organic listings!

If you're not working with an agency to manage your Internet marketing, stop reading this article and set these up immediately. If you are working with an Internet marketing agency, they should already have this if they're any good.

Secret #5: The Internet is not Confusing and Dangerous For Our Needs.

To many the Internet is an is overwhelming and confusing machine. The Internet is just another marketing medium. It's just like Yellow Pages, direct mail, newspaper ads, Television, Radio, etc. It's one of many ways to attract new customers.

Don't get overwhelmed and confused. Hire a good, trusted and reputable firm to handle it for you and you'll be able to see reporting that tells you exactly what you're getting.

Secret #6: The Internet is Not the End-All, Be-All Marketing Tactic.

There are many Internet marketing companies that will lead you to believe that you won't ever need to consider another marketing strategy or tactic again. Ouch!

It's hard to gather really reliable facts, but those who spend a fortune on Internet marketing and have extremely good campaigns put together only seem to pull 30% - 40% of their new customers from the Internet. Where do the other 60% - 70% of the new customers come from? The average contractor has closer to 15% of new customers coming through their Internet marketing.

A good marketing plan should include a robust, Internet marketing campaign and a dozen or so offline strategies that drive predictable, affordable and consistent new customers to your business. Far too many companies put all their marketing eggs in the Internet marketing basket only to be sorely disappointed.

Internet marketing is a solid marketing strategy for many painters across the country. Internet marketing combined with innovative offline sales and marketing strategies is the winning combination. In addition to more customers, you'll acquire them at a lower cost and be diversified in your job acquisition strategies so if one quits working, you'll still be in good shape.

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