How to set up a Painting Business

So, you have been working as a painter for some time now and you are looking to venture out on your own, find your own clients and manage your own projects.

You have perhaps also competed a few jobs and are wondering “where to from here”?

How do I find enough work to keep me busy and perhaps hire other contractors?

First of let me start by saying that running your own painting business is much more than painting a few walls. It requires patience, persistence, IT skills and most of all interpersonal skills to gain a competitive advantage over others within the industry. But if you think that you have what it takes to make it here is a list of what I think are the most important steps when setting up your own painting business.

Know what is required in your area

Check your local/state/county rules for setting up a painting business. Be sure to have the proper licensing and insurance as required. If you are working on pre 1978 homes (in the US), be sure to have your RRP Certification in order.

Design and print some business cards

There is always the options of designing these yourself, but if you want to make an impression it is important that they look professional. If you haven’t got at least some design experience it is best to hire someone to do this for you. Your business cards should include your phone number, email address and web address as well as a brief list of painting services offered – i.e.interior painting, exterior painting, commercial painting, residential painting

Set up a Website

There are currently a number of website design platforms available, which feature templates that do not require any knowledge of html coding, the most popular and well known of these being WordPress. Perhaps you can have a go at designing a website yourself or if you are lacking experience hire a professional. 

Make sure you use keywords throughout your site that potential customers would use when search for a painting business. Include Alt tags on all your images and make sure you use unique titles, descriptions, H1 tags, and keywords for each one of your pages. Once your site is optimised Google spiders will start crawling and indexing your site.

                                                                                Start Blogging

Pick something to blog about that is going to interest potential customers. Make sure that your content is of high quality that others may link to, which will provide valuable backlinks that are going to boost your ranking on Google. Another way to approach this, is to log all the jobs you do on your blog so once you have a some jobs under your belt your blog will be a comprehensive portfolio of your work. View an example of a painting blog featuring recent work here.

Things to include in your posts are:

• Video footage of you and your painting contractors at work
• Photographs of houses or rooms after painting
• Videos and photographs showing you and your painters transforming properties

Get your Online Presence in order

List your business in popular local directories such as Yellow Pages, Hot Frog, Start Local, True Local and Yelp or any others that may be relevant in the area you live in. Get active on social media – set up social media accounts on all the major platforms and start posting regularly. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+ are a must.

Set up a Google Analytics account and monitor the traffic you are getting to your site.

Register for a Google Search Console account – where you can keep track of the search result you appear in including the number of impressions for each keyword, your position and click through rate. Make sure you submit a sitemap, to make it easier for Google to crawl your site.

Set up an Adwords account and run some ads – It will take a while for your site to generate traffic in organic search and this will largely depend on the quality of your content and number of competitors in the market you are in. In the meantime running paid advertising will help

generate leads for your painting business.

Set up an email in Google Apps featuring your business name – this will make you appear more professional when contacting customers.

Visit construction sites – In addition to your online activity you should also start to network on a regular basis. Make it a habit to visit at least two construction sites per day and ask to speak to the person in charge, which will usually be a site manager or supervisor. Ask whether they already have someone who is going to paint the building. Regardless if they do or don’t, hand them your business card and let them know that you are interested in quoting on upcoming projects.

Call builders – Look up local builders in your area on Google Maps and start to call a few each day. Ask to speak to someone in estimating and find out if they have any current tenders or jobs ready for painting. Tell them about your business and request to be considered for quoting on future jobs.

Network – Hand out your business card at every social gathering you attend: birthdays, weddings, christenings you name it. Use every opportunity to casually drop what you do when meeting people in your day to day life. Word of mouth is truly the best way to find work as people are more trusting of recommendations as opposed to advertising.

Find other contractors-Join an online forum or Facebook Group and discuss ideas with other contractors.

Put some signage on your van – This is your free portable advertising space that should always be used. Featuring an attractive display on your vehicle is going to send a signal of professionalism and quality to potential customers.

 Attach “Painting by…” signs to the front of your house and potentially other houses you have painted if permitted by customers. This is direct evidence of the quality of your work which encourages people walking by to contact you.

Collect Testimonials-Use video or review sites

As you can see setting up a painting business requires a great deal more than simply picking up a paint roller. If you have anything to add to this list please include this in the comment section below.

Otherwise I wish you the best of luck and I hope that you have a great deal of success venturing out on your own.

Ana Bosnjak   Marketing Manager, Zoom Painting

Mobile: 0401909755 Email: rade@zoompainting.net Website: http://www.zoom-painting.com.au/

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How to Market your Painting Business Online

Do you want to give your client list a boost without spending a fortune on marketing and advertising? Going digital is a great, low-cost way to turn idle hours into more work than you can handle. These tips will help you to successfully market your painting business online…

1. Create a Hub

If you come across a company or business you don’t know online, what is the first thing you do to check them out more thoroughly? You visit their website.

Without a website, it’s very tricky for any business to earn the trust of potential customers. In an age of instant Googling from smartphones, having an established, trustworthy and professional-looking online presence in the form of a website is crucial.

Check out our Road Map for more info

There’s another reason why websites are great business-boosters – they allow customers to find you in the first place. If you keep your website up to date and fill it with helpful news and information about your work in your local area, it’s likely that your website will appear higher up search engine results pages (SERPs) when people look for services like yours in your region.

But the idea of launching a website can seem intimidating and sound expensive, especially for sole traders with no digital expertise. Fortunately, there are tonnes of services which provide handy tools that will help you build a website for little or no money, with no need for previous experience with the web. For a sleek and flashy look, splash out on Squarespace‘s services, or read up on tutorials to build your own WordPress site.

2. Get Local

Once you’ve established your online hub to earn trust, showcase your services and help your business rank online, it’s time to turn your attention to your local area. As a painter, you’re likely to be based regionally, which it why it’s important to target your online activities towards your area – otherwise you’ll find yourself expending lots of resources for very little attention.

There are lots of ways to get involved with your local area online and make your presence known. Why not:

• Create social media accounts and connect with other business, councils, organisations and individuals in your area. Don’t take an overtly promotional approach, but make sure you communicate, debate and assist where you can to get your business noticed. Next time someone needs a painter, they may recommend you!

• Share local projects which you’ve completed on your new website’s blog. Ask your customer’s permission to use their property as a case study, take pictures, describe the project and then upload it to your blog, making sure you include information about the property’s geographical location in the text. This could help local customers find you online in future.

3. Get Listed

Finally, for a quick fix, don’t overlook the many tradespeople websites online. Many of these will charge for entry into their directory, but they are a good, low-effort way of getting found and generating exposure. The most widely used include:

• Rated People
• Trust a Trader
• Yell.com

Have you used any other techniques to market your painting and decorating business online? Share your success stories and learning curves with other traders below.

By Sam Butterworth, blog editor at Regal Floor Paints

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Let Ottawa Painting Make Your Room More Productive

Ottawa Painters Know the Psychology of Colour

A deep red accent wall might be a unique way to make a bold statement in your home, but do you know which room red works best in? The psychology of colour explores the ways we react emotionally to the shades around us and how they energize or soothe. Ottawa painters know that emotional attachments to colour are universal, but you can also use your own experiences with colours to trigger feelings of well-being, productivity, and comfort. Consider a few ways these colours can be used for your next Ottawa painting project.

Energetic Hues

Red is a bold colour that increases energy, appetite, and even raises your blood pressure! Ottawa painters know that this is the perfect colour for a dining room (think about all the restaurants you eat at with red interior decor). Because red is so stimulating, it is best left out of the bedroom or any other space that you want to be tranquil. But dining rooms and front foyers are great locations to be bold.

For a bright, sunshine-inducing splash, add yellow to entryways, hallways, and small areas that you want to cheer up and chase the darkness away. But beware of letting yellow dominate too much as it can be overstimulating. Yellow can contribute to outbursts of anger or feelings of frustration when used in large amounts. Keep it small and bright.

When you are looking for a burst of energy, orange can motivate you to run that extra mile or complete one more set of reps. Orange is the perfect colour for your exercise space to encourage you like no other personal trainer.

Chilled Out Hues

Where red raises blood pressure, blue lowers it. Blues are known to slow heart rates and perspiration. This calming colour is great for bedrooms and bathrooms where you want to relax and rejuvenate. Be careful about which shade of blue you choose. Lighter blues can seem dingy or dark in areas without much light. If this is your vision, balance this hue with some warm accents for a welcoming oasis.

In rooms where you want to promote comfort and togetherness, turn to greens. Greens are restful and calming in kitchens and living rooms where your family will unwind after a long day of work, school, and all the activities that keep you going.

Neutrals: Beige, Brown, White

Neutral tones are the staple of any interior design project. An all-neutral palette is well blended for a minimalist environment, the true treasure behind these tones is their versatility. They are easily paired with warm and cool hues while also working together. Use them in any room to soften or accentuate any colour scheme.

Your next Ottawa home painting project can easily be boosted and personalized with the right colour for what your room is used for. Let Ottawa painters help you discover your perfect colour combination.

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If You Don’t Go Paperless Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

Do you have boxes of paper taking up space in your office? Receipts stacked up on your dashboard? Don’t wait until you are on the next episode of Hoarders. Go paperless. Eliminate the headache of messy file cabinets, lost receipts, unreadable mileage logs, and cluttered painting vehicle dashboards and home office desks.

Reasons you need to go paperless in your painting business

1. Increase efficiency by eliminating the search for paper documents.
2. Present a professional image to your clients.
3. Save time by creating a faster work-flow between yourself, your bookkeeper, and your employees.
4. Eliminate filing cabinets and reduce office space.
5. Build rapport with clients stating that you are “going green”.
6. Secure backup of documents on the cloud.
7. Access your files anytime, anywhere.

Okay, now that you are convinced you need to go paperless, where should you start?

Steps to making your painting business paperless

1. Get a cloud-based bookkeeping software. Quickbooks Online Plus has job-costing functionality that allows you to access your information anytime, anywhere. You can also complete estimates, invoices, and payroll all from your mobile device with the Quickbooks Online app. To see how to setup your painting business on Quickbooks Online Plus, you can watch a video I developed to walk you through the steps.

2. Use cloud-based file storage. In order to get the full benefit of going paperless, getting a cloud based file storage system is a must. Storing your files in the cloud allows you to access those files on any device, from anywhere. There are several options for cloud storage to include Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box.com. Google Drive has the added benefit of web-based document creation. With tools like Google Calendar, Google Sheets (similar to Microsoft Excel), and Google Docs (similar to Microsoft Word) you can do office work from the jobsite.
3. Use mobile mileage tracking. Ditch the paper mileage log. TripLog is an app you can download on your phone that integrates with Quickbooks Online. The app tracks your mileage for your painting business to allow you to write off the expense using the standard mileage rate on your taxes.

4. Use mobile employee time tracking. No more paper time sheets. TSheets is an app that integrates with Quickbooks Online Plus. TSheets allows employee to clock-in once they get to the jobsite using their phone. TSheets also allows managers to track the location and time in real-time to ensure employees are where they should be.

5. Get electronic signatures from customers. Once you do an estimate and contract, you’ll need a signature. Look into getting electronic signatures from your clients. SignNow.com gives you the ability to have your clients sign on your tablet or smartphone for $5 a month. Not only is this convenient, it also makes you look more professional.
6. Manage your receipts with the cloud. Hubdoc is once again, you guessed it, an app that integrates with Quickbooks Online and to your cloud based file system. When you get a paper receipt, simply snap a picture with your phone, and Hubdoc organizes and classifies the receipt with your bookkeeping software. You can also have all your vendors send you electronic bills to a special Hubdoc email, and Hubdoc categories, syncs with your bookkeeping software and pushes a copy to a cloud storage folder you designate.

7. Get a scanner. In order to digitize all your current paper documents, get a scanner. A fast and efficient scanner that I use is the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500.

Once you’ve completed these steps, you will save yourself a great deal of time through gained efficiencies, easier collaboration, and less clutter.

If you’re interested in more tips about bookkeeping and how to improve your painting business, you can go to my website and get a free report for painting contractors.

I am a former painting business owner and military officer, and current bookkeeper and tax accountant. With my painting and accounting experience, I’m uniquely positioned to help painting contractors save time, money, and resources.

For years I worked in the residential and commercial painting industry. I did everything from prep work and painting to managing crews and completing estimates with clients.

After my stint in the painting industry, I pursued an education in business and accounting and served as a military officer in the intelligence field. I have a Bachelors in Accounting and a MBA.

During my time in the intelligence field, I learned the value of being proactive and staying ahead of the enemy. I apply this mentality to my accounting practice through forward-looking advice to my clients. I don’t just report; I analyze and forecast. This provides immense value to the clients I serve and builds trust.

I am passionate about sharing my knowledge of taxes and business to help painting contractors grow their company.

I only work with a select few painting contractors and provide professional, prompt service to ensure their success.

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4 Important Google Adwords Extensions for Painting Contractors – Boost Click Thru Rates!

What do Ad Extensions do?

Ad extensions do exactly what their name implies by “extending” your text ads to include additional information about your painting business. This additional information boosts ad visibility and prominence leading to increased click thru rates (CTR) on your ads. Ad extensions are a proven way to generate more clicks on your ads and improve the performance of your Google Adwords campaign without increasing your budget.

For painting contractors, the most important extensions are sitelink, callout, location, and call. Here is a quick explanation and example of each:

1. Sitelink Extensions

These extensions appear as hyperlinks at the bottom of the ad and direct clicks to other landing pages on your website. An excellent example is circled in red below. A user might prefer clicking on a link to the testimonials or services page rather than the main link. The sitelink extensions are circled in red in this picture:

2. Callout Extensions

Quick “shout outs” of information, callout extensions are a great place to highlight reasons to work with your painting business. Painters have to create their own callouts, but to save your business time, here is a list of 50 great ad callout extensions for contractors. “Spotless Cleanup” and “Free Written Estimates” are examples of callouts in this ad:

3. Location Extensions

Exactly what they sound like, location extensions provide the physical address and hours of your business. This data is imported by linking your Google My Business and Google Adwords accounts. Here is an example of a location extension:

4. Call Extensions

A great way to generate phone calls, call extensions add your phone number right into the body of your ad. Call extensions have the biggest impact on mobile devices, enabling ads to launch calls right to your business! Checkout this example of a mobile ad using a call extension:

Ready to start using ad extensions?

Since using ad extensions is totally free, every painter running a Google Adwords campaign needs to take advantage of them. If your Google Adwords campaign is outsourced, be sure to ask your provider about your current use of ad extensions. If you manage your Google Adwords in-house, and want to set up ad extensions, Google offers free resources to guide you through the set up process. The Google Help Tutorial on ad extensions is a great guide and the Google Adwords YouTube Channel offers multiple videos on ad extensions.

Need a specific question answered? Feel free to email the author or post it in the comment section below. Expect a quick response!

Interested in learning how Google Adwords can grow your painting business? Please contact AltaVista Strategic Partners, an official Google Partner agency, to set up a free consultation!

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Vice President of Digital Marketing at AltaVista Strategic Partners

Aaron Hockel is a partner and the vice president of digital marketing at AltaVista Strategic Partners, a full service marketing agency working exclusively with commercial and residential contractors. AltaVista specializes in marketing campaigns designed to generate top of funnel sales leads. Their services include email marketing, direct marketing, search engine marketing, and social media marketing. As a proud PDCA member, Aaron and the team at AltaVista currently work with more than 40 painting contractors around the country.

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Catchlight Painting Y.E.S Program

How We Ran a Successful Community Based Promotion as a Local Business

 

At Catchlight Painting, we’re always looking for creative ways to raise awareness of our residential painting company and our desire to be recognized as a community partner. When DYB business coach, Steve Burnett shared an initiative he’d used successfully to brand his own painting company – a scholarship award given annually to a young entrepreneur within his service area – the idea aligned with our own objectives so we thought we’d give it a shot. Here’s what we did, what we learned, and how we’ll improve the rollout of our program next year.

Every Journey Begins with a First Step (What we did)

Our first step was to meet with our digital marketing consultant to discuss the logistics of running a successful campaign on short notice. Before jumping in with other tasks, we refined our objectives which were to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Provide a community service
• Inspire a young entrepreneur

Next we shaped our sponsorship program by:

• Creating a name. (We chose Youth Entrepreneur Sponsorship Award: E.S!)
• Deciding who would qualify. (We chose local youth age 15-20)
• Deciding the value of the award offered. (We chose from $200 to $1,000)
• Deciding what we’d ask of each applicant. (We chose to ask for contact information and a paragraph describing what they’d like to do and how they’d use the funding)
• Creating a sponsorship logo, description, submission form, website landing page, etc.
• Establishing deadlines and announcement dates
• Assigning tasks

Getting The Word Out (How we did it)

Once we had discussed and solidified the list of tasks above, it was time to develop a marketing strategy, more specifically, how to successfully get the word out utilizing our existing marketing channels and relationships. As it was our first year and already late in the season, we decided to limit our 2016 sponsorship to our hometown of Newton MA, which helped us narrow and define our promotion strategy.

The first no-brainer was to create a custom audience in Facebook and boost a post announcing the sponsorship to our Newton community.

We identified the relationships and entities that we could leverage to spread the word within our local community including:

• Local Chamber of Commerce
• News outlets
• Online event calendars
• Local organizations we donated to or had an active membership
• Email blast

What We Learned and What We’ll Do Differently Next Year

We knew from Double Your Business Coach Steve Burnett that we were unlikely to receive more than a few applications. However, as our submission deadline approached, we still hadn’t received even a single applicant. Giving away money can be harder than you’d think! Our branding objective had been incredibly successful with a 75% eblast open rate and a large number of Facebook likes and campaign shares, but we were getting nervous!

 

The above screenshot shows the analytics data for our sponsorship landing page. In addition to creating a specific landing page for the campaign, we also created a form to track where submissions originated.

At the 11^th hour we finally received one word of mouth submission from an applicant who tracked us down on Facebook. Quality trumps quantity and we couldn’t have been more pleased with the submission we received from Lydia Jing who sought to start a “premium” babysitting, tutoring and mentoring business.

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Once the dust settled and we’d announced our sponsorship winner on our website and Facebook pages, we regrouped as a team to discuss what worked, and what we’d do differently next year. Here’s what we learned:

• Do a more comprehensive job of getting our message in front of our client’s audience and youth audiences
• Do a more comprehensive job of getting our message in front of our client’s audience and youth audiences
• Start program roll out mid-winter, perhaps in January, via a post card mailing, flyers email blast to existing clients, out-reach to local high schools, Rotary, civic organizations, religious organizations, BNI chapters, etc
• Place ads in local newspaper – or see which might pick the campaign up as a news story
• Leverage a PR professional for additional press coverage
• Leverage existing relationships to see who might want to post about the sponsorship opportunity on their own professional website and social media channels
• Refine our online content assets e.g. video, images, web copy, etc.
• Prepare better for phase two: Recipient interview, photography and mentoring
• Prepare better for phase three: Announcement of recipient (follow up newspaper article, blog, video, website page update)
• Include an offer of optional mentoring/business consultation along with funding
• Stipulate that the recipient reports back in 6-10 weeks to let us know how things went

All in all, this was a great experience. We plan on making our Youth Entrepreneur Sponsorship Award an annual event and perhaps expand the number of awards offered.

Y.E.S! Winner Announcement 2016

Your Turn

If you’ve run a sponsorship, event or giveaway in your local community, we’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below.

Deborah Costolloe streamlines daily operations, keeps back-burner projects front-and-center, and oversees Catchlight’s marketing and community involvement. When not in the office or spending time with Nigel and their two teenage sons, there’s a good chance she’s making jewelry or walking in the woods with office dog Huey.

 

 

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Angie’s List Reviews: More Important Than Ever

Angie’s List reviews are now visible to anyone and everyone. In March the site announced it would no longer require paid memberships to access their online business listings and reviews. While this announcement was met with little fanfare, the potential impact on residential and commercial painting contractors is huge. Here is why this matters to every painting contractor:

More people are going to see your Angie’s List Reviews.

Access to Angie’s List reviews about your painting services was previously limited to the sites 3,000,000+ paid subscribers. Now consider there are roughly 86,000,000 homeowners in the United States. Potential exposure to your Angie’s List reviews just increased more than 26 times. What do you want them to see?

Angie’s List is all over the first page of Google.

Like it or not, Angie’s List has done a great job entrenching itself on the first page of Google. This is especially true for searches related to generic contracting terms and name specific searches for contracting businesses. They also buy Google Adwords for contracting specific keywords in many markets.

Online reviews matter, so Angie’s List reviews matter.

Research on consumer reviews indicate that 92% of consumers read online reviews and 80% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. With Angie’s List going to a free model, more people than ever will have access to their reviews on your painting business. It is important Angie’s List reviews on your painting services encourage prospective customers to hire you.

What should my painting business do?

1. Claim your Angie’s List profile. This will allow you to checkout your current reviews and register for alerts when new reviews are posted to your listing.

 

1. Develop a plan to drive more reviews to your business. Reputation Stacker is an affordable online software that helps drive reviews from satisfied customers. It also never hurts to ask happy customers to leave a review about your services.

 

1. Negative reviews are virtually unavoidable today, so make sure your painting business has a plan of action in the event of a bad review Here are 10 tips for responding to negative online reviews.

What does all this mean?

Put simply, your Angie’s List reviews are now more important than ever. They are fully accessible to anyone with internet access and Angie’s List will continue to have a consistent presence on the first page of Google. The goal for Angie’s List in making this move is to increase site traffic which will indirectly increase the number of people reading Angie’s List reviews about your painting business.

Need a specific question answered? Feel free to email the author or post it in the comment section below. Expect a quick response!

Interested in a dedicated strategy for generating positive online reviews about your painting business? Contact AltaVista Strategic Partners to set up a free consultation!

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Aaron

Vice President of Digital Marketing at AltaVista Strategic Partners

Aaron Hockel is a partner and the vice president of digital marketing at AltaVista Strategic Partners, a full service marketing agency working exclusively with commercial and residential contractors. AltaVista specializes in marketing campaigns designed to generate top of funnel sales leads. Their services include email marketing, direct marketing, search engine marketing, and social media marketing. As a proud PDCA member, Aaron and the team at AltaVista currently work with more than 40 painting contractors around the country.

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