Here are 20 tested and ‘mostly’ proven ways to get painting leads, derived from our own experience running large painting companies for the last 16 years. It took a lot of trial and error to form this list (and wasted marketing budget). Hopefully you can learn from our mistakes:
First off, what size company are you?
How to Get Painting Leads (For Small Painting Co’s ~70%)
Most of your time is likely spent painting or on the job site. This makes dedicated time for advertising more difficult. It’s usually a challenge to have responsive follow-up on existing leads or referrals (especially when you’re on a ladder). BUT it’s ok! There are still economical ways you can get more leads:
1) Cultivate Word-of-mouth Referrals.
After you’ve completed the job, just ask the client; ‘Do you have any friends or people you know who also need to paint their house?’ Clients that you’ve done exceptional work for will be happy to throw some referrals your way for instant repeat business.
2) Canvass The Neighborhood
Set aside an hour to canvass the neighborhood where you just completed work. I once booked 3 large exterior jobs that were all next to each other. How? I just walked from neighbor to neighbor and rung their doorbell, or talked to them if they were in their garage or yard. When they answered, i’d say:
“Hi! I’m Chandler from so-and-so painting company. We just painted your neighbors house further up the street. Would you like a free painting estimate?”
3) Lawn Signs
When you spend 8-12 hours a day painting, you don’t have time (or energy) for complex ad campaigns. You don’t have time to learn the intricacies of digital marketing, and from personal experience, most digital marketing firms don’t do a great job anyways.
Make sure you have some professional looking lawn signs made and be sure to ask the client if it’s ok to plant the lawn sign in their front yard. Most homeowners will be ok with this, especially after doing a phenomenal job.
IMPORTANT: Make sure the lawn sign is designed with clear branding, a huge phone number (or QR code) and a call to action, for example; ‘Text us for a free estimate!”
Here is an example of an effective lawn sign versus a busy, confusing lawn sign:
4) Build Relationships With The Paint Store People.
Make friends with the people that work the paint store counter. They run into a lot of people about to paint their house. You can go in to pick up a paint order and just introduce yourself to the folks that work there. Let them know you have a local painting company and ask if they know anyone who needs to paint (they do).
There’s usually a little place where painters put their business cards on the counter, or a bulletin board. Add your business card to the list with modern QR codes and clear messaging.
5) Befriend Roofers.
One of my best, recurring clients for my painting company was a roofer named ‘Greg’. He consistently had 2-3 jobs a month for me. He paid well because I was reliable and our work was clean and organized, so he kept giving me more jobs.
Roofers often have painting work included with insurance claims, but they don’t have a reliable painter. That’s where you come in.
Try calling several roofers in your service area and say:
“Hi, I’m Chandler, I run a painting company in your area. Do you have any paint claims you’d like a free bid on?”
6) Befriend Real-Estate Agents.
Realtors often need a reliable painter in their playbook who can freshen up the interior or exterior of the house before selling. On the buying AND selling side, most homeowners want new paint or new colors.
7) Build Up Your Social Media Pages.
If you use social media, post pictures of your jobs. GOOD PICTURES.
90% of the posts by painting companies are of blurry, crooked job-sites. People subconsciously equate picture quality with your company’s quality. Make sure you revisit which of your posts have good visibility. Take AND Post good pictures only.
You may do great work but prospects might be counting you out based on the images you display.
8) Up-Sell More Painting Work To The Same Customer.
They already paid and trusted you once. It should be quite natural to offer if they want any color changes inside the house. Maybe they have a beat-down deck or fence that needs some love. Don’t ever miss an opportunity to add more revenue with the clients you already have.
How to Get Painting Leads (For Medium Painting Co’s ~25%)
If you’re in the ‘Medium’ group, you should have a little more time to try out different marketing. One way is to buy leads from a leads service. Here are the most relevant ones for house painting:
9) PainterChoice/PaintingLeads.com (“That’s us” by the way)
I feel biased talking about our own lead service, but we have worked with 5,600+ painting companies since 2012 doing one thing: Getting painting leads. Call us if you’re interested (866) 389-2854. We can usually get you 12-16+ leads a month depending on your city/state.
10) Thumbtack
They’re one of the biggest and can get you good lead flow. They cover almost all services, including painting leads. You get a preview of the new lead and then you submit your bid, all through their platform.
11) Angi
They’re another one of the biggest. They used to be two separate companies, HomeAdvisor and Angie’s List. They combined and now they get a healthy lead flow.
12) Networx
They also do many trades and services but can generate painting leads.
Important: Make sure you have an effective sales system in place before buying leads from lead providers. They can get competitive and it usually helps if you can be quick on follow-up. Medium size painting companies usually have a sales person or estimator that can follow up with leads quickly and book enough jobs to make the leads worth their cost.
13) Get Reviews from Every Client You Can
Your public reviews on Google, Yelp or other 3rd-party review sites like Trustpilot are more important than ever. Not only do they help with solid credibility for a prospective homeowner, they also help with SEO (I’ll talk more about SEO in a bit) and your overall ‘online visibility’.
Get your painting company listed on Googles Maps (Business Listings) and start sourcing real reviews from as many past clients as possible. These platforms are getting smarter at detecting ‘fake’ reviews that maybe your friends or family filled out…so make sure the reviews you’re building are authentic.
14) Start Building Your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
There are many ways you can structure your website to get listed in Google organically. That means free traffic from Google and other search/ai platforms, just by making your site ‘crawl-friendly’ and ‘E-E-A-T’. ‘E-E-A-T’ stands for ‘Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. If you design and structure your site to fulfill these 4 categories effectively, you’ll start ranking on Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. You’ll also start to rank for ‘AI Overlays’ on Gemeni and Chatgpt among others.
We’ve done this for all of our websites that we use to generate painting leads for our painting contractors.
P.S. We’ve had a lot of success growing painting companies SEO and actually getting them listed and positioned for free traffic. Again, call us if you’re interested: (866) 389-254. Our last client in Houston went from virtually invisible to getting 10-12 leads a month through Google Ads and ranking for relevant ‘Painter’ searches on the organic traffic side.
Try Google Ads, Chatgpt Ads, Facebook Ads
Each of these platforms is a whole tutorial in itself, so you might want to hire someone more experienced and knowledgable in the PPC world. But the painting companies that are getting all this extra traffic and lead flow are dominating.
15) Google Ads – You can try yourself first, but most campaigns don’t convert and generate more prospects if both the Ads and Your Website are not designed correctly.
16) ChatGPT – These are still quite new and initial findings are not great..But I suspect these will perform better over time.
17) Facebook Ads – These are performing great for several of our in-network painting contractors. But again, these have to be setup in a way that actually works and converts people into qualified leads.
18) Try a Direct Mail Advertising Campaign
Target neighborhoods that were built 8-15 years ago. They are now ripe and ready for exterior painting. Send effective mailers directly to homeowners in these neighborhoods. Make sure the design of your flyer is engaging, clear, not too busy and has an incentive for calling: ‘10% OFF All Painting Services By Presenting This to Your Estimator’.
How to Get Painting Leads (For Large Painting Co’s ~5%)
As a larger, more established painting company in your city, you might have tried all of these methods already. You’re at the stage where you can invest a little heavier in the more expensive, innaccessible painter marketing that smaller companies have a hard time affording.
19) Dominate SEO
We really recommend hiring a professional for good SEO. As we’ve learned from painful experience, a lot of agencies claim to know good SEO practices when they actually don’t.
How Much Does Good SEO Cost for Painting Companies?
If an agency or freelancer says they can do good SEO for your website for $500 a month, you should run. Getting ranked on Google takes more specialized work than $500 a month.
Expect to pay $2,000-$8,000 a month for proper SEO from firms that know what they’re doing. We do SEO for some of our partners through our PainterChoice Ultra program. Contact us if you’d like to learn more about it.
20) Sponsor Events Like Farmers Markets, Parades, Home-shows, Trade-shows
You can get a TON of leads by just showing up with a booth and having one of your top sales people run it as your ‘lead-sourcer’. Look into costs to sponsor or secure a booth by going to the events main website.
Ok, that was a lot of painter marketing ideas. We recommend trying the cheapest avenues first and working your way down the list as you grow:
