Marketing for painting contractors: stop bidding against six other painters.
Shared-lead marketplaces sell the same homeowner to every painter in town, then make you race to the bottom on price. Internet marketing for painting contractors done right means owning your own leads: here’s the stack, the real costs, and a calculator for what your spend should be producing.
Where the money goes — and why.
Own your leads
LSA and search ads bring homeowners straight to your phone — no marketplace, no shared lead, no bidding war. Exterior repaint and cabinet-refinish keywords carry the biggest tickets.
Transformation content
Painting is the most before-and-after-friendly trade there is. Color-transformation reels and cabinet makeovers are cheap, endless ad creative — and Meta serves them to homeowners already saving inspiration photos.
Reviews decide painters
Homeowners let painters inside their homes — reviews matter more here than almost any trade. An automated review engine after every job compounds into the map-pack position that makes leads nearly free.
What is your ad spend producing — and what should it produce?
Drag the sliders to what you spend and pay per lead today. The right column shows the typical range after proper management — tighter targeting, weekly negative keywords, faster landing pages — plus leads recovered by missed-call text-back.
Estimate based on typical results from removing junk clicks (15–30% of unmanaged budgets), landing-page fixes, and missed-call recovery (contractors miss 20–35% of calls). Ranges, not promises — your audit shows the numbers for your actual market. Ad spend is always paid straight to Google/Meta, never marked up.
Your first 90 days, week by week.
No mystery retainer. This is the exact rollout order, the same one we run for every client — each phase starts producing before the next one starts spending:
Audit + foundations
We audit your rankings, ad accounts, tracking and competitors, then fix the free stuff first: Google Business Profile completed, review engine on, tracked numbers on everything. You get the findings in writing within 24 hours of the first call.
LSA live
Google Guaranteed screening submitted day one — it takes 1–3 weeks to approve, so it runs while everything else is built. Pay-per-call only. First calls typically land here.
Search ads launch
Campaigns split by service and intent, each with its own landing page and budget. Emergency terms and big-ticket terms never share a campaign. Weekly negative-keyword pruning starts immediately.
Website + conversion
Fast pages, click-to-call everywhere, instant estimator, proof blocks. Every channel lands here — fixing it mid-rollout means every dollar before and after works harder. Automations (missed-call text-back, review requests, reminders) go live.
Content, Meta & SEO compound
Monthly film day starts feeding Meta ads and GBP. Retargeting switches on. City/service SEO pages publish and start their climb. From here it’s weekly tuning and a Friday text with the four numbers that matter: spend, calls, cost per call, estimates booked.
Want the full channel-by-channel playbook? Read the digital marketing for contractors guide →
Straight answers.
What does a painting lead cost?
Owned leads via LSA and search: $25–$80 in Florida markets. Marketplace leads look cheaper per lead but close far worse because five painters got the same one — cost per booked job is what matters.
Interior or exterior — which should I advertise?
Exterior and cabinet work carry bigger tickets and search volume in Florida runs year-round. But interior fills weather weeks and keeps crews busy — we run both with separate campaigns and shift budget by season.
How do painting companies compete with cheap unlicensed painters?
Don’t race them to the bottom — outrank them. Licensing, reviews, GBP photos and financing options filter for the homeowners who care about quality. The ones price-shopping $800 whole-house repaints were never your customer.
Get a free audit — see your market's real numbers.
One call. Within 24 hours you get it in writing: where you rank, what leads cost in your market, and what your top three competitors are running.
No card. No contract. Takes one phone call.