Painter Advertising: Digital Marketing Ads that get Leads

There’s no magic method to bringing in new painting leads. Driving business and company growth takes time and hard work — but engaging in strategic painter advertising efforts can help you tackle your growth goals a bit quicker.

To expand your reach in the local community, you need to find ways to get your painting company directly in front of your target audience. One of the most effective examples of advertising a painting company is through Facebook advertising.

Facebook Ads for Painters are pay-per-click advertisements that painting companies use to get house painting or commercial painting jobs.

Here are a few compelling reasons why Facebook is where your painting company needs to make its mark:

• 90% of marketers say their social marketing efforts have increased exposure for their business, and 75% say they’ve increased traffic (Vendasta)
• 2.79 billion people globally use Facebook. (Sprout Social)
• 32% of small businesses invest in social media marketing (eMarketer)
• Facebook is the world’s third-most visited website. (Hootsuite)

Now that you understand why Facebook advertising can be a cost-efficient way to drive leads and reach an untapped market for your house painting or commercial painting business, it’s time to cover the best methods for setting up Facebook ads for painters.

Keep reading to better understand how to hyper-target your audience, determine the type of campaign to run, and craft the perfect promotional offer.

1. Determine the Goal of Your Facebook Ads Campaign

Before diving into the backend of Facebook Ads Manager, you need to determine what your goal is. Why are you investing in Facebook ads? What is the desired action that you want your target audience to complete upon seeing your ad?

There are several reasons you may opt to run a targeted campaign, and you aren’t stuck picking just one, but to determine which is ideal for the business goals you need to understand what your options are.

The first step of setting up an advertising campaign is to select one of the following campaign types that align with your painting company’s digital marketing goals:

• Brand awareness – Are you simply trying to get your name into the community? A brand awareness campaign will help introduce your painting company to a new audience.
• Reach – Use a reach campaign to show your advertisement to as many users in your hyper-targeted audience as possible.
• Traffic – Is your goal to drive users to your website or mobile app to complete an action? Running a traffic campaign will help direct them to the page of your choosing.
• Engagement – When your goal is to have users interact with your social media content — claim a promotion, follow your Facebook page, generate event RSVPs — and an engagement campaign will promote interactions on your content.
• Video views – Do you have promotional video content you’d like to use to highlight your painting company? Use this campaign to encourage users to watch your videos.
• Lead generation – If adding leads to your existing sales pipeline is a top priority, a lead generation campaign helps hook new prospects.
• Messages – Communication with prospective customers is the key to building a relationship with them. Encourage them to contact your painting company via Facebook Messenger.

Pro Tip: Each ad you make can have its own goal — you aren’t stuck using only one! Determine what the specific goal for this campaign is. Ask yourself what action you would like the user to take and use the campaign and encourage them to do so.

2. Create a Compelling Painting Offer

Everyone loves a good incentive, that’s why offering a compelling promotion is the key to gaining traction with your Facebook ad.

Do you have existing promotions that you’re already running and want to promote on social media? Is there a Facebook-exclusive offer available to customers?

Creating a compelling incentive is one of the best ways to make your social media ads more successful so you can get more painting leads and send more painting estimates.

When crafting your promotion, ask yourself these questions:

• Does the offer provide high value? – You can’t just promote any offer in your ad. To gain traction with your target audience, it needs to be highly valuable to get their attention. For instance, if you offer $100  OFF whole-home painting, that probably won’t motivate them to take you up on the offer since it’s a small reward for a big ask. It needs to be more compelling and provide them a benefit. Maybe you offer a “paint one room, get one room painted for free” deal. Or you could offer 15% off for new customers. Understand what makes your customers tick and use that knowledge to craft a high-value promotion they’ll be tempted to use.
• Are there a lot of hoops to jump through? – As a business, there always needs to be some type of fine print that accompanies your promotional offer. But if there are too many hoops for the customer to jump through, they’re likely going to pass on your offer. Avoid using language such as “can’t be used with XYZ” or “only valid on jobs above $4000.” The more complex the details, the less inclined your audience will be to take you up on the deal. Make redeeming the deal as straightforward as possible.
• Will the promotion attract your target customer? – Depending on the campaign you choose to run, you might incentivize your audience to complete an action by providing them with a reward, such as a gift card or branded merchandise. While this method might get a lot of engagement on your ad, it’s likely gaining traction from all sorts of Facebook users who want something free — not your target customer looking for residential or commercial painters. No matter which campaign type you choose, ensure that the promotion is targeting the audience that you want to convert into loyal customers.

3. Examples of Painting Ads

Feel free to use any of the painting ads examples below on your own campaigns:

4. Set Your Budget and Timeframe

How much are you willing to pay for a lead? This is an important question to ask yourself when determining what the budget should be for your Facebook ads.

A budget for a Facebook campaign can be set as a daily budget or a lifetime budget. This means that if you only want to spend $25 a day, you can set the budget to be capped at $25. Once you hit that cap, your ads will stop being shown until the next day.

For a lifetime budget, your ad will be shown throughout the campaign (that you set) until it reaches the cap you set in place. During this step, you’ll also need to determine how long you plan to run the campaign — a few days, a week, a few weeks, a month, etc.

For either of these options, it’s important to keep in mind that Facebook won’t show your ads at every hour of the day. Based on your audience targeting, Facebook will only show your ad during the hours when your target audience is most active on the social media platform.

5. Narrow Down Your Target Audience

Facebook is one of the most effective social media platforms to advertise on for painters because of the ability to drill down to a hyper-targeted custom audience.

As a painting company, you probably have a target area or customer you’re trying to get in the door. This is the part of the process where you can narrow your focus.

You can customize your Facebook audience by adjusting the following:

• Location – Is there a particular service area you’re focusing on? Are there specific zip codes that have new development homes that might require more painting services? With Facebook targeting options, you can drill down the users seeing your advertisement by city, county, zip code, and even a street address using a radius around it.
• User Location – Along with setting your target location area, you can also set a default user location. With the default setting, anyone who is within this set area and meets your criteria will see your advertisement. However, this doesn’t factor in if the person lives there or just happens to be shopping in the area. You can adjust the settings for user location to only target those that live within the target region.
• Home Type and Home Size – When running house painting ads on Facebook, there are additional factors you may want to consider in your targetings, such as home type and size. If you focus on residential painting, you probably don’t want your ad showing up for residents living in apartment complexes. You can choose what type of home your target audience resides in, helping you narrow down who your ideal painting customer is. You can even take it a step further and can filter by home square footage, allowing you to focus on a specific sized home if you’re looking for a more narrow audience.
• Homeownership Status – In most cases, homeowners are the main audience of a painting company. Those renting, whether it be an apartment or a single-family home, aren’t typically hiring painters because they’ll be required to repaint once they move out. This setting ensures your ad is only being seen by the decision-maker that owns a home in your target area.
• Purchase Behavior – Facebook can target customers based on their previous purchasing history. This makes it possible for you to show your painting company’s ad to those that are regularly purchasing home improvement services or supplies or recently purchased a new home. This targeting option allows you to create a customized promotion that might appeal to a very specific group of customers.

6. Choose The Type of Facebook Ad

Once the nitty-gritty details of your Facebook ad have been set, it’s time for the creative side of things. First things first, you need to choose the type of Facebook ad that will best support your campaign goal. Here are a few types that work well to promote painting companies:

• Image Ads – As one of the most simple types of Facebook ads, these are a great option for someone just getting started. Using a high-quality photo and some copy, you can easily attractively share your promotion.
• Video Ads – Whether you have a video showcasing your painters in action or you’ve put together a compilation video of customer testimonials, you can have this appear as your ad directly in the user’s News Feed. Videos are an effective way to create a personal connection with the prospective customer — but make sure the first few seconds of the video hook them!
• Carousel Ads – A carousel ad allows you to promote up to 10 photos or videos at once, appearing as a slider that the user can scroll through. This is a great option if you have a variety of painting services that you want to highlight in one advertisement since each image can link to the corresponding service page on your website.
• Slideshow Ads – If you don’t have video content but want to create an engaging video ad, a slideshow ad allows you to compile a collection of still photos and text into a video clip. They don’t require much effort to set up and are more attention-grabbing than a standard image ad.

7. Craft Your Engaging Ad Copy

Last, but certainly not least, you need to craft the copy that will show alongside your advertisement to grab the attention of your target audience. It should be short and concise, yet compelling enough to drive the desired action.

Make sure your ad copy covers these four aspects:

• Attention – Your ad is just one of many that your prospective customer is going to see on their feed today. First and foremost, you need to grab their attention and get them to stop scrolling.
• Interest – Now that you have their attention, you need to help get them hooked. Find ways to appeal to their needs and address their pain points.
• Desire – Not only do you need to get them interested, but you need to make them desire what you’re offering. Make your promotion feel exclusive to them and their needs.
• Action – Use a sense of urgency to motivate the prospective customer to take action on the ad and perform the desired action, whether that’s contacting your painting company, visiting your website, or engaging with your Facebook page.

Although setting up Facebook ads is a relatively straightforward process, you must remember that there might be times you need to pivot your strategy and tweak the campaign.

While the copy you created might be great, sometimes it doesn’t appeal to a specific audience. If this happens, don’t stress. Analyze your audience, pivot your strategy, and try again.

With consistent Facebook advertising, you can expect to get your painting company directly in front of your target audience and help add leads to your sales funnel.

Frequently Asked Questions