Welcome to the Digital Marketing for Painters Guide
The painting business is not easy work. And we’re not just talking physical work. Owning and/or operating a local painting company can be a challenge in other ways too. In order to stay ahead of your competition, you need to optimize your digital presence. This guide provides suggestions on how to do that successfully.
Online Marketing Strategy
An effective marketing strategy is mandatory for the success of any business. It’s crucial to create a strategy that encompasses all aspect of digital marketing. You need to hone in on what works for your business and your target audience.
A Website that Generates Leads
A website is absolutely necessary for your online presence; that’s a given. And yes, it should be attractive and designed with aesthetics in mind. There should be no broken links, grammatical or spelling errors. And you should have a plan in place to drive relevant traffic to your site. But what good is all that if visitors click away seconds after they land on your page? Your site should be constructed with lead generation in mind.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the organic (unpaid) way to show up in search results and drive traffic to your website. An effective SEO strategy is needed to make sure the search engines display your company in the top results when users search for your services. To be successful in this endeavor, you need to have a strategy for the right keywords to be included in your content.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is paid advertising with the intent of driving visitors to your website. It’s a very effective way to build up traffic to your site, while your organic SEO is building traffic more slowly. SEM is also referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing.
The key to a successful SEM strategy, as with SEO, is choosing the right keywords for your ads. Using long-tail keywords (those phrases that contain several words) over short-tail keywords (only a few words) will usually work better, since there will be less competition. There are a number of tools available to determine the most relevant keywords to use.
Gathering Analytics to Measure ROI
Digital marketing isn’t a one-and-done effort. It’s critical that you routinely measure the success of your strategies and adjust, as needed. In the digital world, there are unique metrics for measuring success – sales and revenue are still obviously really important, but brand engagement and visibility or an improvement in social following or organic search results are also markers of success.
There are a number of methods and tools that are available for monitoring and analyzing performance. Some of the top choices include Hubspot, Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Mixpanel, Megalytic, Salesforce and Basecamp. Of course, there are many more out there; you’ll need to evaluate and choose the ones that work for you.
Online Reputation
What customers say about you can make a huge difference. Most buyers will check reviews and testimonials before they purchase or decide whether to hire a company or not. According to a survey by BrightLocal in 2017, a full 85 percent of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Further, 97% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses in 2017, with 12% looking every day.
There are several review sites where reviews can be posted, so you’ll need to do your due diligence in monitoring and managing them. Having no reviews at all is not good, especially if you’ve been in business for a while. One negative review won’t necessarily destroy you, but you need to know if it occurs so that you can mitigate the possible damage. So developing an effective reputation management strategy is paramount to overcoming these situations.
Email Marketing
If you think email is becoming extinct, you can’t be more wrong. Email marketing, as part of your overall marketing strategy, is still a very powerful method of gaining and retaining customers. And it’s less expensive than most other marketing methods, to boot! According to Constant Contact®, the Return on Investment (ROI) for email marketing is $40 for every $1 spent.
To make the most of your email marketing campaigns, there are a few things to concentrate on. A strong and obvious call to action within the email will maximize engagement and increase responses. Adopting a more personal approach has been proven to improve effectiveness. Also make sure to follow up appropriately when warranted.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is definitely a requirement to a successful marketing strategy. Many platforms exist, so you may need to test the waters on which ones are most effective for your business and target audience.
Don’t ignore the opportunities for advertising on these platforms either! The reach can be considerable and the possibilities for lead generation and driving traffic to your site are virtually endless.
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