Marketing a painting business is just as important to the painter as applying the paint. After all, if you don’t have wires, where will you put the paint? Now there are many ways to advertise. And of course some are more effective than others and some are more expensive than others and cost is not an indication of how effective you will be in marketing your painting business.

I have tried almost everything. When I started in this business I started mailing out 8.5×11 inch brochures tri-folded and stapled, this was too much work. So after doing it this way for about three years, I switched to a 5.5×8.5 inch postcard. Both were printed by the local printer with the exception of the address which I printed on my printer. I purchased mailing lists and downloaded the lists to my Excel spreadsheet and then used Microsoft Word’s mail merge feature. At first, I printed on pressure sensitive labels, peeled them off their backing, and stuck them to the mail piece, but again, this was too much work, especially when I was mailing thousands. In the beginning when I started I was getting 8 calls per thousand pieces shipped, lately return has dropped to about 4 per thousand. I’m still using the postcards. I buy 10,000 cards and send 2,000 coins at a time. You will need a bulk rate permit and what is called a postal order. The post office will help you; you need to go to a special branch that specializes in bulk mail.

Then I went to my website. I hired Get a Freelancer for less than $100 to design and build my site. I thought the process would be expensive; but I only pay $3.75 per month for a hosting company. The website initially produced few leads, but these have grown in number each year. So between sending cards and the website, I have a constant source of leads. I imagine that one day I will eliminate sending postcards, when the website provides enough leads.

I tried newspaper ads, which gave poor results. I tried tracking at the bottom of the weather channel and got no clues. The yellow pages had good returns; but very expensive. When I first advertised in the yellow pages there were 3 pages of painters; when i finally canceled my ad there were 9 pages of painter ads, too much competition.