It can be challenging to find enough leads to ensure that your painting company is successful. The painting industry is full of companies, which increases the industry’s competitiveness. Buying sale leads is an excellent way to meet business growth adjectives, but is it the best way to get painting leads?
Lead generation services are among the top marketing tools a painting company can utilize, but not all leading sites are created equal. There are two types of leads: shared and exclusive. This article discusses both lead generation forms and explores whether shared leads are beneficial to painting companies.
What Is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is a way for you to create work opportunities for your painting company. Examples of lead generation include advertising your services and digital marketing campaigns to gain consumer interest in your company. You can also buy leads outright.
You might consider working with a lead generation company that aggregates consumer and business details to sell to service providers if you choose to buy leads. Some companies source leads organically to sell to businesses by driving traffic to their websites using digital and traditional marketing strategies.
Buying leads is an affordable way to boost your painting business’s sales, but the system is not without drawbacks.
Shared Leads vs. Exclusive Leads for Your Painting Business
You could buy two types of leads to build your painting business: shared leads and exclusive leads. Understanding these terms is essential for producing high-quality leads, especially if you outsource lead generation or buy leads from a third-party website.
What is a Shared Lead?
A shared lead is a potential business opportunity that a third-party company sends to multiple contractors who could complete a client’s service request. You might think a shared prospect is the best way to get painting leads, but it creates a competitive landscape between you and other contractors. Even if your company receives a sales lead, it means your direct competition also received that lead and will most likely require you to bid down your rates just to get the job.
Painting contractors like shared leads because they tend to come at a lower cost. Plus shared leads typically come in at a higher volume, which increases the chance of acquiring a potential customer’s business — but this is a fallacy.
Despite the higher lead volume, the quality of shared leads is not always the best. Instead of receiving valid information for a potential customer interested in your painting services, you could end up with incorrect contact information or a person who doesn’t need or want anything your company offers.
What is an Exclusive Lead?
As the name suggests, an exclusive lead goes to a single painting contractor who best fits a client’s service request or inquiry. While a shared lead creates an opportunity to secure a job, that opportunity is shared with your direct competition and is typically low in quality as a result. An exclusive lead offers the best opportunity to book consultations and lock in a new painting project.
You won’t secure a job from every exclusive lead, but your close ratios and ROI will be higher compared to a shared lead. Exclusive leads tend to cost more than shared leads, but the cost per a closed job is typically much, much lower.
The quality of exclusive leads tends to be high. Since these leads are generated through your own marketing and advertising campaigns you can quickly identify bad or underperforming mediums, allowing you to avoid low-quality publishers and poor advertising campaigns.
Are Shared Lead Sites the Best Way to Get Painting Leads?
As a painting contractor, you might consider listing your company with websites like Houzz, Angi, and others that claim they can generate high-quality repaint leads online by expanding a service provider’s online presence and creating digital marketing campaigns.
Unfortunately, some of the most popular lead generators are more problematic than you might realize, from poor reviews to FTC complaints.
HomeAdvisor
According to this 2022 article from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) HomeAdvisor misrepresents the quality and sources of the leads it generates and is cheating small businesses.
The FTC alleges the Angi-affiliated company uses misleading and deceptive tactics when selling home improvement project leads.
The complaint filed by the FTC against HomeAdvisor alleges that the company has made unsubstantiated claims about the source and quality of leads the company sells to service providers, like gig workers, small painting companies, and general contractors.
An example of the company’s misrepresentation is HomeAdvisor telling service providers that the leads it generates will produce more home improvement jobs than its data support. As a result, service providers spend excessive time following up on low-quality leads and seeking refunds from HomeAdvisor for failing to live up to its promises.
According to the FTC complaint, another issue with HomeAdvisor is how the company matches its leads with services. HomeAdvisor purports to connect consumers with companies and services in their preferred geographic area, but it doesn’t do that for everyone. Many of the leads HomeAdvisor sells come from affiliates and not the company’s website.
Angi
Angi, formerly known as Angie’s List, is another popular lead generator for painting services. Companies can list their information for free. However, the validity of the company’s system is easily compromised because service providers can pay Angi to appear higher on its search results pages.
The problem with this approach is that Angi draws its revenue through advertising the companies it rates. Because most consumers only check the first one or two search results pages on the website for home improvement contractors, providers who don’t pay for higher rankings are left behind.
In other words, Angi appears to have dishonest practices. Instead of service provider ratings being influenced by the quality, type, and location of their services, the company favors providers who pay to advertise on the website.
Thumbtack
Thumbtack.com is a services-for-hire website hosting everything from psychic readings to painting services. Each week, customers and service providers leave negative reviews about Thumbtack online, making people wonder whether the service is reliable.
According to the Better Business Bureau, at the time of writing this article Thumbtack has over 400 closed complaints. The company’s online presence also includes poor to modest consumer ratings on review websites like Sitejabber and Pissed Consumer. Some of the negative complaints from service providers include:
There are no substantiated claims that Thumbtack is a scam. However, the influx of negative ratings and reviews from customers and service providers is enough to make one hesitant about generating leads for your painting business with them.
Why Exclusive Leads Are Better for Your Painting Services
As a painter, you want to position your company as the leading contractor for your service area. Exclusive leads will help you boost your reputation and authority in the painting industry thanks to the following benefits the service provides:
Profitable Lead Generation For Painting Contractors
Instead of investing in third-party lead generation websites that don’t have your painting company’s best interests at heart, consider working with a marketing agency that specializes in the professional painting industry, like (shameless plug alert) Base Coat Marketing. Our painter marketing experts generate exclusive high-quality painting leads using:
We use a tested, data-driven approach to help painting companies dominate their local markets, creating an unfair advantage over their competitors. As an industry-specific marketing leader, we can help your painting company stand out from the rest in your region.
Tips to Maximize Your Painting Services’ Lead Generation Success
Buying exclusive leads for your painting business is not enough for growing your business. Once you secure sales leads, you should take the appropriate steps to turn a potential customer into a loyal client.
We have A TON of free resources to help painting contractors generate exclusive high-quality painting leads, but here are a few tips that will help improve your close ratio regardless of your lead source:
Contact Leads Immediately
After receiving exclusive leads on prospects interested in your painting services, give them a call as quickly as possible. Even if the lead is exclusive to you, that doesn’t mean the potential client will stop searching other websites for quotes on painting services.
For best results make first contact within 5 minutes of receiving the prospect’s contact information.
If the potential client gives their information to another website while searching for affordable painting quotes, it could pass that information to one or more of your competitors. At that point, your exclusive lead is more like a shared one because another company could take advantage of the client’s interest and lock in the sale.
Most customers choose to work with the first business that connects with them. By calling a client within five minutes of the lead generation, you increase the chances of them choosing to work with your company. The quick response on your behalf reduces the potential customer’s time to seek another company’s services.
Personalize Contact with Potential Customers
Most customers prefer personal interactions with businesses; they don’t want to feel as though they are nothing but numbers or generic clients. You can circumvent that issue by personalizing your contact with the client.
Be sure to greet potential clients by name instead of generic, impersonal terms. If the lead includes details about the service the client is searching for, you can also mention them to show how your painting company can help them.
Also, be respectful of your new client’s time. If you call at an inconvenient time for them, ask when they would prefer you to call back and stick to that schedule.
Track Your Results
Whether you choose to use shared or exclusive leads, tracking and measuring your results is essential for your success. Otherwise, you won’t know whether the information you buy is helping your business.
Tracking your results will help you generate the best leads, but you won’t waste money on ineffective lead generation tactics. It’s also beneficial to measure your lead generation strategies to accurately calculate your painting company’s revenue and make necessary adjustments to meet your lead generation objectives.
Improve Your Painting Company’s Sales with Base Coat Marketing
If you are looking for the best way to get painting leads for your business, look no further than Base Coat Marketing. For over a decade our marketing agency has been helping painting businesses reach their ideal client base through exclusive lead generation. We understand how professional conflicts can affect lead generation, so we only serve one painting company per region. Contact us today at 888-313-1991 or schedule a free strategy call to discuss your unique needs.
