PPC for House Painting Leads: Google or Social Media?

Painting leads are the lifeblood of your painting company and the principal factor determining your success. The more qualified leads you capture, the faster you can scale your painting business.

One of the ways that you can generate more repaint leads is through online advertising. Online ads improve your brand’s visibility, allowing you to quickly reach your targeted audience when they are primed and ready to buy.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is the most common form of online ads. They allow you to refine your audience through the use of targeted demographics, while only paying for those that interact with your business/website. Therefore, the more money you spend on a PPC campaign, the more leads you can expect to capture.

There are several popular mediums that offer PPC advertisements, however, the two most effective PPC platforms for the professional painting industry are Google and Meta (Facebook/Instagram). These two advertising titans can help you reach qualified leads, close more jobs, and generate more revenue.

But before you start throwing money at these platforms it’s important t0 understand the pros/cons of each…

Google, the grandfather of PPC ads, is still the most effective way of obtaining new painting leads online. You can target particular users by catering to their interests, age range, gender, and other demographics.

Why is this useful?

Because it allows you to only show your ad to those who are most interested in your painting business.

Also, you can create ad campaigns to target your marketing efforts at a specific service or location. This ensures you are reaching your preferred prospect interested in your most profitable services.

Below are some advantages of using Google Ads to generate painting leads over advertising on Meta (Facebook/Instagram).

Google’s advertising platform can help increase your painting company’s repaint leads by targeting only the customers who are most primed and qualified to buy. This is because unlike social media, those searching on Google have established buyer intent.

Buyer Intent (or Purchase Intent): The probability of how close a consumer is to completing a purchase of a product or service.

On Google, those searching for your services are only performing that action because they are interested in the painting services your business has to offer. This may seem like an obvious statement, so let’s compare this to social media to understand why this is so important.

Consider how this works on Facebook or Instagram — Those scrolling through social media are not searching for your business. If they stumble across your advertisement, they may reach out, but this type of marketing relies heavily on guessing where the buyer intent exists.

In contrast, on Google we can target specific key terms and reroute the clicks to targeted landing pages to help convert and close that traffic into paying jobs.

Let’s face it, Google has a massive head start when it comes to paving the way for online advertising. What makes Google such a great place to invest your marketing budget is its algorithm, which is updated several times a day (hundreds, or even thousands of times a year).

Google only cares about one thing: Delivering the most accurate search results based on the searcher’s intent.

Think about it, when you search the internet you expect the results to be relevant to your search query, and ordered by importance. If your search results constantly came back with irrelevant content you would quickly find another search engine to rely on.

With this in mind, you can start to develop a picture of how your ads should be designed — Capture attention while staying relevant to a specific search query.

Capture Attention: On Google, CPC (cost-per-click) is determined by several factors including CTR (click-through-rate) which is calculated by the number of times your ad was shown vs the number of clicks it received. Generally speaking, the higher your CTR, the lower your CPC.

Relevancy: The terms used throughout your ad copy should match the search queries you’re targeting. For instance, if you’re targeting “cabinet painting” your advertisement copy should also include “cabinet painting.”

Understanding Google’s algorithm will help you invest smarter. When using Google Ads to target painting leads, create ads relevant to your painting company’s audience. Tailor your ad copy and targeting options to accurately reflect the interests of those who may invest in your house painting services. 

When you think of advertising on Google you may overlook the fact that you can also reach your customers on Google Maps, YouTube, and Google’s Display Network as well.

Google’s advertising network is much larger than social media, allowing you to reach a broader audience. Generally speaking, the more eyes you can target the better results you can expect from a marketing campaign.

Google is also expanding into the PPL (pay-per-lead) market with their Google Local Services Ads for painters. Unlike shared lead sites like Angi, LSAs generate exclusive leads for your painting business.

When considering advertising on Google it’s important that your Google Business Profile and website are optimized for conversions. Why? Because CTR (click-through rate) is an important ranking factor for not only your ads, but also your website and GBP.

This information can help you make business decisions on and off your website. For instance, if you notice most of your traffic is landing on an ad for cabinet painting you may want to refocus your print advertising around that same service.

For best results add Google Analytics to your website and link to your Google Ads account. This will allow you to monitor the performance of traffic coming from your ads to your website.

Google Ads is a paid advertising platform that allows businesses of all sizes to target consumers across several platforms and devices. Because it is an automated process, that relies on bidding for keywords, there is no bias involved.

Remember, when advertising on Google quality content is more important than the size of your budget. As a painting contractor, you must ensure that your ads are valuable and relevant to your target customers.

Google Ads offers businesses of all sizes a fair playing field with its advertising platform. You can start small, and work your way up, or go big from the beginning. Either way, there are countless ways to use Google Ads to generate new house painting leads for your painting company.

If you’re like most $1M+ painting companies, your website is the primary source of reaching customers online. However, Facebook and Instagram (otherwise known as Meta) have become powerful platforms for marketing to your target audience. 

Facebook Ads allow you to reach out to customers who may be completely unaware of your painting company. In turn, this increases the chances of getting leads for your painting services that may have otherwise gone undiscovered. With a well-executed Facebook Ad campaign, your painting company can generate new business from people interested in your services and who live in your service area. 

Below are some of the principal benefits of using Facebook Ads to generate more house painting leads. 

Unlike most other industries, such as plumbers and electricians, the professional painting industry can be visually communicated through images and videos.

If you haven’t already, be sure to review our article detailing how to take quality before/after photos.

We recommend using attractive visuals to showcase your work in your advertisements.

For Example: If you offer exterior painting services, you could create an ad with beautiful photos of your past work. This ad type will show potential clients what their house might look like if they hire your paint company. 

For best results, use images/videos of you and your team on the job site. Images of a human face tend to generate better results compared to an image of the side of a house.

Before you begin advertising on Facebook, it’s important to understand your target market. You can use the Facebook Insights tool to get a detailed understanding of your current followers. Doing so will help you create targeted ads relevant to those most interested in your services.

As a painting business owner, you should be adding images to your social profiles at least 3-4 times a month. Since Facebook and Instagram are pay-to-play platforms your organic posts are only shown to a small percentage of your followers. This strategy is primarily used to build trust among those researching your business online.

Facebook Ads reach a broad audience, making them a viable option for painting companies. Over 2 billion people use the Facebook platform, making it the most popular social media network globally.

Facebook provides a sizable network of potential clients you can interact with on the platform. Plus, you can take advantage of being able to market on two social networks via one advertising campaign.

One of the BIG benefits of advertising on social media over Google is the depth of knowledge these platforms have about their users. While Google’s algorithm relies on search queries, Facebook and Instagram know your interests, birthday, and even household income.

According to recent research from eMarketer, Facebook is the most popular site on the internet for advertising, and with good reason: Facebook Ads have a high ROI (return on investment). Databox reports that 90% of surveyed marketers who use Facebook ads report a positive ROI.

This is primarily due to the CPC (cost-per-click) on Facebook being 10-20x lower than Google.

Another benefit of Facebook PPC ads is that they deliver quick results. Typically it takes Facebook administrators around 24 hours to approve your PPC ad. Once approved, your campaign will go live immediately. 

The social media platform offers campaign tracking to see how effective your digital marketing campaigns are in real-time. Therefore, you can make adjustments on the fly to gain more house painting leads. 

You can expect increased web traffic within one to two days after posting your PPC ad on the Facebook platform.

One of the unique things about the Meta PPC platform is you can create ads based on how you want your clients to respond to them.

For example, both Lead Ads and Messenger Ads produce great results on Facebook for the professional painting industry, but you can also send prospects directly to your website from Facebook as well.

When it comes to ad optimization and performance, both platforms have their pros and cons.

For Example: Google will leave you with a better close ratio since we have established buyer intent. Also, Google can target a wider audience with its ads as you do not need a Google account to access the platform.

However, Facebook has better demographic information and a much lower CPC. Therefore, it can provide you with more leads at a lower CPL, but since the quality of those leads are lower the amount of time you will need to invest to close a new job can be slightly higher.

Overall, deciding what platform is best for your company depends on the type of clients you want to reach and your overall budget. If your goal is to increase your brand’s awareness and acquire leads with a lower price point, we recommend advertising on Facebook. Alternatively, if you want to spend less time trying to close leads, but at a higher price point (time is money) Google is your better option.

Whether deciding to advertise on social media or Google, our advertising experts can help you maximize the efficiency of your marketing campaigns. We have over a decade of experience creating customized PPC ads that translate into paying jobs. Our team will help you target the right qualified customers in your target service area.

If you want to learn how we can help you generate more house painting leads at the industry’s lowest CPC, give us a call today at (888) 313-1991 to speak to one of our trusted painter marketing experts.