Running and scaling a painting business in 2020 means understanding and moving more and more towards digital marketing. When I first took over the digital marketing of my dad’s painting business, Picazzo Painting and Pressure Washing, he had been running that business off of nothing but referrals for over 20 years. Safe to say, he was doing just fine but was definitely not scaling in any way. When I came in, I immediately modernized the business and implemented a number of advanced marketing strategies.

One of the most important strategies I implemented  helped him scale from 270k In yearly revenue to over 760k in yearly revenue in just 12 months was Google PPC advertising. 

However, it’s been brought to my attention over the years that many painting companies still struggle with achieving a positive ROI on Google Ads. 

In order to help more companies achieve great results , I’ve decided to give my step by step process that I followed to set up my father’s Google Ads account keywords strategy. 

Choose The Right Keywords

When it comes down to getting results in Google PPC, choosing the right keywords is probably the most important thing. At the end of the day, the keywords you choose will determine who sees and doesn’t see your ad. 

However, for many people choosing the right keywords can be the hardest thing to accomplish. So while I can go into depth and write entire books on how to choose the rights keywords, just follow this formula that I’ve created. 

Most Importantly, Stay Away From Broad Match Keywords. For new accounts, and new Google advertisers, using broad match keywords is usually a great way to burn through your entire budget. Instead, use modified broad match keywords. 

How? It’s actually pretty simple, just add a plus in front of every keyword. 

For example, if you’re a painting contractor in Miami and you want to target people searching for “Painting Companies In Miami” if you use broad match keywords, Google will also show you for people looking for painting lessons and a ton of irrelevant services and products. Instead, Use Modified broad match by targeting “+Painting +Companies +In +Miami”, this will keep things much more relevant. 

With being said, just follow these keyword templates to target the right searches:

“+YourService +Companies +In +City”

“+YourService +Near +Me”

“+Best +YourService +In +City”

“+City +YourService”

While I could build this out a ton more, just targeting these types of keywords will generate more relevant searches, and will prevent burning through your budget. 

Build A Comprehensive Negative Keyword List

Ironically, as important as your keyword lists are, your negative keyword lists are actually much more important. This part of the process is actually pretty simple, just very time consuming. You’re going to want to build comprehensive lists of all terms and services that you don’t want to show up for. 

For example, painting companies don’t want to show up for people looking for brushes so you’ll want to add “Brushes” and all related terms like “Roller”, “Equipment”, “Stores”, “Sherwin Williams”, and more keywords like that.

Pretty much, take your time here and build lists of things that you don’t want to show for. My biggest suggestion is build this list in Google Sheets so that you can easily edit and move the list around. 

Also, create separate lists by category like lists to block people looking for employment, equipment, unrelated services, competitors, and anything else you can think of. 

Negative keywords really make or break your account. Having a good negative keyword list is the difference between showing up for multi million dollar homes looking for a repaint, or showing up for someone trying to paint their 2001 honda civic. 

Take your time on this. 

If you need any help you can also reach out to me at anthony.lara592@gmail.com and I’d love to give advice completely free of charge.