House Painters Need Help

It's that time of year.

I've gotten about 10 different fliers and mailers for exterior painting services.

And they all say the same exact thing.

Seriously, this industry needs some help.

Every single flier shouts "Quality Painting!" Some even italicize quality. As if that would make a difference.

First of all, quality is a baseline requirement. If it's not quality, then you shouldn't be in business. In other words, I assume it's quality until I experience otherwise.

Secondly, it would be so easy to stand-out in this industry. Why isn't anyone doing it? I haven't seen a single unique sales pitch yet. (The closest being "hand rolled" vs. "spray on.")

If you're a house painter (or writing copy for a house painter)... please do better than promising me "quality painting."

Comments

[Curt]

I used to work for a painting company. This is exactly what I told the owners.

Told them to develop a USP and advertise that... but they wouldn't listen. They wrote their display ad by copying all the other ads.

And they wonder why they just float along with everyone else... making very little money. Oh well. I tried.

Curt.

[Joseph Ratliff]

Ryan,

I like this concept in your blog. Please, expand on it. Identifying business genre's for copywriters is a good topic everytime.

On to the painters...

A personal example from my own business.

I wrote a simple, one-page flyer for a painting company locally. They converted it into a door hanger and hung it in a known area for rental houses (which always need paint). They also did a small mailer to 100 landlords.

Doubled their month to month business.

Not because of my copy mind you, but because we identified a U.S.P. and integrated it into both pieces.

Wow.

The scary thing is, at least 60 - 75% of small businesses out there are in exactly the same position.

Exactly the same position, no U.S.P., no targeted market or marketing...

Nice post Ryan.

Joseph Ratliff
Author of The Profitable Business Edge located at http://profitablebusinessedge.blogspot.com

[Andre Bell]

A client of mine I pursued suffered the same problems.

Quality, number of years in business, drug-free employees, yada yada yada... all the stuff anyone can claim.

So after interviewing the owner I came up with an idea for a flyer to replace what they were trying and failing at.

The before and afters are on a few of my sites. One is at http://www.andrebell.com/client_request/

Here's the kicker though... after getting an immediate emotional response from the owner after showing her what I came up with, she decided to go back to doing things as 'every other painter' is doing. Arghhhh!

So I decided to give her the boot.

The do-as-everyone-else mentality is one I will never understand.

Thanks for the memory :-)

Andre