When I first started Fresh Coat Marketing, I knew I wanted to build an agency, and I knew I wanted to niche down. From my experience with my previous agency, I knew the painting industry needed online marketing, but I kept on hearing they got burned by previous efforts that resulted in nothing.
The problem I kept on hearing from many painting companies over and over again were 1) they tried to do online marketing and failed 2) some had even hired an agency, the agency promised them results, but they didn’t deliver in the end 3) they had someone build a website, but it looks just okay and it drove zero business.
In this article, I’ll talk about the story about how and why we created Fresh Coat, including the 3 major problems we saw with marketing agencies and how we’re going to solve the problems.
Gap 1: Most generalist marketing agencies talk a big game but aren’t able to deliver results
Gap 2: Marketing agencies don’t understand the painting industry
Gap 3: Many marketing agencies prices are too expensive
Gap 1: Generalist marketing agencies talk a big game but aren’t able to deliver consistent results
I’ve lost count of all the times I’ve heard from a potential client that they’ve been “burned by marketing agencies before”. You can scroll through instagram or facebook and see the agency market is overrun by these 19 year olds who are overnight “marketing experts” who are claiming they have a ‘marketing agency” and they can grow your business overnight.
What I’ve learned is that these agencies don’t have actual experience and scramble on how to get their clients results once they convince them to sign on. But at the end of the day what really ends up happening is they are sold the dream and then things go downhill very quickly. The client’s expect a certain level of service and quickly realize they will never get that. This is a direct result of agencies over promising and under delivering.
Gap 2: Marketing agencies don’t understand the painting industry
Many marketing agencies don’t understand how the painting industry works. They don’t know the seasonality, they don’t know the average ticket value of an exterior vs interior painting job. They don’t understand the difference between the average estimate to sale conversion ratio. They don’t understand the difference between using subcontractors versus your own employees. They don’t understand the keywords that drive the best revenue for your Google Ads campaigns. They don’t understand the best keywords to rank your website for. They don’t understand how generating reviews is incredibly important for painting companies to stand out amongst your competitors.
Gap 3: Many marketing agencies prices are too expensive
Many generalist marketing agencies charge standard rates across all their client base. So whether you’re an e-commerce store, a software company or a painting company, they will charge you the same.
So with the gaps identified, we had the basis of the marketing agency we wanted to be and be proud of the services we offer. It was just a matter of creating systems to solve the gaps we identified.
Solution 1: We’re niching down and only serve painting contractors
Solution 2: We’re going all in on the painting industry knowledge
Solution 3: We’re going to offer better packages that fit the painting industry
Stay tuned for the next part of this article!
