Looking for painters on Facebook makes a lot of sense these days. Google used to be and still is to a point, the place to search for and find a good service provider. Were you looking for a furnace repair technician? You googled “furnace repairs in your town” and you found plenty of technicians at your service. Google has always insisted on providing a great search experience for it’s users. Reality is, this experience seems to be distancing itself (in a hurry) from that initial promise. Google makes it’s income from online ads. Last year about 95% of it’s income came from ads. Adwords itself is responsible for about 70% of that revenue. It makes sense then that most of the results coming back after a search, especially at the top half of the screen seem to be paid or sponsored.
Local results seem to be manipulated by savvy marketers and there are very few spots for the so called organic results. The more scarce the real estate for these “organic results” gets, the more contested it becomes. As a result, “review” companies, Yellow Pages type groups and lead providers with big budgets snap these spots. So what is left for us smaller painting contractor then? How is a reputable painting company supposed to make its services available when our demographic is searching for local painters? Well it is almost impossible for the searching public to find their next painter on the first page of Google, unless they contact the advertised companies or look through painters reviews.
Enter Facebook
There are now painters on Facebook (like Ecopainting) with a story to tell. This platform is slowly now becoming our virtual showroom. As a platform it does lend itself to that kind of thing. You get to invite your future clients, your prospects to your Company Page. Then you can show off your work with all kinds of pictures, before and after shots. You get to write and promote here, blogs about projects, even have your customers rave about your painting services and skills.
Social Proof & Social Identity
Facebook it seems, was always built for corporate purposes and most corporate entities spend a lot of their marketing budgets here. And yet the majority of Facebook users are everyday people. Yes, the consumers’ preferences are recorded, their tastes monitored but somehow they can still benefit from it. Are you looking for a painter? Which ones did your friend or your friend’s friend use? What was their experience with them? You can spend some time to follow that painting company. Check out a few of their projects as they are uploaded as project pictures. You may even catch a glimpse of some of their painters in action. Are they professional? do they take pride in his work? Do they provide a good customer experience? Is it a good idea to have that painter work in your home? How do they interact with their followers, with people asking them questions? Have they written any blogs that you can follow? This is what in the search marketing world is called social proof. That means endorsements and citations from all kinds of people.
What does that mean for you the consumer who is looking for a painter on Facebook? What is the social identity of that company? Do they look like a good fit for that project you have in mind? In fact, you can follow them back in their timeline, even ask them questions.
Interacting with our visitors
We as local painting contractors appreciate interacting with our Facebook followers. They may be located north or west of Toronto and our offices are in the east, but in Facebook they are neighbours and a part of our community. I am not sure how much advertising money Facebook gets from large corporations vs how much of it comes from small service providers but one thing is always going to continue: none of their monetizing scheme can exist without the millions of everyday users. They are the demographic that everyone is after. As a result small business and consumers can still have a place to interact.
By the way, visit our Facebook Page and check out our community.