Discover the brushstrokes of digital mastery with Martin Morgan, the ingenious creator of Pro Painter Websites, who joins us to share insider tips on maximizing your painting business's presence online, even when your budget is more minimalist than a blank canvas. Uncover how to craft an online persona that captivates potential clients with our deep dive into the transformative power of a well-optimized Google Business Profile and the art of accruing rave reviews that speak volumes.
Dive headlong into the vibrant world of social media, where your business's profiles become galleries showcasing your finest work, all while fostering a thriving digital community. We navigate the nuances of selecting the perfect platforms to enchant your audience and share secrets to creating a website that narrates your brand's story, ensuring it resonates with your ideal customer. The conversation turns into a palette of possibilities, blending personal and business branding strategies for those ready to scale their marketing efforts with precision and flair.
The crescendo of our dialogue with Martin Morgan paints the picture of how established painting contractors can elegantly transition from DIY marketing to orchestrating a team of specialists or in-house magicians. We articulate the balance between gaining expert assistance and maintaining control over your marketing, all while keeping the essence of your business shining through every interaction. This episode isn't just a discussion; it's a collaborative mural of marketing ingenuity, designed to inspire your next strategic masterpiece in the business world.
ProPainter Websites:
https://www.propainterwebsites.com/
Discover the brushstrokes of digital mastery with Martin Morgan, the ingenious creator of Pro Painter Websites, who joins us to share insider tips on maximizing your painting business's presence online, even when your budget is more minimalist than a blank canvas. Uncover how to craft an online persona that captivates potential clients with our deep dive into the transformative power of a well-optimized Google Business Profile and the art of accruing rave reviews that speak volumes.
Dive headlong into the vibrant world of social media, where your business's profiles become galleries showcasing your finest work, all while fostering a thriving digital community. We navigate the nuances of selecting the perfect platforms to enchant your audience and share secrets to creating a website that narrates your brand's story, ensuring it resonates with your ideal customer. The conversation turns into a palette of possibilities, blending personal and business branding strategies for those ready to scale their marketing efforts with precision and flair.
The crescendo of our dialogue with Martin Morgan paints the picture of how established painting contractors can elegantly transition from DIY marketing to orchestrating a team of specialists or in-house magicians. We articulate the balance between gaining expert assistance and maintaining control over your marketing, all while keeping the essence of your business shining through every interaction. This episode isn't just a discussion; it's a collaborative mural of marketing ingenuity, designed to inspire your next strategic masterpiece in the business world.
ProPainter Websites:
https://www.propainterwebsites.com/
Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast. The mission of this podcast is simple to help you navigate the financial and tax aspects of starting, running and scaling a professional painting business, from the brushes and ladders to the spreadsheets and balance sheets. We've got you covered. But before we dive in, a quick word of caution While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date financial and tax information, nothing you hear on this podcast should be considered as financial advice specifically for you or your business. We're here to share general knowledge and experiences, not to replace the tailored advice you get from a professional financial advisor or tax consultant.
Speaker 2:We strongly recommend you seeking individualized advice before making any significant financial decision, and today I'm here with Martin Morgan. Martin is the general manager of Pro Painter Websites. He has 20 plus years of experience in marketing and events and a degree in broadcast journalism from Syracuse University. Martin has a passion for helping small businesses succeed. One of his favorite things to do is to cut through all of the marketing jargon and help small businesses understand how to make the best decisions on leveraging the web to grow their business. Welcome to the podcast, martin.
Speaker 3:Thank you, daniel, excited to be here. A longtime fan of the podcast, a longtime listener, so excited to be here with you today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm excited to have you. I'm really interested in digging into this topic today, which is maximizing the impact of your web presence on a shoestring budget. And we talked a little bit before the podcast and you basically laid out these four different phases of what painting businesses have for how to approach their marketing and I really like that idea, so I'm excited to get into it. But before we get into that, could you just kind of give the listeners like kind of your background and where you're coming from?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, daniel.
Speaker 3:I'll expound a little bit on the intro that you gave there.
Speaker 3:As mentioned in there 20 plus years in marketing had done some events for a while, really loved that aspect of it and part of what I really enjoyed was pulling people together and having discussions around challenges and issues that they were dealing with, but also helping businesses succeed and kind of found an opportunity to work in marketing through marketing events and then small businesses and most recently, before coming on board here with ProPainter websites, it was is focused on HR type issues.
Speaker 3:So I know that's a huge thing for everybody as far as hiring and finding good people, and what I tried to do there was help people understand how we could help them largely in that pursuit with that organization and had the great opportunity to come on board with Pro Painter websites, and for me, a lot of it is it's about marketing and it's helping those small businesses, the painting contractors, who don't have the knowledge or understanding of how marketing works, get a better feel for what they can do and, as you mentioned, as we talked about briefly, just depending on where they are, what phase they are in their business, especially early on, so that they can make good decisions on how to handle those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Let's dive into the first phase that you have here, and I like the way you frame this, because you basically frame it with, let's say, you're a painting contractor and you only have time available, so you don't have a lot of money just starting out, but it's kind of limited on how much time you have. So what are some things that a painting business owner could do in that situation to improve their marketing?
Speaker 3:That's one of the more challenging times in the evolution of a business is that new entrepreneur who's really starting the business. In most cases, they're the ones that fit into this phase. They've started the business, they're doing a lot of the work and time is of the essence. But you know you've got to do something to try to start getting the word out about your business and really for that business owner, spending a good amount of time on their Google business profile is really the way that they should go and that I would definitely recommend. You know that's the very fundamental piece of where you are online. So you wanna make sure you've got a Google business profile. Make sure you've built that out to the full extent that you can Go through that list of things that Google asks you to fill out and fill out every possible thing that you can, things like a description. You wanna make sure you've got that. Make sure you've got your service area covered. That's really important as well. Services other services that you provide.
Speaker 3:If it's most likely a residential painter, house painter you know Google's not great with service area businesses, which is a challenge for painting contractors because you're a service area business, you don't have a brick and mortar, where everybody comes to do business with you. You cover a wide service and you go to people's homes or businesses if you're commercial to carry out your services. So Google struggles a little bit with that, so you got to help them out by filling out all this information to make sure that they know who you are and where you are and so that you can be found when people are looking for the services that you provide. You want to give yourself your business, the best opportunity to be found, so that Google business profile is really the key piece of that.
Speaker 3:And then the other thing I would add on that, with limited time to the extent that you can, asking for reviews and responding to reviews would be the other thing I would say in addition that you would want to use that limited time for, because reviews your Google business profile can be what gets you found, but reviews are really what get you chosen. So when people look and they find painting contractors or they're looking for a house painter, reviews are super important so they might find you in the consideration set. But if you don't have painting contractors or they're looking for a house painter, reviews are super important so they might find you in the consideration set. But if you don't have good reviews, they're going to be less likely to make that call to ask you to give them a quote or just start the conversation where you can win their business.
Speaker 2:And so getting your business, your Google business profile filled out, getting reviews. Is this more important than a website or on par with a website? Should they prioritize this first or should they get a basic website first and that's?
Speaker 3:a great question. Right here's the guy from Propainer Websites talking about how important the Google business profile is, and you're making me answer the difficult question. I would say in this phase, most likely the answer is yes Because of the value that Google puts on that Google business profile and especially reviews. That's where you can probably get the most bang for your buck early on with your limited amount of time.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we talked about the Google business profile, the website. Is there anything else at this phase? If you have some time, would anything else we should focus on if we we've knocked out? Okay, I got my Google business profile filled out completely, got some reviews, maybe have a basic website. Is there anything else that we can do at this, this level?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think as, depending on where you are from a time standpoint kind of to your point, daniel this is where you can do some web work, and most likely that's going to be you yourself trying to build out some sort of website, because here in this phase you don't really have the money to pay somebody else to do it. So you can establish a website. It could be fairly basic, but there's a bunch of good tools out there now that you can work with. The other potential thing is we start to think about social media. Here the challenge is, what happens is that for some business owners, especially early on entrepreneurs, you think about all these things and then you become too spread out amongst all of these things and by doing that, what you end up doing is you're diluting your ability to make a difference, to make a real connection or a real impact in helping your business, to make a real connection or a real impact in helping your business.
Speaker 3:What I usually encourage people to do is find the one thing or two things that you can really spend time on and focus on that. So if you do have some time and you can work on a website, then focus on making your website as good as it can be based on your time that you have to spend on it, instead of diluting that over you know four other social media platforms. However, if you say, look, we're in the painting business and we have great images of the work that we do, so I want to dive into Instagram, that's also okay and that can be beneficial for you, and you can have a great Instagram profile host fairly frequently. But if you're not going to be able to put the consistent time and effort into it, it doesn't help you to try to get that started. So I think from that standpoint, it's you know, find another if you've got the time. Find another thing that you either love to do, you enjoy to do, it's fun, or you like to be involved in and put your time toward that.
Speaker 3:Part of the challenge with social media and we come across this sometimes with customers or just other painting contractors is some business owners feel like, oh, if you just set up your profile and you post something, you're just going to get a whole bunch of followers, and that's not how it works. Building a social media following is a lot of work and even if you have somebody else doing it for you, you still have to get the followers. So you've got to be diligent in building your community and getting your followers and asking for followers amongst your customers, family, friends, making sure that you're involved in community type efforts and doing all those things that are going to help build your followership. So you know, from that standpoint it kind of depends on the time, but I would say you're going to be better off, you're going to have a bigger impact, if you can devote more time to one specific thing or two specific things, instead of trying to spread that out across five or six.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes complete sense. That out across five or six. Yeah, that that makes complete sense. If you, if you have a limited amount of time and you're trying to manage facebook, instagram, tick, tock, all these, all these different things, you're probably not going to get much done or make much impact. But if you just focus on one thing, you can, you know, you can one get to know that platform, because they all have their nuances. It seems that everything is different on each individual platform, but then also on top of that, each platform is always changing the way they're doing things and what they're, you know, pushing to the top of your feed and that sort of thing. So there's so many nuances between the platforms and then within the platform they're always changing the things. So it's like, how much time do you really have? And probably just picking one is gonna be way more than enough amongst all the other things you're probably doing. So that makes complete sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you nailed it there, daniel too as far as how much they change and what things are happening in the different platforms. It's. I mean, it's kind of funny. We try to stay up on all these things and it's even hard for us to understand what is happening in different areas, because now you're talking about the Google and the Google search and how the Google business profile shows up and what's happening with reviews, and Facebook and Instagram are always changing. You've got other platforms you can be involved in and it's just difficult for anybody to try to stay on top of all those things, especially if you're trying to spread yourself across them.
Speaker 2:You mentioned websites, trying to get a basic one up, do you have any recommendations for getting something like if you're just starting out and you have your Google business page filled out completely, you want to have a domain with your painting business. Do you have, like a recommendation for how to get that basic website up?
Speaker 3:Good question. You know, in six months. Well, I guess they made the announcement six months ago, a year ago. When you asked me that question, I may have said just use Google's core website thing that they've set up for businesses. But they killed that feature and that no longer exists, so you cannot use that.
Speaker 3:There's several. If you did a search for free website builder or something like that, you're going to come across several. Somebody like Wix has one. I think Squarespace is another one that sometimes can work well. You're probably not to the point where you really wanna utilize WordPress, although you could do that. It's been some years since I've utilized WordPress, but that was a little more in depth. It wasn't quite as easy or quite as drag and drop as some of these new web builders are. So I'd say look to see what the options are and then make a decision based on what you feel most comfortable with doing utilizing yourself. You want something that's going to be easy to use but is not going to be as so easy that anybody that uses it all looks the same, or your ability to do some things is limited, so it kind of depends on your comfort level with managing website type things.
Speaker 2:Okay, now I guess let's move to the next phase. Maybe you're a painting business owner. You have a little bit more time on your hands to focus on marketing. You're not as rushed as just starting up the business. You maybe have been around for a little bit longer and you've delegated some of your tasks that you have on your plate to. You have a couple of crews going on some of your tasks that you have on your plate too. You have a couple of crews going on, and so you have some time to really focus on the marketing, but maybe not so much cash in the bank still at this point. So what would you recommend someone in that scenario if they have a little bit more time on their hands but not as much cash?
Speaker 3:Yeah, at this point I would say, if you're making the transition from where you had less time and you haven't built a website yet, this is the place where you would definitely want to make sure you've got a website in place. Again, you can use several of the builders, but the key thing here, too, is it's not just creating something and forgetting about it, it's actively managing that. So that's updating pictures, updating images, telling the story of your business and how you got to that business and your ideal customer. You don't have to say my ideal customer is this, but we work with these types of customers really well or we want to make sure that you fall back in love with your home, or something along those lines. So you've got a good story, you've built it out, you've added pictures. You've added images. Maybe at this time, since you've got more time, you can build out those service pages. Service pages are really important to highlight all the services that you have, so you can do a little bit more of that work. So you're moving from maybe what was a one page-page website into something that's more five, ten pages, because you're now building these additional pieces into that. So this is definitely where that website comes in and also, depending on how much time you have, this is again where you would get more involved in social media. So maybe you've built your social media profile. You're posting once a week or something along that line, and now you've got an opportunity where you can increase that. Maybe you can post three or four times a week, maybe, even better, you can engage with other folks on social media. So, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, you're now engaging with other people.
Speaker 3:Another thing that can be really valuable if you have it in your area is something like Nextdoor. Can't emphasize enough how valuable Nextdoor can be and there's a lot of engagement you can have on there just by commenting on different things. Now I would say about all of these things, these are not platforms that you want to just go on there and sell, sell, sell of these things. These are not platforms that you want to just go on there and sell, sell, sell. So when I encourage you or talk about being involved in social media, the idea isn't in there. You're always in there talking about how you're the best painting contractor in town and call my number, but you want to engage with other people legitimately, without just trying to sell your services. So get involved, know, get involved in those things where you're commenting, you're engaging with other people.
Speaker 3:Follow other people, follow businesses, so you can get a follow back and start to build your community, build those people around you. Make sure you're asking everybody you know to follow you on social media, which is really important. One of our account managers. He does a really good job. What he encourages our customers to do is he says at night that 10 minutes before you go to bed or something like that, go on Facebook, like some things, follow some people. If you're still able to comment on some things, just spend that 10 to 15 extra minutes a day where you're still able to, you know, comment on some things. Just spend that 10 to 15 extra minutes a day where you're engaging with other people. You're not trying to sell. You're not specifically trying to get people you know in through saying, hey, we're the best, but you're really trying to engage with other people in the community and that can be just a great way to build that followership.
Speaker 3:A lot of what I always like to say when it comes to social media is you're trying to educate and engage people, because then what happens is when they need to get their home painted. They're going to remember that you were the one that talked about how important it is to use specific types of paints in specific types of rooms, or how you want to make sure that, if you're painting your cabinets, you want to use this sort of technique or do these types of things. People will remember that and they'll follow and they'll stay in touch with you, in tune with you, on social media, because you've helped them, you've provided value to them. So be that painting contractor that's providing value that people look at as oh, they've really helped me with all of these things and you're going to greatly increase your chances that you're going to be the one that they call when they need that type of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you mentioned Nextdoor and I've heard a lot of folks have a lot of success with that, like going into those groups and, like you said, providing value or just participating in their communities.
Speaker 2:But then once somebody asks about a painter, either saying hey, this is something I do or, best case scenario, someone's already referring you I think someone I was talking to a painting contractor and they actually encouraged their customers to to make a post in next door with like a picture like you know, and they gave them, you know, a discount or something like that, by just kind of saying, hey, I got this done by abc painting and they did a great job and just making that post in next door.
Speaker 2:Or, um, even facebook groups some sometimes there's these facebook groups by communities and just getting in and being like the person that's being referred can be like huge and just, uh, you know, and like you said before, like just owning one one of these things. You don't have to do all of them, but just figuring out one of these things because you know one, one neighborhood might be really big on next door where another neighborhood might have a facebook group, but getting in into those and being the referral person, um, the person that's being referred for painting could be huge. Yeah and uh, do you have any um thoughts on the use of Facebook business accounts versus using Facebook personal accounts?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's a good question. As far as the Facebook accounts, it can be a little tricky because for you to get, for your business to be recognized and to really build a following, then you want to make sure you've got a business account and you're utilizing a business account. From that standpoint it kind of depends, like the reason I say that, and you know, for many of these things there's no absolutes. Like your point, daniel, about next door can be great, facebook can be great if you got community groups. That's true and that's why there are no absolutes. You need to do the research to figure out what's going to work best in your market, based on what is strongest there.
Speaker 3:And when it comes to business account versus personal account, I'd encourage you to take a look at it from. What's my long-term goal? Am I early enough in this business that I expect to be involved for the next 20 years? And in some ways I'm trying to build my brand because that's going to raise the business. In that way, engaging as an individual can be beneficial and not cause any sort of long-term damage. If your goal is, I'm going to be really engaged in this business for the next three to five years and then I plan to be working on the business, a business owner, or maybe even just letting this business function successfully without needing my involvement.
Speaker 3:Then you want to build the brand of your business, so then you want to engage with people through the business account as well, and Facebook can be difficult as far as what they like or don't like based on whether it's your personal account or a business account. They're getting a little more tricky about some of those things. So when you're thinking about how you want to engage, I would just encourage you to think what's the long term here? How do I plan to do it? Because people aren't going to be upset to see a business interacting with others. You know you can't do that wrong in most places as long as you are interacting as again like somebody who's trying to bring value and not just somebody who's trying to sell, sell, sell, yeah, yeah, that makes sense for sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's go to the next phase. So let's say we have a painting contractor who does have some money to invest and they want to kind of take their marketing to the next level. What kind of things do they have at their disposal at this point?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think at this point you've got some money. You can spend some money. I think this is where you start to look at potentially utilizing somebody to manage your website, and part of why I say that is they're going to be able to bring a whole bunch of knowledge and success and a track record to understand how best to do that and to position your site to really show up in search results for several things, several of the services that you're specifically providing in that way. And the other thing that's nice about that is if, uh, if you, if you still have time and now you've got money, if the people that you work with can now manage the website, that frees you up time to be more personal in your social media utilization. Or, let's say, perhaps you were just using one platform or maybe two. Now you can expand to additional platforms. I wouldn't encourage you can expand to additional platforms. I wouldn't encourage you to expand like 10 platforms. I don't think there's that many. Well, I'm sure there are in some places, but you can add one, two, maybe even three, depending on what's most popular in your market and or who you're targeting, and we haven't talked about that, but I think that's an important thing to mention as well. Think about your target market, the age of the folks that you're targeting, and that should determine what you're going to be more involved in. If it's something like you serve senior citizens, but baby boomers, et cetera, something like Facebook is probably going to be more likely to be something you can find success in, versus like Instagram, for instance. If it's you know, if it's more like Xers and even millennials, then you can talk about something like Instagram, which would be helpful. Nextdoor is big with that group as well. Probably nobody's targeting 20-year-olds because they're not as likely to want the services that you provide with some exceptions, certainly. But you look at a different platform depending on what age group that you're targeting as well. So you want to think about that. But if you've added money here now, you can also start to think about some pay-per-click type advertising. Maybe that's Google Ads and maybe that's Facebook advertising. If you've built up your Facebook account, but you've got some money here to kind of play with and understand how is this working, how can I benefit from it? Local service ads with Google is another thing that might be beneficial, and what I would encourage you to do is hopefully, by this point too.
Speaker 3:You've built a community of other painting contractors, whether it's through something like PCA or being involved in other types of groups, where you can ask folks to say, hey, where have you seen the biggest bang for your buck? Or you know, I only have $300 a month to spend. What would that look like? How could I spend that the best way? But you also, again, you want to consider your market Something. We've seen this all over, you know, working on websites for painting contractors all across the United States.
Speaker 3:Sometimes the things you do in one area doesn't work in another area or another town or another city, another location. So you want to realize that as well and know that early on. Especially, some of it is exploring. It's testing, working to see what's going to work best for you and understanding that just because something works perfectly for somebody else doesn't always guarantee you success. So you got to know that there is some element of that. And don't get discouraged if you spend some money on some things and it doesn't work right away. Just know OK, maybe that's not working as well as I would like, maybe I should use that towards something else and then consider how that works as well. So there's some testing involved at this really at any level, but definitely early on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and something that I've learned is also the amount you test is important too. So let's say, facebook ads. If you're trying to run Facebook ads for your business, maybe you're doing it yourself or having somebody else put it together for you. There's likely a learning curve in there for either you to learn how to put the Facebook ads together and have a successful ad and you'll need to give it some time to go through that learning process and also, does that work in your area? So, plus, the Facebook algorithm also has to learn where to put your ads in front of.
Speaker 2:So, because I've made this mistake too and I've also seen other folks make it as they try something and test it where, but they don't give it too much opportunity. Maybe they just test it for a couple of weeks, where you really should be, you know, probably testing it for a few months, for a quarter at least, pretty intensively, cause there's a learning curve and you know you're not going to get much out of it if you just like launch one ad and then it doesn't work after a week and then you're like, okay, that doesn't work, so let me try something else. You know you got to give a little bit more time and testing to really see if something's going to take off or not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's such a good point, daniel, too, because it's easy. I mean, I fall victim to the same thing too. Where it's you want to test something, see if it works, you give it a few days, or, like you said, a week, and it's like oh man, this isn't working, we need to change this up. And then you never give anything a chance to really work and take hold and be successful, which is why things like A-B testing really can be really useful.
Speaker 3:I go back to earlier in my career. I worked for a business journal and we had this full direct mail campaign which was run by the corporate office, and you had a champion, and then you had, like you know, challengers to the champion, and. But a lot of what I took away from there is we were always testing, we had that champion, the one that produced the best results, but there were two or three that we were always testing within that direct mail to see if they could beat the champion. So that you know, okay, now it's time to switch, and and you may not be in a position, based either on your budget or your number of potential impressions, where you can test three, four things at a time, but you can at least test two things. If you wanted to or start something, give it enough time to work.
Speaker 3:Like Daniel said, maybe that's a few weeks, maybe it's a couple months Now, okay, we've seen what this thing can do.
Speaker 3:Now we wanna try something different, but we want to do it reasonably. Let's run an A-B test and see if this new thing can match up to what we're seeing on the other thing and with some platforms you can do that in percentages as well, so you can say, hey, show 75% of this thing that I know works pretty well in 25% of this other one and let's see how those numbers look at this point. As far as advertising and that really is part of the challenge in this phase is, once you step into the world of online advertising, there is so much give and take and testing and other things that are involved that it can be a little bit tricky. But they're also building the interface, the user interface and the knowledge base and all of those things much better than they were a few years ago, so that it is possible to jump in there and find some success fairly early and then try to build upon that and or test against that to better understand what's going to work for you?
Speaker 2:All right, let's move to the next phase, which is you have more money to invest, because the last phase you had a little bit of money. Now you have more money to invest and some limited time. What are some options for marketing in this scenario?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then think about this You're the business owner. You've made this evolution right. You started that business early on. You were working in it a ton. You had very little time. You've been able to hire somebody, you added more time and you're still doing almost everything yourself. Now, in addition to the time, you've made some money so you're able to make those investments in some of the things, and now you've really got to the point where your operation is stronger and you have more happening. So you've got more money and you probably have less time because you're dealing with many more issues or challenges or other things that are happening in the business.
Speaker 3:Or maybe you're just investing in yourself and making sure that you're growing your leadership skills or your business skills, or you're involved in, you know, business owner groups or some other sort of peer group system where you're really focused on guiding that business and being a visionary and or, you know, just making sure you're executing at a high level, and so you've got more money to invest. You've got less time, and this is where you either most likely outsource most of the things that you're doing in a positive way. The benefit of working, for instance, with somebody on ads that knows how to do ads is. They've got similar to what we mentioned about a website. They've got a history of success for knowing what works and they can fairly easily move you into a program where you can see the same success that they've seen for others, and or they can take what you've built and make some tweaks, manage it, so you're not having to manage things as much or as often. But you're really considering, okay, how can I do this? The alternative, of course, is that you say I still wanna manage this all in-house, and then you're either hiring somebody to do these things for you on staff, or a contractor perhaps, so you're outsourcing at a smaller level but in a way that you have a little more control over what things are being done.
Speaker 3:Or you feel pretty good about the success that you've built and now it's just a matter of managing it and you want to keep it in-house a little bit more. So you've got somebody who can go out and take pictures of work that you've done or work with others within the organization to highlight specific things. Maybe that's highlighting part of your crew, maybe that's highlighting some of the things that you're involved with in the community, but they're thinking about those things. They can also write a blog for you on your website, because it's part of what they do.
Speaker 3:You know they're making those posts on social media. They're responding to people. They're building out your following. They spend all day, every day, or maybe a part of the day anyway thinking about how do we build our community, how do we get a greater following? What things can we provide to the community that's going to make them more engaged in what we're doing online? So really, at that point, you've built some things up and now you're offloading that to other people who are going to either be the experts or they're more focused on how to do this, while you can run the business successfully and invest more in your ability to do those types of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically getting that team in place and focusing on that component of your business. So, yeah, that makes sense and focusing on that component of your business. So yeah, that makes sense. So we've covered a lot of different things Getting your website squared away, getting your Google business profile, making sure you're getting reviews on Google or just reviews in general on any platform really, and then social media all the Facebook, Nextdoor, Instagram. Are there any other things that we didn't talk about that we probably should add in there that we haven't covered yet?
Speaker 3:I would say there's always something else that can be added onto that, and when I think about the scope of what we're talking about, it's more around the lines of your web presence and the different places that you can own. There's some other things that go alongside that, but a couple of things that I would add that predominantly related to those things, those specific things For something like reviews I think we mentioned it early but making sure that you're responding to reviews as well, wherever those reviews might be, and I always try to encourage people if you get a not so good review, just remember that your response is more for the people that will see that in the future and less for the person that gave you the not so good review. I know it can be really challenging if you go through a walkthrough at the end of a job and nobody gives you any indication that they're unhappy and they might say they're happy, and then all of a sudden you see you know a non less than four star review on Google and you're questioning like what the heck? And you want to go on there and respond to their review in a negative manner, and that's human nature. What I would encourage you to do is when you think about that and you respond to reviews, do it for the next person to see it, show what type of class and professionalism you have for them, but be sure to respond to reviews, whether you're doing that very specifically or you're working with somebody to make sure that they are doing it.
Speaker 3:The other thing I would say too and I know I talked about the value of social media, and it's absolutely valuable, same thing with Google.
Speaker 3:But I encourage you when you think about these things, comparing those things to like a website. Just, you know, the website is really the only piece of real estate online that you own, as far as what you can control, and it's your place to tell your story. Facebook and Google could decide tomorrow that they want to make huge changes or start charging every business $100 a month to be on the platform, or something like that. So when you think about, we'll sometimes talk to painting contractors who will say, well, I'm on Facebook or I'm on Instagram, why I don't need a website? Okay, and I'm glad to hear that you're active on there, you're building a community that's working for you. But what if Facebook said tomorrow, we're going to charge you $100 a month just to be have a Facebook business account. The idea of what you do with that going forward changes so significantly versus, you know, versus having a website. Building out a website, making sure you're working on something that is going to last and you're going to be much less likely to have that same type of issue.
Speaker 2:That makes complete sense. And going back to what you said about reviews, just reflecting on how I look at reviews, whenever I'm going to buy a book on Amazon or whatever the case is, I always go to the bad reviews and just see what people are saying why I shouldn't get this book or why I shouldn't get this service, I shouldn't get this book or why I shouldn't get this service. And you know, seeing the, the, the business owner respond, or the support team, whoever respond in a professional way, it always it's because we I think we all know like there's crazy people out there and so you're always going to have someone that's just has crazy expectations or they're just insane. So I think everyone kind of knows that. And as long as you're responding to those bad reviews, like you said, in like a professional way and showing what you've done to correct the situation people are going to, most people are going to understand, you know. So I think what you said makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:And then for the owning your own presence, like actually having your own territory on the internet that you own, makes complete sense Because, like just to take Facebook, for example, the business profiles I don't know when they started doing it like in the last year or two. But basically when you post something from a business profile it's buried, like there's no one's going to see it unless you boost the post pretty much. So having posting on a business, a Facebook business profile, it seems to be like a bunch of black hole, you know, whereas before it was like you would be not as, not as buried. So things like that are just if you're solely dependent on Facebook, you know your Facebook business account, you know you're pretty much screwed in that scenario. So having your own presence, you know it, makes complete sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the other thing to think about along those lines, daniel, because it's a great another great point about Facebook is remember Facebook wants people to stay on Facebook. Because it's another great point about Facebook is remember Facebook wants people to stay on Facebook. So as you engage with Facebook, think about okay, how can I get more engagement, even for the things I do post? How can I keep people on Facebook? So sometimes what we'll find paying contractors will do is they'll think it's a good idea to post links to their website on Facebook in their posts. And you think about that. Facebook wants people to stay on Facebook. Now you just posted a link that if somebody clicks on that is gonna take them off. Well, then they're really gonna bury that post because they don't want people to leave Facebook. But if you can do something like post a video, which means it's gonna keep more people engaged, more people on Facebook, they're gonna be much more likely to show that in the feed, so it keeps those people engaged. So just consider that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great point, All right, awesome. I guess how can folks learn more about Propainter websites? Where can they either reach out to you or find out more about Propainter websites?
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for asking that question, Daniel. You can find us on the web, as you would expect, at propainterwebsitescom. You see, I'll pretty much learn all there is about our organization and what we do, how we help painting contractors. If you have any additional questions or want to connect with me, I'd love to hear from you for sure. If you have any additional questions or want to connect with me, I'd love to hear from you for sure, and you can reach me at martinmorgan at propainterwebsitescom. Again, anything I can help you with any questions that you have. I love having the opportunity to help business owners and give them good advice, because there's so many shady characters out there, unfortunately, who are trying to prey on business owners who don't know a lot about how some of these things work. I encourage you to feel free to reach out. I'm happy to help any way I can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely recommend you check out Propainter websites and we'll include the links in the show notes. If you need to own your own piece of the internet and you need some professional help, definitely check them out. And with that, really appreciate Martin you coming on. You've been super generous with your time and to the listener. We'll see you next week.