Blog, Marketing

A local painter and decorator told me they give verbal quotes to customers, often over the phone. What?! It’s not that I distrust people, but there is way too much can go wrong with that approach. Mondegreen is not a colour, it is a contractual disaster waiting to happen “A mondegreen is the mishearing or [...]

Blog, hand-painted kitchen, Marketing

If you want an easy way to find a trusted reliable specialist kitchen painter in your area, just scan this QR code with your iPhone or smart phone.

Blog, Marketing

In April 2011 I commissioned a website review by Darren Slaughter, a US-based marketing adviser to building and building-related companies. To say that his review was insightful and helpful is an understatement. The site is now attracting 26000 page views a month, whereas in April at the time of Darren’s website review, it was attracting [...]

Blog, Little Greene, Marketing, paint

In 2012, I find the easiest way to classify or differentiate between traditional paints and modern paints is by “look” – not by VOC values or chemical content… If you read a comment below, I get lambasted for apparently not knowing what a traditional paint is, and that I have no appreciation of what horrors [...]

Blog, Marketing

I Googled, “WordPress for Android” to see if the specialist painters listed on the Traditional Painter website could use their Android phones to upload images to the gallery on their profile pages. All I can see on page 1 of the search results is a bunch of unoriginal rehashed press releases from experts who don’t [...]

Blog, Marketing

Blogging is one way that painters and decorators can get themselves and their website on the map, so to speak. Pick a topic you are expert on, and write about it, add photos, keep it real! Google indexes the topic and serves your blog post to the public in the search results. If it is [...]

Blog, Marketing

I have been refreshing this website recently to accomodate “progress”, but I have realised that you have to be careful, if you are a bit on the creative side. It is easy to get carried away and forget the point of changes. Don’t want to end up with a site looking like this cluster: I [...]

Blog, Marketing

Website, SEO and keyword stuff can be a bit baffling, but this is a dead simple but powerful marketing idea for all painters and contractors with a blog. Pick a particular article you are proud of, and send the following email to the companies or experts mentioned or linked to in your article… Hi this [...]

Blog, hand-painted kitchen, Marketing

I just completed a refurbishment of a big 15 year old dark oak Poggenpohl kitchen. The brief was to bring it up to date, and breathe new life into it by hand-painting the solid oak cabinets. I also had to replace the existing wooden handles with something more uplifting; to fill & repaint the walls [...]

Blog, Marketing

They say a picture says a thousand words. Here is a 12-month history of the traffic that comes to this site. (Dec 2010 – Dec 2011) In a few words, this website was building gradually, attracting about 9000 views a month. In April 2011 I approached Darren Slaughter who is an expert in website reviews [...]

Blog, hand-painted kitchen, Marketing

Most painters and decorators go through the motions of their job and when 5 o’clock comes, they switch off and that’s it till tomorrow. No interest in what’s going on in different areas of the trade, no clue what is happening in the US world of painting, or on sites in Scandinavia. Not everyone in [...]

Blog, Marketing

Apparently only 8% of all internet traffic to websites in US is on Google. Yet most website owners, including painters with websites and blogs, worship Google. Maybe we should think about more than SEO. This is a diagram of the various sources of internet traffic. Major Internet Traffic Sources Pay Per Click – every ad [...]

Blog, Marketing, suppliers

There are hundreds of thousands of sites dedicated to painting and decorating, but here are a couple to check out. Mark Nash is a 3rd generation master painter based in Marlborough in Wiltshire. Not too many painters can boast that sort of pedigree. The old photos on his home page are of his father and [...]

Blog, Marketing

To get your head around what blogging actually is, think of a word processor program like Word connected to the internet. If you have a computer and an internet connection, you can blog. The main difference between Word and blogging software like WordPress is that, instead of saving to your computer, WordPress can send your [...]

Blog, Marketing

Options to get a decorating website / blog online If you have zero computer skills, can’t email, have zero experience of running or setting up websites, and absolutely no interest in becoming internet literate, then there is no point trying to do this yourself. Pay a pro to get you online and run your website [...]

Blog, Marketing

Off my own back, I set up this site about 2 years ago, and for the past year, enquiries via my site have kept me fully employed with a constant flow of specialist decorating work. I doubt I would have come across most of those clients via conventional offline sources. At the end of March [...]

Blog, Marketing

If you haven’t got a website yet, painters, you are in trouble, or heading that way. The world is moving ahead fast and regardless of how conservative, traditional or resistant to change the painting industry might be, the fact is, the rest of the world, the public, your customers, are going online. And if you [...]

Blog, Marketing

I had an email from Northern Ireland asking for tips on setting up a kitchen and furniture painting business. This is how I started from zero not too many years ago. Assuming you can do the job, marketing is the key. Marketing just means, raising awareness. And when marketing a decorating business, the biggest enemy [...]

Blog, Marketing

The internet is a series of links and inter-links, and when I blog or post on forums, I try to link to sites and articles that will add colour and substance to the various decorating topics I post online. Several sites have maintained links back to this site too, and below are the websites sending [...]

Blog, Marketing

If you mouse over the Mentionmap, you will see the various painters, decorators, designers, building professionals and fun folk I have “tweeted” with this past week. I am @acmasterpainter . Why not follow me and see what you can learn, share and laugh about in 140 characters. Twitter is an excellent tool to promote your [...]

Blog, Marketing

I blog for a few reasons, but in a nutshell: – Hopefully this blog gives folks a pointer to what a good painting job looks like. – I try to demonstrate the thought and work that goes into producing a high quality finish – I try to show off the tools and equipment that make [...]

Marketing

It’s that time again – looking back at the year that was. When looking at a job, I tend to write a lot of info down. All the jotting has little to do with being thorough, just compensating for a poor memory! In fact, off the top of my head, the most vivid memory of [...]

Blog, Marketing

Overall, I think I am easy to contact. The CONTACT button on my website is fairly prominent, and I have listed all the details for people to make enquiries and pose questions via email, via the contact forms on the website, and via mobile phone and landline numbers. There is also Twitter… Occasionally I even [...]

Blog, Marketing

Apart from Traditional Painter FAQ, there is an excellent online resource for decorating tips and advice – the daily paper.li a Twitter-powered newspaper! Graphskill Ltd Daily Graphskill is an on-line shop for marine grade stainless steel fasteners. Component manufacturer of a full range of pipefittings. Of their 469 Twitter followers, 3 are experts in the [...]

Blog, Marketing

Thanks to architectural historian, Ellen Leslie, Paper.li and Twitter, we have our name in lights!!!! What is this? This newspaper is a compilation of the articles published today by the people whom Ellen Leslie, aka @wallstroker, follows on Twitter. (I should point out that the real experts on historical architecture are off enjoying the Sunday [...]

Blog, Marketing

These days, any serious decorator, builder or construction company should have a website, blog and Twitter account. Even little old me gets about 4 online inquiries a week from potential clients, fellow tradesmen or DIYers who come across me via my website, blog and Twitter set-up. WordPress is a brilliant (free) tool to build a [...]

Blog, Marketing

This is a bit geeky, but if you are a painter and decorator, or any business for that matter, and you have a WordPress blog that you regularly update with company news, photos of recent jobs, offers etc – it is a good idea to publicize your blog as well as possible. Feedburner RSS feed [...]

Blog, Marketing

These are some marketing strategies that have worked for me over the years when promoting my painting and decorating services. In general, marketing is more an art than a science. No two campaigns return the same results, sure-fire winners fail, whereas less well thought out ideas can strike gold. The best approach involves a variety [...]

Blog, Marketing

I use the following terms and conditions in my daily business. They are based on a mix of what I have seen in cookie-cutter contracts and personal observations of what seems to matter to my customers. To put the terms in context: I usually work direct for private clients who I visit in their home [...]

Blog, Marketing

*cpt = characters per tweet What is this Twitter milarkey? It is easy to be cynical and get hung up on the old percepton that Twitter is just to tell the world you are having a quad mocha latte burger with basil and cucumber dips at your local deli, but that is olde school. Twitter [...]