What a painter should ask an agency before spring

Late January is when painting company owners get pitched. Exterior season is still weeks away in most of the country, northern crews are working through interiors and cabinet jobs, and every agency with a contractor package knows the spring calendar fills up now. Some of those pitches deserve a meeting. Plenty are a general contractor template with the word “painting” pasted in, and the owner who signs one tends to find out in April, when the clicks are expensive and the estimate requests are for the wrong jobs.

Below are the questions we would put to any agency, ourselves included, before a painter signs anything.

The rules that reach into a painting ad

Most contractor marketing deals in platform policies. Painting adds a federal rule and several state ones that govern what the ad itself may say, and an agency should raise them before you do.

• EPA’s lead-safe rule. The Renovation, Repair and Painting rule covers paid work that disturbs paint in homes and child-occupied facilities built before 1978. EPA names painters among the covered trades, lists painting preparation as covered work, and says firms “cannot advertise or perform” that work without firm certification. Sole proprietors are included. The only carve-out is minor work: six square feet or less per room inside, or 20 square feet or less outside.
• California. Licensed contractors, C-33 painting and decorating contractors among them, must put the license number in all forms of advertising.
• Washington. The contractor registration number belongs on business cards, estimates, bid proposals and internet ads.
• Florida. The state lists paint among work that needs no state license, though a city or county may still ask for a local one.

An agency that has never heard of the first rule will happily aim exterior ads at a street of 1940s houses for a company with no certificate. Ask how they would check.

Questions that separate a painting plan from a contractor template

• “Which searches will you keep me out of?” LocaliQ’s 2025 home services benchmarks, drawn from campaigns that ran from April 2024 to March 2025, put the median Paint & Painting click at $13.74, the highest of the 16 home service categories it tracks. At that price, a click from someone hunting for paint colors, a paint store or a how-to video is money gone. Ask to see the negative keyword list they would start with. A good one is long.
• “How will you split interior, exterior, cabinet and commercial work?” These are different buyers on different calendars. Lump them into one campaign and the exterior budget gets spent on interior clicks in February, or the reverse in June.
• “Will you set up Local Services Ads, and what does Google check for painters?” Google has a Painter category, and since October 2025 the ads carry a single Google Verified badge. For painters, Google screens the business and the owner, asks for a general liability certificate, confirms a state license where the law calls for one and requires a verified Business Profile. It puts the average at three to four weeks once documents are in. An agency promising Painter ads live by next week has not filed one.
• “Where will my license number and EPA logo appear?” A good answer names places: each ad, the site footer, the profile description, the estimate template and the truck door.
• “How will you get reviews in winter?” A painter who asks only after exteriors walks into spring with a profile full of last summer. Listen for a plan to ask after every interior and cabinet job, with a photo of the finished room.
• “What changes in October?” In the North, exterior ads should stop once overnight lows fall. Sherwin-Williams calls painting on days above 50 F with nights below 35 F a common mistake. An agency with no seasonal plan runs the same ads twelve months a year.

What the first ninety days should look like for a painter

Starting in the next few weeks means the work lands before the first warm weekend in March. The order matters because painting clicks are expensive and homeowners judge you by photos before they ever call.

• Weeks 1 to 3: proof. Before and after photos from your own jobs on the site and profile, reviews requested from every recent client, the EPA logo if the firm is certified, and license or registration numbers checked everywhere your state wants them.
• Weeks 2 to 6: being found. Profile categories, service area and services split by job type, and the Local Services Ads application filed early enough to clear Google’s review.
• Weeks 4 to 8: tracking. Every call and form tagged by source and job type, plus a way to catch calls while crews are up ladders.
• Weeks 6 to 12: search ads. One campaign per job type, the negative list already loaded, switched on just ahead of your local exterior season.

A plan that opens with a big ad budget in January spends painting’s click prices in a month when few homeowners in cold states are ready to book an exterior. That money is better spent on photos and reviews now.

What a monthly report should show

A report worth paying for follows the lead all the way to a signed estimate, split the way a painting company actually works.

• Calls answered and missed, by hour of day. Weekday afternoons, when every crew is on site, are when calls slip through.
• Estimates booked, sent and signed, by job type. Interior, exterior, cabinet and commercial, each on its own line.
• Cost per signed job, by channel. The same LocaliQ report put the Paint & Painting median cost per lead at $138.38, with 10.80% of clicks becoming leads, a strong rate for home services. Because painting converts well, a report stuffed with leads can still hide a campaign that signs nothing.
• Where everything else came from. Referrals, yard signs and repeat clients, recorded by asking every caller how they found you.

What we are telling painters this month

• Pull last year’s ads, business cards, yard signs and estimate templates, and check each one for your license or registration number where your state requires it.
• If you work older neighborhoods without EPA firm certification, sort that out before any ad goes near those streets.
• File the Local Services Ads application now, so Google’s screening finishes before March.
• Ask every winter interior and cabinet client for a review, with a photo of the room attached.
• Ask each agency you meet for the negative keyword list it would load into your account on day one.

The agency worth a second meeting is the one that brings up the lead-safe rule and your license number before you do. To compare its answers with ours, the painting contractors page shows the order we would work in, our Google Ads and Local Services Ads page explains the paid side, and review requests run underneath both.