Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

From my experience, the main marketing influence for customers for your industry - painting specifically, but building related artisans in general - is word of mouth (WOM). The main source of prospects is from referrals from clients and industry partners (builders, interior decorators, real estate agents, etc.) A secondary influence is phone book entries - such as yellow pages, ads in the local paper, and website. But these sources generally yield much less prospects than WOM and referrals and generally investing in these media are hard to justify with the limited payback (media sales folks will argue with me, but won't produce convincing statistics.)

In the case where WOM and referrals are your primary source of prospects, your name and potential tag lines are much less significant than your relationships with referral partners and your performance with clients. Spend your time and money forging relationships and making sure that your present clients are ALWAYS more than happy with your performance. Augment your marketing budget with with promotional materials to clients and referral partners.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

You've asked the 'Magic Bullet' question! What's a name that will create sales? Well . . . guess what? Wayde's advice is very accurate. (I truly do wish the name was the answer. It's not).

If people come to know, like and trust you personally and respect you professionally you're better positioned to capitalize on your attributes of quality, integrity and excellence than other painters who share those same attributes but lack the know, like and trust factor as you do.

Of course, next to you establishing that know, like, trust factor is working with a related contractor who has it already with a homeowner who needs a good painter.

I've worked with painting and remodeling contractors and what I respectfully suggest you do is build some alliances with related contractors. Think 'anyone who goes into the home' -- electricians, plumbers, HVAC, carpet guys, granite guys, paving guys, deck guys, tile guys, etc.

Approach them to discuss how you can help introduce each other to your respective clients. In effect, you each become a marketing arm of the other firm. And now, you're leveraging the goodwill the other guy's already built with a homeowner customer.

That's your basic strategy, the details of the tactics aren't easily gotten into in this limited venue but if you approach related contractors with this basic idea, you'll find they're usually quite happy to find a proactive professional in a complimentary field like yours.

A couple of other thoughts:
* If your name is common or already used by another painting contractor, use a different name to distinguish yourself.

* To make your name appear earlier in lists (Yellow Pages, etc.) consider re-naming to start with a number (1-2-3 Painting) or the letter A (An Painting Perfectionist).

I love questions like this and let me start by congratulating you on your goal to break away and franchise. If your goal is to stand out amongst several others in your field, you need to build a strong, loyal customer base as the previous postings have stated. Second, if "standing out" and really getting yourself recognized, another approach would be to create a persona. ie. Everyone knows the annoying guy in the question mark suits who advertises "free money from the gov't" on tv. Why? Because he does things different from your average, boring, vanilla style of marketing. He forces himself to stand out, creating an "image" where people can associate his image/persona with making money. Genius.

Try this for example. Around your area set up a few benches painted white except for an area left unpainted and have it appear as if someone sat down and took the paint with them on the back of their clothes. On the bench where it's unpainted, have it read as your advertisement.

Ie: "Smith Painting" - "We also have connections with a dry cleaning business."

or

"Smith Painting" - "We'll paint anything but the smile on your face"

"Smith Painting" - "We've got your back. Literally." (with the bench idea in mind)

Last, a t-shirt idea could have paint marks on the back (like you sat down on a bench with lines in your shirt) and have it say "Smith Painting", - "We PAT ourselves on the back" however, where it reads "PAT", have a graphic designer scribble in an "IN" with an arrow between the A and T so it would read "We PAinT ourselves on the back". This could kill two birds with one stone being 1: You have just established a brand identity for your company. 2: It's humorous yet gets your point across and it makes people want to talk about you and your product.

Everything I do whether it comes to design, marketing, advertising, etc. I always live by this idea: "If it's not worth talking about, it's not worth doing."

Hope this helps and if you need any other advice or possible graphics, email me at [Email addresses deleted by staff].

Good luck!
-Dean