9 Easy Ways to Improve Your Marketing

May 29th, 2021

Our guest author Jon Mears has put together a range of simple guides to help professional painters and decorators with their sales and marketing. These simple marketing secrets will help to grow your business in no time!

Jon has been working in sales and marketing for over a decade and has gained important skills and knowledge about the industry. He began writing to help tradespeople with their marketing in 2020, and has since published three books which are available to purchase on Amazon.

9 Quick & Easy Ways to Improve Your Marketing!

1. Have a plan and set a budget

All too often people don’t start spending money on marketing until they hit a quiet spell. They then go into panic mode and spend loads of money all in one go. Instead of falling into that trap, try setting yourself a small monthly budget and plan your spending. You’ll get a whole lot more for your money and you’ll get steady and reliable results.

2. Do 3 simple things each day

‘Marketing works best when you take small actions on a consistent basis.’



With this in mind, think of 3 simple tasks you can do everyday that will help your marketing or business in general.

To give you an example, my 3 things are:

  1. Write for at least 15 minutes
  2. Post something on social media (This includes commenting on other people’s posts)
  3. Speak to a customer

These 3 things are very simple, and on their own don’t make much of a difference. However, they are easy to stay consistent with.If I do them every day for a year these small actions add up to massive results. Think of your 3 things and start doing them daily.

3. Try something new

We are all guilty of sticking with what we know. However, the truth is, to make progress we need to try new things. Whether that is a new social media platform, leaflets or anything else. Think of something that could help improve your marketing and give it a go!

An easy one to do is to sign up to a new social media platform.

4. Clean up your social media

Another thing you can do with your social media is to give it a general clean up. Pretend you are a potential customer and look at your social media profiles from the outside. Make sure your profiles have up to date contact information in them, add a new profile picture and delete any of those old drunken tweets!

For 12 easy social media ideas for decorators, click here.

5. Get clear on your message

Have a clear message of what your business is all about. You might well have thought about this when you first started up, but it has probably changed by now. In corporate world it’s called a mission statement. What’s yours? A good mission statement is clear and concise. It should explain what you do, who you do it for and WHY you do it. Having a clear purpose for your business will help you in all areas of your marketing.

6. Stay in touch with your existing clients

How often do you contact your regular clients? Most people only speak to them when the client needs more work doing. Change that dynamic. Build a stronger relationship with them. It only needs to be the odd email or phone call. 

‘Remember, from a marketing point of view, it is much cheaper to hold on to an existing customer than to get a new one.’


If you struggle for things to share with your customer then here’s a quick hack that will help. 

Go to Google and set up something called ‘Google alerts’ Set up your alerts for keywords such as colour schemes, Farrow & Ball, interior design etc. Then, once a day (or how often you want) Google will send you an email will all the latest mentions of those key words. 

You’ll get loads of handy articles you can quickly share with your customers. Easy!

7. GET SOME TESTIMONIALS

One of the most powerful marketing tools is the humble testimonial. We all love getting positive reviews, but we rarely take the time to ask for them. Reach out to your recent customers and ask them for a quick testimonial. These are great to use on your marketing materials. Whether that’s a website or a printed leaflet!

8. Engage with your local community

Being well known in your local community is a huge advantage for most painters and decorators. Are there any local events you can take part in? Or even sponsor? If there is nothing like that then try to get more involved with your local Facebook groups. You don’t have to constantly post about decorating. Just engage in competitions, share funny posts etc. The more often ‘Dave the Decorator’ (or whatever your name is) pops up on people’s feed the better.

9. Flip your mindset

‘The most powerful thing you can do to improve your marketing is to think about what your potential customer is getting out of it.’


A great example of this is your social media posts. Too often I see social media posts from decorators that are just boring adverts. It’ll be a picture of a job, with a caption listing the services they offer. 99% of people looking at your post aren’t looking for a decorator right now. 

So, if your posts are boring like this, they’ll just start ignoring them. Think about how you can use your posts to offer some value. Give them a reason to follow you and engage with your posts. Talk about the colours you’re using, show people some quirky designs that might inspire them. Show people how you achieve the results you do. Share funny stories from jobs.

Aim to create posts that people would want to share with their friends. This is the key to reaching more and more people.

Find out more about 'Sales & Marketing for Decorators' by Jon Mears here.

Listen to Jon's podcast where he talks about all sales and marketing with decorators and industry experts.