Google Ads for painters who are tired of feast or famine.

One "House Painting" campaign is three businesses wearing a trench coat.

We audit painting company accounts every month and 8 out of 10 have a single search campaign labeled "Painting" with fifty keywords stuffed in one ad group. Google's smart bidding then optimizes toward whatever converts cheapest — which is almost always small interior touch-up jobs, because they have the lowest friction to book. Meanwhile your $9,000 exterior repaint keywords sit starved of budget.

Exterior repaints are weather-gated and seasonal — spring through early fall in most of the country. Interior work fills the gaps but pays less per hour of labor. Cabinet refinishing is a completely different buyer chasing a kitchen remodel on a budget who found you instead of a cabinet company. Mixing all three into one budget pool means you never actually know which one is making you money.

What each job type can afford per lead.

Assumes a 12% marketing-cost-of-sale target. If you don't know your close rate by job type, that's the first thing to start tracking — not your CPC.

Bid strategy changes four times a year, not once.

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  Spring ramp (Mar–May)

  Exterior search volume triples in most climates. Move budget out of interior and into exterior two weeks before your local weather turns, not after — competitors wait, you don't have to.

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  Peak season (Jun–Aug)

  CPCs climb 20-40% on exterior terms as everyone bids up. This is when target-CPA bidding needs the widest tolerance band, or the algorithm throttles volume to hit an unrealistic cost target.

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  Shoulder season (Sep–Nov)

  Interior and cabinet refinishing become your primary campaigns. This is also the best window of the year for cabinet refinishing ads — homeowners want kitchens done before holidays.

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  Winter (Dec–Feb)

  Exterior campaigns go to minimum viable spend or pause entirely in cold climates. Redirect that budget into interior and cabinet work so utilization doesn't crater along with your crews' hours.

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  Rebuild the negative list each season

  Winter searches skew toward 'interior painter near me' and 'cabinet painting cost' — exterior negatives you set in December can accidentally block profitable spring traffic if left untouched.

What a healthy painting company account looks like.

Search isn't the only channel worth running — see how Facebook and Instagram ads for painting companies fill the gaps search can't reach.

Painting company Google Ads questions

Should interior and exterior painting share one campaign?

No. Exterior work is weather-locked and seasonal; interior runs year-round and often pays worse per square foot but keeps crews busy in January. Blend them into one campaign and Google's algorithm will chase whichever converts cheaper that week, usually starving the higher-ticket exterior jobs right when the weather's good.

How do I stop paying for painters looking for jobs, not customers?

Negative out 'painting jobs,' 'painter salary,' 'hiring painters,' and 'how to become a painter' on day one. Painting contractors lose 8-15% of budget to job-seeker traffic before anyone notices, because the keyword overlap with 'house painter near me' is brutal.

Is cabinet refinishing worth its own campaign?

Almost always yes — it's a distinct buyer with a distinct search vocabulary ("cabinet painting" vs "kitchen remodel") and a ticket size that often beats a full exterior repaint. Treat the close-rate math the same way we break down in why painting estimates don't turn into signed jobs.

What's a realistic budget to start?

$2,000-$3,500/mo in media for most single-market painting companies, enough to run three separated campaigns (interior, exterior, cabinets) without any of them starving. Below that, pick one job type and go deep instead of spreading thin across all three.