You're paying $40 a lead to HomeStars and $1,200 a month to Houzz Pro
And you don't own any of that audience. The reviews live on their site. The leads are shared with three other painters. Stop paying and the pipeline dies the same day.
Every lead through HomeStars costs $30 to $80. Houzz Pro is $1,200 a month. HomeAdvisor sells the same lead to three other painters. You don't own any of that audience. The day you stop paying, the inquiries stop. If you're an owner-operated painter in Ontario and you're tired of that math, this page is for you.
Above All Awnings. An Ontario awning installer we work with. This is the playbook's track record. Here's how the same system applies to painting contractors.
Most painters we talk to have the same four problems. None of them are fixed by buying more HomeStars credits.
And you don't own any of that audience. The reviews live on their site. The leads are shared with three other painters. Stop paying and the pipeline dies the same day.
Interior, exterior, cabinet refinishing, commercial. All jammed together. Google has no idea which you're best at. Neither does the homeowner searching "cabinet refinishing Oakville."
The last review was six months ago. No posts. The primary category is generic. You've wrapped 80 jobs since that last review request went out, and none of them turned into a Google review.
Because nothing you own is sending you leads. Your site doesn't rank. Your GBP is inactive. HomeStars is the only tap, and they charge by the drip.
Take a painter in the Hamilton-Burlington-Oakville corridor. Owner-operated, three crews, doing interior and exterior residential plus cabinet refinishing, paying HomeStars and Houzz. Typical starting point for the painters who call us.
Month one, we'd map their service mix against their real service area. Four services across three cities is twelve real pages, not one. Interior painting Hamilton. Exterior painting Burlington. Cabinet refinishing Oakville. Each page with real job photos, crew info, and pricing ranges the homeowner can actually use.
At the same time we rebuild the Google listing. Correct category. Real job photos. Weekly posts that flip with the season: interior and cabinet content through winter, exterior content April to October. Every completed job triggers an automatic review request. That's the biggest single lever in the trade.
The goal is to turn HomeStars and Houzz into optional, not life-support. As organic and the review engine compound, the marketplace spend shrinks and the pipeline gets cheaper per lead. We also work with Brant Transmission, Cinderellie, and Verwey Automotive. Same playbook, tuned for paint.
This is what Full Local Growth looks like when the client paints houses. Same system we use for any owner-operated trade, but every deliverable is shaped around how homeowners actually hire a painter.
"Interior painting Hamilton." "Exterior painting Oakville." "Cabinet refinishing Burlington." "Commercial painting Mississauga." Not one Services page. Each one targets a specific service in a specific city.
Correct category. Weekly posts that follow the season. Interior and cabinet offers November through March, exterior offers April through October. Every post is a signal to Google that you're active.
This is the single biggest lever for painters. You wrap 3 to 5 jobs a week in season. If every one triggers a Google review request, you go from 40 reviews to 200 in a year. That's what lifts you above every HomeStars page in the map pack.
Which cities sent traffic. Which service converted. How many leads. How much HomeStars spend we replaced. No 40-page PDF. One page, by the fifth of the month.
Average interior repaint in Ontario is $3,000 to $8,000. Full exterior is $5,000 to $12,000. Cabinet refinishing is $2,000 to $6,000. If you're spending $2,000 a month on HomeStars and Houzz combined (plenty of painters spend more), replacing even 30% of that with organic leads pays the retainer twice over before we touch your close rate.
That's the bar we hold ourselves to. Not "more impressions." Not "brand lift." One extra job a month that you would not have gotten otherwise, and a steady drop in your marketplace rental bill. You'll see it in the monthly report.
Start small with GBP Growth, or go all-in with Full Local Growth. Both month-to-month. No lock-in.
Two-minute form. 48-hour turnaround. We look at your current site, your Google listing, your HomeStars footprint, and your two biggest local competitors, and tell you exactly where the opportunity is. Ontario painting contractors only, for now.