Two pros talk MARKETING
A little more than 3,000 miles separate paint pros Don Easton of Easton Painting in Woodland, CA and Rodrigo Evangelista of Masterpiece Painter in Holliston, MA. For all intents and purposes, the distance between their approaches to marketing are equally far apart. For one, sticking to word of mouth—and only word of mouth—for more than 30 years has yielded the desired results. But for the other, a hunger to grow and a willingness to learn from others resulted in a lot of ups and downs, and, more recently, the creation of a future more firmly in his control.
We’re grateful to the two pros for sharing their approaches to marketing as well as offering some thoughts and takeaways on the other’s efforts.
The owner of Easton Painting in Woodland, CA, Don Easton has honed his craftsmanship skills over the course of 35 years Specializing in historic home restoration and preservation, he loves the challenge and learning opportunity that period homes present. Currently working with a crew of two—although he's employed as many as 21—the Easton Painting team has a reputation for meticulous prep, process and inspired color selection.
Easton Painting’s approach to marketing
When it comes to describing his marketing strategy, Don Easton answers honestly, “If there’s one at all, it’s about communication and connection.”
With a website absent of updates for six years running and zero social media presence beyond that, Easton is happy to let his work speak for itself. Well, he does a bit of talking, too.
“I am 100% a people person,” he explains. “Like the houses I work on, every owner also has their own unique and interesting story. “I connect with customers through an open and honest dialogue about colors, color placement, repairs and remedies. By being direct and demonstrating knowledge, they open up about their lives and trust us to preserve their homes. In most cases, I end up becoming friends with my customers— not just for the span of the job but for years. Seriously, years.”
—DON EASTON, EASTON PAINTING “
For people who share our appreciation and love for historic homes, that conversation is far more meaningful than a Facebook post or print ad.”
Easton frequently ends up befriending people from communities where he’s working as well.
“So often, the houses we’re working on are landmarks in their communities,” he explains. “Next-door neighbors, people walking their dogs, all kinds of folks will stop and watch us at work. I’m not shy about telling them what we’re doing. It’s probably more detail than they expected but I just love what we do, and I want them to know that we have a lot of respect for the integrity and history of every home. For people who share our appreciation and love for historic homes, that conversation is far more meaningful than a Facebook post or print ad. I honestly can’t put a number on how many of those conversations have turned into jobs.”
While Easton doesn’t do any online or print advertising, his crew members do sport company shirts on the job and he puts up a lawn sign at every project. “It has our company name as well as my name and number. It’s not much but it does seem to work. I recently got a text from a lady to paint her home without ever meeting me. She chose us based on our work on a neighbor’s house and speaking to that customer. When I told her it would be two years, she said she’d wait.”
When he’s not working, Easton is very involved in his community. He attends weekly Rotary meetings and participates in the club’s charitable acts. He’s also extremely involved in the local youth foster program. While Easton attends meetings for both organizations, he emphasizes that he never goes as a representative of his company. “These are organizations I support because I believe in their mission. It’s not a business strategy. That’s not to say my participation doesn’t result in a bit of name recognition for me, but it’s not because I’m tossing out business cards or key chains.”
Easton adds, “I’m sure my lack of systemized marketing is like nails on a chalkboard to some, but for what I want to do—work on gorgeous old houses in a particular area—what I’m doing is delivering results that far exceed the customer’s expectations.”
Rodrigo Evangelista basically stumbled into the world of painting in 2005 when a friend, who was a painting subcontractor, handed him his business including his one and only customer, a two-person crew, some equipment and a van.
The van died a week later but thanks to Evangelista’s vision and business sense, the painting operation has continued to grow and evolve and now bills more than $3 million with a team that consists of a project manager, 14 painters and up to 5 exterior subcontractors. Operating in the suburbs of Boston, the company handles residential interiors and exteriors, cabinet refinishing, HOAs and some work for general contractors.
Masterpiece Painter’s approach to marketing
While Evangelista was new to the painting industry when he was gifted the company, he was no stranger to business. “I had been running a cleaning business for three years before I got into painting,” he says. “I operated that business following the marketing principles of business coach Brian Buffini, which is all about generating referrals by building relationships through a combination of personal notes, phone calls and pop-by visits to existing customers. That worked well for the cleaning enterprise, so I just went with the same approach for the painting business and leaned on my existing customer database. Plus, always, always, ALWAYS asking for referrals. What I told people then and still do today is this: I’m never too busy for your referral.”
For 10 years Evangelista stuck to that marketing approach and managed to steadily grow his business through referrals and a few marketing efforts. “We sent holiday cards to our database, had yard signs and lettered trucks. But I stuck close to the relationship approach.” In 2016 and 2017, he worked with two different business coaches who helped him hone his customer relationship management (CRM) business systems and introduced him to a few different marketing ideas.
Masterpiece Painter’s IT Director Daniel Oliveira (left) and company owner Rodrigo Evangelista (right) work together to create an exterior maintenance marketing calendar that automatically contacts customers one, two and four years after job completion to schedule a warranty inspection.
“We left paint cans full of cookies at the close of every job. I created a gift bag that included a Magic Eraser cleaning tool with a note that read, ‘If this won’t clean up your wall, call us and we’ll come do it.’ We had mugs filled with goodies that I’d drop off at the houses neighboring the property we were working at with a note that read, ‘Sorry for any inconvenience created by our working to improve your neighbor’s house.’ I didn’t ask for business. I just let them know that, even as I was working on the house next door, I was aware of and respectful of them.”
Then, in 2019, Evangelista built a website, established a presence on Facebook and Instagram, and dabbled in some search engine optimization (SEO). “I did it because we had to, not because I had a master plan for it.” In 2021, he brought someone on board to grow their exterior painting business and near the close of the year, added a roofing company to his holdings.
In 2022, Evangelista tested the waters with Angie’s (which he describes as a ‘complete disaster’) and three different paint-industryspecific marketing agencies. “I tried reactivation campaigns, newsletters and campaigns on Facebook, Instagram and Google. In some cases, we weren’t ready for what they had to offer and in others, our styles simply didn’t mesh. But the real takeaway was that again and again, the results fell short of the expectations set.”
Frustrated by his experiences, Evangelista sought to take things into his own hands. When someone mentioned a powerful all-in-one sales and marketing CRM platform, he did some digging and landed upon the same software used by all the marketing agencies he had previously used. Shortly after that discovery, he hired a full-time marketing person with some SEO experience, writing talent and passion for tech.
With his ‘tech nerd’ in place, a powerful platform at his disposal, and the help of a great friend and mentor in the form of Jason Phillips of Phillips’ Home Improvement, Evangelista is now successfully implementing the best of the efforts he previously tried plus some new approaches.
“The CRM automates all our processes and communications and allows us to see who visits our Facebook page, website and Instagram page, and we can see who opened our email campaigns. This lets us focus our messaging and marketing very narrowly on them,”