Currently booking pilot clients · Manitoba painters
Meta lead ads. Built for Manitoba painting companies.

More booked jobs. Less chasing leads.

I'm Carter Bilous. I run Facebook and Instagram lead-generation ads for painting companies in Manitoba. Qualified homeowners land straight in your phone. I handle the targeting, the copy, the creative, the daily optimization. You just quote the jobs.

Book a 30-minute call
$500/month  ·  Ad spend separate  ·  Hit your lead target or your first month is refunded
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A single residential paint job in Winnipeg is worth $3,000 to $8,000. Booking one extra job a month covers the ads, the management, and your time — twice over. That's the math that makes this work for painters when it doesn't work for almost any other trade.

The person behind the work

Who I am.

Carter Bilous, founder of Forge Media
Carter Bilous
Founder · Forge Media

I'm 19. I play for the Melfort Mustangs in the SJHL and I study at the Asper School of Business. Winters in Melfort, the rest of the year in Winnipeg. I started Forge Media doing organic social for small businesses across Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and I made it work — but the math was wrong. Most of those businesses can't afford what it really costs to move the needle. Painters can.

A single residential paint job is worth a few thousand dollars. Booking one extra job a month covers what I charge to run your ads. The numbers are clean. The work is countable. The leads are real homeowners in your service area asking for quotes, not vanity engagement on a feed. That's the business I want to be in.

That's where I come in.

When you hire me, you're not getting handed off to a junior on someone's team. You're getting one person — the same person who set up your ad account, built your audience, wrote your offer, made your creative, and is sitting in Ads Manager every morning watching what's working. If a lead is bad, I hear about it. If a creative is tanking, I see it the same day you do.

The system that works for painters is specific. Meta lead ads with an Instant Form. A strong, speed-anchored offer. Real photos of your finished work. An audience tuned for homeowners inside your service area. It is not the same system that works for every other small business. I built this one specifically for you.

Melfort Mustangs · SJHL
Asper School of Business · U of M
St. Paul's High School
Born and raised in Manitoba
Anatomy of a painter ad

How a painter ad becomes a lead.

From the moment Meta serves your ad to the moment a homeowner is on your phone — shorter than you think.
Step 01
Homeowner sees your ad A real photo of your finished work shows up in their Facebook or Instagram feed. The audience is tuned to homeowners inside your service area — not the whole city, not the whole province.
Step 02
They tap "Get my free quote" Meta opens an Instant Form inside the app — no website redirect, no loading screen, no friction. This is the single biggest reason painter lead ads outperform ads that point to a website.
Step 03
The form pre-fills their info Name, email, phone, and address auto-populate from their Facebook profile. All they have to type is two or three qualifying answers — job type, timeline, whether they own the home. The whole thing takes about 15 seconds.
Step 04
The lead lands on your phone You get a notification within seconds of them hitting submit. Full contact info, full answers, ready to call. Goes straight to your email or your CRM — whichever you want.
Step 05
You call them while they're still warm This is where the job is won or lost. The painter who calls within an hour books the job. The painter who calls the next day loses to the competitor who already showed up. The ads do the first 80 percent. The last 20 is yours.
What this means for your business

Real leads, not vanity metrics.

Likes and followers are nice. They don't fill your calendar. Booked paint jobs do. Here's what I am chasing for your business — and what every weekly report will track.

The offer

What you get.

Every deliverable. Every month. No fine print.
Setup
Done once, before anything goes live
Meta account + tracking installed
Done by Day 2
Painter audience built for your service area
Service-area tuned
Instant Form + lead routing
Built and tested
Speed-anchored offer locked in writing
Written with you
Ad creative produced from your photos
Image + carousel
First campaign launched
Live by Day 7
Every month
Every week, every campaign
Active campaign management
Daily, in Ads Manager
New ad creative tested
Every month
Audience & targeting optimization
Ongoing
Lead quality monitoring
Lead by lead
Performance report
Every week
Direct line to me
Text or call
Qualified leads, delivered
Target set with you
$500
per month, all in
Ad spend is separate  ·  Billed direct from Meta to your card
Money-back guarantee  ·  Hit your lead target or your first month is refunded

You quote the jobs. I handle every other piece.

A question every owner asks

What I'll need from you.

You don't need a website. You don't need a videographer. But there are three things I do need from you, and you should hear them straight up.

First, photos of completed jobs — before-and-afters of homes you've painted in the last 12 months. Phone photos are fine. Ten or fifteen good ones is plenty to start a campaign, and we add more as we go. Real photos of your work convert. Stock and AI imagery does not.

Second, account access. You add Forge Media as a partner on your Meta Business Manager — same way you'd add an employee or an accountant. You stay the owner of every login. I never touch your ad spend; that gets billed straight from Meta to your card.

Third, fast replies when a lead lands. The ads bring you homeowners ready to book. If a lead sits in your inbox for two days, you lose the job to the painter who replied in two hours. That part stays with you, and the speed you reply at decides what the ads are worth.

How it works

From signed up to campaign live, in one week.

Day 1
Onboarding call 30 minutes. We cover your service area, your reviews, your average job value, and the offer you want to put in the ad. No slides, no pitch deck.
Day 2
Account access set up You add Forge Media as a partner on your Meta Business Manager. I plug into your Facebook page, your ad account, and the pixel. You stay the owner of every login.
Day 3
Audience + Instant Form built Painter-specific targeting tuned for homeowners inside your service area. The lead form built and tested end to end — including the qualifying questions that filter out tire-kickers.
Day 4
Offer + ad copy locked Speed-anchored offer written for your business (think "home painted in 7 days" or whatever fits your model). You read it, edit it, we agree before anything ships.
Day 5
Creative produced Image ads and carousel ads built from your before-and-after photos. Multiple variations, ready to test against each other from the second the campaign goes live.
Day 6
Final approval You see every word and every image before any homeowner does. Anything that's off, I rewrite. Once you say go, the campaign is queued for launch.
Day 7
Campaign goes live Meta runs a learning phase for the first 3 to 5 days. First qualified leads typically land between Day 10 and Day 14. From there, weekly reports and daily monitoring start.

My guarantee.

Before the campaign launches we agree, in writing, on a qualified-lead target for your first 30 days. By day 30, if I have not delivered that number of qualified leads — homeowners inside your service area requesting a quote — your first month is refunded in full.

One honest line: ad spend is not refundable. That money is billed straight from Meta to your card and I never touch it. The $500 management fee you pay me is the only thing on the line, and it's the only thing I refund. The risk on the work I do is mine, not yours.

Hearing yourself say yes? Let's get on a call.

Book a 30-minute call
Honesty section

Is this a fit?

I'd rather lose you here than waste your time on a call.
This is for you if…
  • +You own a painting company in Manitoba — Winnipeg metro, Brandon, or a clearly defined service area
  • +You've got at least 10 Google reviews at 4 stars or higher
  • +You can supply 10 to 15 phone photos of completed jobs
  • +Your average residential job is worth $2,000 or more
  • +You're the decision-maker and you reply to messages within a day
This isn't if…
  • −You're brand new with no Google reviews yet — ads can't fix that
  • −You won't grant access to your Meta Business Manager
  • −You're outside Manitoba — I'm building the local market first
  • −You want me running your organic posting instead (different service)
  • −You're looking for the cheapest provider on the market
  • −You can't or won't fund the ad spend separately
Common questions

Asked and answered.

A homeowner inside your service area who fills out the Instant Form requesting a painting quote. Exact definition gets locked in writing before the campaign launches — usually including job type (interior, exterior, cabinets), timeline, and home ownership. That definition is the standard the guarantee gets measured against.

No. You add Forge Media as a partner on your Meta Business Manager — the same way you'd add an employee or an accountant. You stay the owner of your Facebook page, your Instagram, and your ad account. I get manager-level access, and you can revoke it any time.

We talk about this on the call, because it depends on your service area and the lead volume you can actually handle. For most Manitoba painters, a healthy starting budget is $25 to $50 per day — enough to clear Meta's learning phase and produce real data inside 30 days. Ad spend is billed direct from Meta to your card.

Every ad — copy, image, carousel — sits in a shared review doc before it goes live. You see every word and every image before any homeowner does. If something's off, I rewrite or rebuild it. You are never surprised by an ad with your business name on it.

You do, and it has to be fast. The lead lands in your inbox the second the form is submitted. Homeowners hear back from you, the painter, not from me. The painter who replies in two hours wins the job from the painter who replies in two days, every time.

Tell me. Every bad lead gets logged against the qualified-lead definition we locked at the start. If we're seeing patterns — wrong service area, wrong job type, repeat junk form submissions — I tighten the audience or the Instant Form questions. Bad leads are signal, not failure.

Tell me as soon as you know. I can spin up a short-run promo campaign alongside the main one — special pricing, seasonal angle, whatever it is. Anything you can plan more than 72 hours ahead, I can build into an ad set.

Campaigns are built to run without me touching them daily. I'm in Ads Manager every morning, including from a bus to Battlefords. If something urgent comes up, you can text or call me directly and I'll handle it from wherever I am.

Email or text me. No 30-day notice. No paperwork. The current campaign winds down at the end of the billing cycle, you keep your ad account, the audience data, the creative, and any active leads. The setup work I did is yours either way.

You shouldn't, until I've earned it. That's why the money-back guarantee is on your first month. If I don't deliver the qualified-lead target we agreed on in writing, you get your $500 back. The risk sits with me. The only way I get paid for the management work is by delivering leads.

Whatever you decide, I appreciate you reading this far. Most landing pages don't earn that.

Carter Bilous
Founder · Forge Media
The next move

Let's talk.

Book a 30-minute call. No slides, no pitch deck — a straight conversation about your painting business, your service area, your reviews, and whether this is going to work. If it's a fit, the campaign is live within a week. If it's not, you'll walk away with a clearer picture of what to do instead.

Book a 30-minute call
Or call: 431-688-9000
Or email: carter@forgemedia.pro
Based in Winnipeg, MB  ·  Working with painting companies across Manitoba