Make sure you apply the materials directly to the faces not a group or component.
I found that if I do a UV unwrap in Blender, I can have full customization of the UV coordinates for my materials.
Its not as easy as in Sketchup, but for in-game meshes, its absolutely necessary.
I also found that I have to "triangulate" all the faces before exporting to OBJ because of the quads.
M