(3) Content Production is an Essential Part of any Contractor Marketing System.
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Corey Halstead
Owner, HALSTEAD.
Your website is far from the only asset that benefits from compelling content. Not surprisingly this year and beyond, content is, and will be continue to be, king across all initiatives. It’s the difference between ordinary conversion rates, and the spectacular, and it is literally the fuel for effective posts on social media, blog articles, SEO, paid social media campaigns, email blasts, direct mail efforts, and pretty much the entire marketing system each year. But to keep content fresh, where’s it all supposed to come from?
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Clearly, some level of content production must become an integral part of your workflow, not just something to get to when you have a chance.
To compete, it must be ongoing—once-a-month photo and video shoots throughout the busy season, for instance, is a staple line item for the leading firms we support.
So what exactly are you shooting? For sure, videos of active and well-trained crews on job sites under construction. Capture the practices and craftsmanship that set you apart. Show dramatic progress on projects, before and after shots, and time lapse videos of projects from start to finish. These let the potential customer in on your world. Taking the knock-the-walls-down approach allows the customer to connect with your brand, building transparency and trust in the process—two things critical for closing project sales.
In addition to the behind-the-scenes content, project porn content is a must. Capturing the finished spaces your company creates in a way that allows potential customers to truly experience them is the very essence of what you do. Without these visually driven case studies, you are basically a company selling a product without telling the customer what it is, right? Imagine a manufacturer of cabinetry or concrete pavers having no product photos, no colors swatches. That wouldn’t fly, and it doesn’t work to sell design/build services either.
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Why Video?
How important is video? Web marketing guru Neil Patel estimates product videos can increase purchases by 144%. While your team should edit in-camera as much as possible, some post production will be important nonetheless, partly because post production is the key to extending and stockpiling content to feed regular updates. Site visits are sufficiently time consuming that require some effort in planning, to make sure you get the footage needed to feed your content-hungry channels, and the coverage you need to avoid a reshooting “pick-ups”—those shots you missed in the first go around.
The critical practice for streamlining content production is how you leverage raw video and photographs to multiply their value. By shooting video first, you have a ready-made source for “bumper clips,” short versions of content to grab attention in ads that drive users to the longer version of content. Focus on maximizing the captured video with creative cutting, shorter excerpts to capture attention in Facebook ads or on your site. Well-thought-out video content can be repeatedly edited, remixed, excerpted, and converted to stills—it’s extensible, shareable across multiple touch points.
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The Written Word
Despite the complete dominance of video over recent years, the written word still holds incredible power. Copywriting on paid social ads, for instance, can be the single defining factor of successful metrics. The A/B testing data proves it time and time again. Along with those impactful videos and photos used in your case studies, it is essential to tell the story of the project with words as well. Educated, discerning consumers who purchase high-end remodeling projects are research-driven—they want to know the details. What challenges did your firm overcome to make that space come to life? Why did you choose the flooring manufacturer you did? What were the expressed needs of the client? This information makes a difference to the potential customer and it is the backbone of the SEO strategy that we will look at in a coming section.
The importance of this video, photo, and written word content can’t be overemphasized. It’s critical for building trust and transparency in a digital-first environment.
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Today, most prospects will have decided whether they’ll go with you based almost entirely on your online content and presence.
By the time you first talk to them, they’ll have already made their decision, at least in their hearts. Why sell against emotion when you can use it in your sales team’s favor? Content reaches every nook and cranny of a brand and few things make the leadership we work more surprised than how valuable an asset content is.
