Welcome back to our Video Marketing series! We are particularly excited about this week’s post, because we hope it will get everyone’s creative juices flowing and empower ourselves as marketers and business owners to take the leap into Video Marketing.

On the last post we gave you 3 very good reasons to include video in your contractor marketing, and we explained that you can use video to reach your customers in every step of their buying journey. As promised, this post will be about different types of content, and how they fit in the concept of the Marketing Flywheel.
Don’t know what the Contractor Marketing Flywheel is? Then I urge you to familiarize yourself with it by reading this post.

With the Flywheel concept in mind, let’s talk about how you can use video to transform strangers into prospects, prospects into customers, and customers into champions. 

1. Hello, Stranger!

The easiest way to quickly reach a lot of people in your area, who may or may not know about your contracting business, is with video advertising. Videos are better to drive traffic to your site than other ad formats. According to a study by Smaato & Liftoff, people are 7.5 times more likely to click on a video ad than any other display advertising format. With a good targeting strategy, you can get your name in front of many viewers, on any device, and on all the websites they visit without blowing your marketing budget. Advertising programs like the Treehouse’s BrandBlaster are designed for that purpose, to create Brand Awareness.   As an expert contractor marketing and SEO agency, the Treehouse has mastered this.

2. From Stranger to Prospect

Imagine now a person who is a stranger, but at the same time shows some of the preliminary signs of purchase intent. It may be someone who has a problem such as a flooding basement or hail damaged roof. It may be someone who has a problem such as indoor allergies or a drafty room but has no idea of the source. What do they do? Chances are that -- just like most internet users -- they “Google It” or search on YouTube. We know for a fact that our potential customers across the network tend to do a lot of research online before trusting any company with their business.
What about using video to reach these prospects? There are two ways of doing it.

A. Useful Content.

By creating content that is useful to your customers and answer all the questions they may have. How do you know which content to choose? Think of your customer’s frequently asked questions. Talk to your sales or production people. They usually deal with a lot of customer’s doubts. Need more ideas? You can also search Google and YouTube. Just start typing questions and a list of related searches will populate, giving you ideas for video content.
In addition to query ideas, search results will also show videos. Watch some of the highest ranking to see how other companies are answering the questions and think of ways to improve what they did. See examples below.

 

 

With proper SEO and the blessings of the search algorithm you may be able to get these videos to rank in search results too. As a matter of fact, across our contractor networks, these types of videos are always the highest-ranking and have the highest view counts. In a future post, we will open our bag of video SEO pixie dust and sprinkle you with some knowledge on how to increase your videos’ chances to rank where it matters. 

B. Videos in Landing Pages.

The second way to turn a stranger into a prospect using video is to include a video in the landing pages for all your online and offline campaigns. That includes the landing pages for your PPC advertising. As we saw in the last post, a video on a landing page can boost conversion by up to 80%.
Video content for landing pages should be unique, short and straight to the point. Do not reuse your search videos and please, whatever you do, do not repurpose your ads for the landing page. Use video to convince the person that clicked on your ads to sign up for an estimate. Tell them why you are the best company for the job, showcase your work or star products, talk about your history and local reputation, show authority. You don´t need to do all those things in a single video, but experiment with ideas. Here again, your salespeople may have great input to offer in this matter.

3. From Prospect to Customer

For video marketing purposes, prospects are what we will call every person who filled out a lead form, called for an estimate, or engaged in any other way with your company signaling a clear purchase intent. It is the person who is ready for a visit from your salesperson.
Can we use video to reach them? Of course! In this phase it’s all about decreasing sales resistance and getting them ready to meet in person with sales. As we discussed in the previous post, videos introducing your customer to the salesperson are quite beneficial when it comes to making prospects more comfortable with his or her presence in their homes.
The Treehouse offers a great widget called Meet the Team, which can include a small bio for every sales team member, a photo, a showcase of recent projects they were involved in, testimonials from customers about the experience they had with the person, and yes… it can also include a video! The sales pro can text or email their Meet the Team page to the prospects, before the appointment scheduled date.
Some other types of video that can be very helpful in this phase:

• A “What to Expect Video” to let people know your sales team will treat their home and their budget with the utmost respect. When you read contractor reviews online the things customers complain about most often are pushy salespeople, sales gimmicks, overpricing, and complete disregard for their budget concerns. Use video to convey that your company is different.

• Product and Solutions Showcase. Are you installing a different, great product or implementing a new kind of solution? Do you offer anything that is custom designed? Use video to let your customers know that they are getting the best that money can buy.

4. From Customer to Champion

So now the sale was made, the project was completed, and well… there is nothing else to do right? Wrong! One of the greatest mistakes specialty contractors make is to think of their customers as a “done deal”.
You might think that, if the job is well done, that customer won’t need you again for several years, except perhaps for some maintenance. Let’s think about this: each one of your happy customers have friends and family that might need your services. If they don’t, they can at least help get the word out in their community, which is something you’d otherwise need to spend some money to accomplish. Word of mouth is the best and most trusted form of advertising, and it is free.

Start by getting an idea of how happy your customers are. As a specialized contractor marketing agency, the Treehouse has a Crew Review widget and program that you can use specifically for this. Your most satisfied customers are the ones that may become champions. They will be delighted to help you with referrals, reviews and testimonials (including video testimonials). They will be happy to talk about you on their Social Media profiles. Sometimes, however, they might need a bit of encouragement. Follow up emails containing videos are a great way to do it! Some ideas of content for follow up videos:

• A Thank You video, thanking them for their trust. This can be generic, or a personalized video from the salesperson, foremen and the production crew that worked on their project taken from someone’s cell phone for authenticity.
• Video Promo. Offer something nice, like a gift card, in return for a referral or a social media post about your company in their own profiles. CAUTION: Never offer anything in exchange for a review, on any site. Yelp and Google, for example are known to severely punish businesses who engage in review soliciting or review buying. Unlike testimonials, reviews are supposed to be spontaneous in order to be legitimate.
• Seasonal greetings are always nice. They keep your company on the customer´s mind year-round. Those can be posted on Social Media as well.
• Maintenance appointment reminders. That again can be customized, showing your service manager and the service crew.

This kind of follow up will most likely surprise your customers and show them that they matter to you. Even if they are not likely to spend a lot of money with you anytime soon.

On the next post for the Video Marketing Series, we will talk about basic YouTube channel setup & best practices, as well as basic SEO tips. Consider that 300 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That is a lot of competition, but don’t feel intimidated. Having the right knowledge will give your channel and all your video content a fighting chance. So please, stay tuned!