Getting the Word Out on Lead
Observers long ago noted that, given the choice between text and images, Web searchers almost always direct their attention to the image. Video’s ability to draw both mind and eye is even more potent. And contractors use video footage not only to market and to sell, but to teach as well.
Earlier this year Massachusetts contractor Chris Zorzy, owner of A & A Services, a home improvement company in Salem, Mass., started a separate company called Leadsafe Video Solutions to market a DVD of Zorzy and his crews explaining step-by-step how to do lead-safe renovation. (See www.leadsafevideosolutions.com.)
Filming new challenges encountered in the field must be habit-forming because lately Zorzy ? whose company has done more than 1,000 lead-abatement and lead-safe renovation jobs during the last 20 years ? has been posting additional material to YouTube. (See him explaining what he does and why.)
Competitive Advantage
Learning to use video can be a technological hurdle for those unfamiliar with how it works. But once past the initial jump, the competitive advantages it offers the contractor who masters it are substantial. For instance, Deschaine says that when he goes out to do an estimate homeowners “know what they’re going to get” because they’ve seen company installs in action on his company’s website.
Video, he says, “helps brand your business and explain your product.” Simply putting together a confirmation video and e-mailing it to prospects “puts you way ahead of the guy who comes out in a pickup,” Deschaine says. “Homeowners have no idea who he is before he gets to the door.”
?Jim Cory, editor, REPLACEMENT CONTRACTOR.
