Video Marketing in Construction
Video Marketing in Construction By: Robert Thayer
I have seen a lot evolve over the last nine years that I have been the VP of Marketing for Tri-North. So, how do you market a construction company? Well, that’s my little secret. But, what I will talk about a bit is content marketing and specifically how and why Tri-North uses video as an integral part of our marketing strategy. If you haven’t seen our latest video just posted today on St. Patrick’s Day, here it is for your enjoyment.
I started playing with video editing back in 2008. It was something I always wanted to learn and my first video was actually just a photo slideshow for my wedding. During the time leading up to my wedding, I got to know a videographer named Phillip Hinkle really well and watched in amazement as he edited my whole wedding day into a 2 minute video in about an hour. I was inspired and started to play with video a little bit more, teaching myself for a couple years doing small family videos.
That’s when the recession hit and marketing budgets everywhere were necessarily whittled down to almost nothing. I pondered what we could do to set Tri-North apart from our competition marketing-wise besides social media. Christmas was coming up and I had just seen an old advertisement on YouTube. It was an ad for Pizza Pit pizza from the 1980’s and immediately I thought that it would be fun to make a spoof of it as a unique way to say Merry Christmas to our clients, staff, and partners. I had a camera, the software, and the idea–let’s do it!
We recorded TNB-Ville in 2011 and blasted it out to everyone we knew. The reception was amazing. It was so good, in fact, that a few months later, I did our first St. Patrick’s Day video with Tri-North Senior Project Manager, Joe Herr, who happens to also be the City of Madison’s official Leprechaun. Once again, it was met with an outstanding reception and with that, Tri-North video production was off and running.
But, beyond fun around the holidays, why is video so important to us?
Construction is an industry overflowing with hardcore competition and also a lot of public perceptions (and misperceptions). I look at these videos as not just a way to get new business, but also to show the fun side of our industry and to highlight that we do more than build buildings. What started as simple holiday videos has expanded to Tri-North’s construction progress video for clients, educational safety videos on common risks and hazards for the general public and our site visitors, and videos to help raise funds for charities and non-profits we support. It is fun, hard work, and also educational and informative. This is just another example of how Tri-North’s ever-expanding expertise and service portfolio fuels us to Build Smart.
Oh, and we still have plenty of fun around the holidays.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
