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I Don’t Care If Your Online Video Gets A Million Views.

With Regards To Contractor Marketing, Creating A Spectacle Will Get People To Pay Attention… And Make A Strong Point.

With Regards To Contractor Marketing, Creating A Spectacle Will Get People To Pay Attention… And Make A Strong Point.

Just Make Sure When Your Prospects See It,
It Makes Them Want To Buy From You Instead Of Anyone Else.

Written by Rich Harshaw.

Will it blend? That is the question.

At least that’s the question Tom Dickson, former CEO of Blendtech has been asking since 2006, when he started his wildly successful video series with that same name on YouTube.

It’s so simple, it’s genius: To show people the raw blending power of his blenders, Tom takes odd, interesting, and unexpected household items and throws them into the blender and “lets it rip.”

The idea came from a new marketing director named George Wright. He’d seen Tom chopping up blocks of wood in their product testing laboratory. Wright was new, so unlike longtime employees who were used to seeing Tom grind odd objects into dust, he was blown away. Who would have thought a blender could blend wood into sawdust! $50 later, they created the first “Will it Blend” video of the Blendtech pulverizing marbles into a pile of white dust.

Then it was a garden rake; then Chuck Norris; then a McDonald’s extra-value meal; the Coca-Cola and ice and golf balls and credit cards. Eventually they got cuter and blended iPads, iPhones, glow sticks, Bic lighters, a crowbar, and even a Ford Festiva.

Check out a few of the videos; they’re hilarious:

and

These videos are good fun, and they generated a lot of attention for the company and their blenders, including appearances on the Tonight Show and several other national programs. According to this interesting interview in Inc. Magazine in 2008, sales went up by over 700% thanks to the video.

So let’s start with what the takeaway from this story IS NOT. This is not about “going viral,” creating a sensation, juicing social media for contractors, or becoming famous on the Internet. None of those things will make you any money as a remodeler. You don’t want to create a cool or funny or catchy video for the sake of being cool or funny or catchy.

The purpose of this article is to help you think of ways to create videos that INCREASE CONVERSION of the prospects you already have into customers.

Stated differently, you want your videos to act as EVIDENCE that the claims you are already making in your marketing are true. Let them convince the jury that you are what you say you are and you can do what you say you can do.

Think about the blender videos. From a selling standpoint, what is the point of the video? Clearly, the point is that these blenders are powerful and strong enough to blend things that seem too tough to blend. And if the blender can do that, it can then surely blend any normal stuff you want to blend like smoothies or whatever.

So as you ponder creating a video that makes a spectacle of itself, first think in terms of

  • “What selling point would I like to illustrate?”
  • “How can I illustrate that point in spectacular, memorable fashion?”

You need to ask yourself those questions in that order—otherwise you’ll come up with all sorts of weird stuff that might be interesting for gawking passersby, but won’t be particularly useful when selling something.

One of my clients created a video to try to use the power of a demonstration of the strength of the windows they manufactured. Originally, the video was made in response to Window World’s videos where they stand on their windows. Here’s what they came up with:

Not a bad start. I like the fact that the three guys who stand on the window are… how shall we say it… LARGE fellas. But I don’t like the way they gingerly step on the window then conspicuously don’t move—as if they are afraid they’ll crush the window if they move. I suggested that they “amp it up” by creating a series of follow-up videos that do the following:

  • Jump Up & Down: Tell the audience that they received a positive reaction to the first video, but they’ve been asked exactly HOW STRONG the window is. Half a minute of fat guys jumping on the window should answer that.
  • Run Over It With A Truck: Now that would be interesting to watch, and would certainly prove strength!
  • Football & Baseball: Hire the local high school starting quarterback and pitcher and have them throw footballs and baseballs respectively at the windows. Great for local SEO for contractors, and great for demonstration.
  • Air Cannons or Potato Guns: Get these guys or the local equivalent to go to town on your windows.
  • Flame Throwers: They’re hard to get, but could prove a point about heat transfer…
  • Bats, Chains, Crowbars: The buffer the guys, the better. HD would be nice.

I think you get the idea… but don’t lose sight of the objective, which is to illustrate the selling properties of your products or services.

Video Challenge: send me your best ideas for a video to rharshaw@mymonline.com. Whoever comes up with the best idea will win a free copy of my book, Monopolize Your Marketplace. And if you already have a video, send it as well. I’d love to see what you come up with!

© 2014 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

  1. video marketing is extremely important. As a GC, homeowners are investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into remodeling their homes. As a way to understand what is involved within the remodeling project, showing them videos allows them to be more comfortable with hiring you and allows them to see your company in action.
    Our video channel on youtube is comprised of over 750 home remodeling videos. That is an amazing assortment of videos for homeowners to view ( ” REMODELINGHQ” ) on youtube

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