and if you can source your own life from its presence.” – Oriah
Since LinkedIn decided to remind me, and everyone else, that I have been drawing, animating and demonstrating building products for more than 18 years, I have been thinking about how I got here.
I’ve always seen things differently than most. I don’t just want to know how things work, I need to know. When I was a kid, it was only a matter of time before I stole my dad’s tools and dismantled the new toy, game or device within reach.
The ripple effect of parental consequences of this was two-fold. Firstly, I destroyed a lot of things in our house trying to take them apart – conveying a lack of respect for my belongings. Secondly, I failed to return the screwdrivers to their proper location, showing a similar lack of concern about my father’s tools.
I have always found beauty in functional objects. If you remove or change one little aspect of a part, it either doesn’t work anymore or it’s not as efficient as it could be. I eventually did learn how to put things back together without ruining them, and actually developed an ability to fix things along the way.
The greater thing that I learned from this wanton lack of appreciation for my things was an affinity for design, no matter how mundane. What I would learn later, and build my own business on, is the fact that just simply knowing how things work is useless unless you can pass that information on to others in a dynamic and exciting way.
Regards and I hope you find beauty today, even when it is not pretty.
-JY
About the Author :
Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.
His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.
Have you ever been on a family vacation and had to deal with this daunting decision?
The buffet
versus
ordering from the menu?
It feels like a life-changing decision at the time, doesn’t it?
The buffet is great because there is a wide variety of options available, but the cost is higher and you have to talk yourself into the entire package as a whole. Buffets can be really good the first couple of visits, but visiting the same buffet every single day gets old.
If you order off the menu, you know exactly what you are going to get and you aren’t going to have to deal with the inconveniences.
There are many amazingly talented big marketing firms who specialize in building product marketing, but not every company wants to dive into the whole buffet. Perhaps it is for economic reasons, or other organizational reasons. Whatever the reason, there is clearly a much larger commitment involved with retaining a marketing firm for a long period of time.
There is a definite trend developing in companies of all sizes choosing to order their marketing services off the menu, a la carte. Marketing managers for building product firms need to fill their contact list with consultants and specialized service providers who can perform contract based services.
These services include
Cad Detailing
BIM component development
Product photography
Graphic Design and Publishing
Web Development
Content Development
Marketing Video Creation
Marketing strategy consulting
3d renderings of products
3d animations of product installation
spec-writing and consulting
copy-writing and content creation
social media and search engine optimization
My firm provides some of these services and my contact list is full of people who provide all of the services above.
Sometimes it is just nice to know that you are not alone, and to realize that there is an entire menu of marketing services which you can obtain, a la carte, without having to eat from the same buffet every single day.
Marketing anything is about connecting. There is nothing more frustrating than having this great product or service which you are certain will make the world better in some way, but not knowing how to connect it with customers in a meaningful way.
The most powerful way to connect with people is by using video, and I think when we think about it, we all know that video is the most powerful marketing medium at our disposal and the nerdy research certainly confirms it.
But I know what you are thinking, video is complex, difficult and expensive and I don’t really know where to start.
Below I share how to make the process simple, easy and cost effective by showing you 4 different types of building product marketing videos and the simple 3 step process it took to get them completed in a matter of weeks.
The Nerdy Research
80% of our brains processing power is dedicated to visuals
6 Parts of the brain have been shown to be dedicated to processing images
Just hearing something, the retention level is around 10%
Using an image alone, that number jumps to 35%
Combine the two, as you would in a video and you now get to 60% retention!
[convertkit]
Step 1 Develop the Script
The first decision is to decide the goal of the video and create a one sentence summary describing this goal clearly.
The most common video types are :
“to introduce a product to a potential customer”
Here is an example of a product introduction video
“to inform potential customers about the features and benefits”
Here is an example of a features and benefits video
“to use 3d animation to demonstrate the entire installation process”
Here is an example of a product installation video using 3d animation
Step 2 – Have a storyboard created
“storyboard” is a weird term and there are many different ways to go about it, what works for me is simply a series of still images at key points in the video, especially when the video includes 3d animated sequences demonstrating an installation procedure,etc.
Seeing all these images in chronological order helps to iron out any technical issues, and allows you to get a feel for how the video will look before it is actually rendered into full motion video.
Step 3 – Review full draft of video and revise
This is usually about how the thing looks and feels, how the voiceover sounds, how the words are presented, etc.
What all This Costs
If I could, I would publish the costs of the examples I put above, I cannot do that on here, but I’d be willing to share it with you privately, just call me or send me quick message.
It’s quite likely that you sit and think about your customers, what are they like? are they type A or type B personalities? Are they as impatient as i am when they are shopping for something online? Take the next 20 seconds to put yourself in their shoes and imagine they are in the market for what you are selling.
Now go to your own web site and see if you can get the answers to these questions in less than 20 seconds.
What makes it unique?
How does it look?
How does it work?
How is it used?
Of course, it may not be possible to get all this information across in just 20 seconds, but shouldn’t you try?
Sharing interesting and engaging content online through blogs and social media has become a primary part of any marketing effort. It has also, consequently, been a source of confusion and often ends in frustration for many marketing directors. I have personally seen and experienced the power of content marketing for getting new customers and, in general, helping connect a valuable service with customers who need it. I think that we all now agree that content marketing is a powerful thing. Here’s the problem, what content are we going to share, anyway? Rather than guessing or scratching our chins for eternity, let’s use a few recent surveys and see what we know for sure.
We know from the Construction Marketing Associations recent survey that:
97% of respondents said they use social media in their marketing plans in 2013
47% have blogs
91% are on linked in
This is great, this shows that the construction industry is getting involved and understanding that people are going to research products and services online far before they contact you. They will search the internet, or ask their network of contacts for advice online, or they will see quality content produced by a manufacturer or service provider online and they will take notice.
The Most Used Social Platform Used by Manufacturers is YouTube
This makes a whole lot of sense because there is nothing more engaging and powerful than video to demonstrate the what, how and why of a product.
The Butt-Crack of a Tradesperson Will not Sell Building Products
Only 3% Rate It as Effective, Let’s Fix This.
Using video to market building products is a double-edge sword, however. If you think that throwing up a 20 minute video from a handheld camera on a job-site is going to help sell your products and get them specified, I am afraid that you are going to be disappointed with the results. Video needs to be professional, to the point and it needs to make the product the star of the show. I’m talking about a 3o second video, a one or two minute video, which captures attention, informs, educates and convinces elegantly.
So, according to the research, only 3% of the manufacturers surveyed found their video content to be effective, lets fix this . . .
Here are three forms of engaging video for building product content marketing.
Video is the most popular medium for manufacturers to share content, and the biggest challenge is finding engaging video content to share about products.
1. The 3d Animated Marketing Video to demonstrate visually how a product works and why someone should use it
Click Image Above to View
2. The 3d Animated Installation Instruction Video which uses high end photorealistic animation to show clearly how a product is installed or used
Click Image to View Video
3. The Snippet Animation – A very short, shareable, tweetable short video clip demonstrating a product in action.
“people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou
The Brain Retains Image Information Far Better Than Words
For marketing building products, or anything, for that matter – there is one pitfall which we face constantly.
Sure there are manufacturing costs, spiking labor costs, competition and countless other pitfalls we can run into when trying to convince design and construction professionals to use our latest greatest building product. However, if we don’t address this one evil thing, everything else we do will be sure to fail.
So what is this horrid evil pitfall?
Simply put, it is when our audience tunes us out – changes the channel – so to speak. We can have the best product in the world, which economically solves our potential customers problems, but if we don’t hold their attention long enough to present our idea to them, nothing else matters.
So How do we Defeat this Evil Tune Out?
By way of Pat Flynn’s SPI podcast, I came across a gentleman named Bryan Kelly who has done the research on this topic, gathering the latest information from neuroscientists and other experts covering what helps people succeed in presenting, speaking and pitching. We all hate the word “pitch” but the truth is that we are always selling, all of the time.
Be a Teacher and Strive for Learning
When we are presenting building products, we become teachers. We want our audience to learn about our products. Learning, as Bryan’s research shows, is an active process which takes place in the working memory as the learner abstracts meaning and connects it with existing knowledge to place it in long term memory.
In the podcast episode, Bryan explained how to defeat the evil of tune-out with a five letter acronym S-P-L-A-T as a way to remember this information.
The biggest thing I took away from all this Neuro-Babble is that we are all visual learners. How many times have we heard that some people learn by hearing things, some learn by doing things, some learn by seeing things etc.? The truth is that science shows that we are all visual learners.
Check out these numbers :
80% of our brains processing power is dedicated to visuals
6 Parts of the brain have been shown to be dedicated to processing images
Just hearing something, the retention level is around 10%
Using an image alone, that number jumps to 35%
Combine the two, as you would in a video and you now get to 60% retention!
Bottom Line – Leverage the Power of Visual Learning for Marketing Building Products
Listen to the Podcast (link above)
Use great visuals of finished projects
Use great images of your products
Use marketing videos to explain your products professionally
Create animated installation instruction videos to allow your customers to learn about how your products work in a way they will remember
I hope this information was helpful to you, please let me know what you think.
