The new Canadian Design and Construction Report website

We've just flicked the switch on the relaunch of the new website for the Canadian Design and Construction Report.  This site will set the template, as well, for the U.S.-focused Design and Construction Report and is built on our successful North Carolina site designs.

Our websites are certainly not leading edge; we probably could do better to incorporate more bells and whistles and advanced interactive features.  Equally, however, we keep them from getting stale and periodically review and rebuild them to ensure they are relevant and useful to viewers.  I think in the current era, you should certainly review your website design at least annually and contemplate a major update/revision at minimum on a three-to-five year cycle.

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Discovering a potentially effective website marketing template

Grant Harris of plumbermarketing.com communicated with me by email yesterday. He asked for his email to be "off the record" so I cannot discuss its content, but, with his identity verified, I Googled Harris's name and arrived at the PM Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine website, and this fascinating article about Don Paz's success as a 24-year-old entrepreneur in running DrainPro Plumbing in Phoenix.

The article, relating to the "Truck of the month" (I won't reproduce it here as I haven't received copyright permission yet), observes:

At such a young age, Paz is enjoying his role as entrepreneur. But he understood early on that a successful business needs a solid marketing team. He found a proper promoter at PlumberMarketing.com, a niche advertising agency that offers strategies to plumbing businesses around the world.

“If we didn’t have them, I don’t know what we’d do,” Paz tells me. Through his exclusive relationship with Plumber Marketing and its rep Grant Harris — who Paz calls “a machine” — DrainPro is able to compete with much larger and established drain cleaning companies in its area.

Plumber Marketing handled Paz’s complete marketing package: from truck wrapping to logo branding to the company’s professional Web site. “They’ve made us look like a million-dollar franchise, when in actuality it’s a small but growing family-owned operation,” Paz says.

I visited the DrainPro Plumbing's website. Notice the distinct template similarities to plumbermarketing.com, including the moving imagery, the video testimonials, and the like.

You may also wish to review the feature we produced for Multi-Drain Inc. in Ottawa.

The editorial feature in Ottawa Construction News, Building a thriving business by understanding the space underneath, (which did not require any financial investment from Multi-Drain), shows how the business has grown to be a successful enterprise here.

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Video ads reviewed

This professional-style video posted on contractortalk.com resulted in an interesting thread on the topic. Is this television-style video better than home-made testimonial content; or would both be effective?

How good can good video be?

I'm seeking some answers to that question, observing this contractortalk.com thread and the observations about the video of Mr. Mikes' Painting in Louisville, KY. Hopefully I'll be able to speak with Mike Smith there in a few days to learn more about how much the video has helped business, if at all.

My sense is the video is fine, and the overall website is excellent, but the most powerful video would not be the "television ad" design, but some human, real, and substantiated testimonials. (Mike has great written testimonials on his website.)

Are contractors willing to pay for video services? It seems the market may be a little slow. Jeff Uecker at Big Time Productions in Burbank, CA, for example, sought some publicity in this blog in March, but by June, he had sent me this email:

Thanks for the email Mark. We didn’t have a lot of luck with contractors in these challenging times….the site has shifted focus on other small businesses for now, but we will be redesigning the contractors section….lowering the price and giving options on how the contractor might want their commercial to look like, rather than a more custom one currently featured. I will keep you posted!

I think one challenge for most of us is that video, even with the simplest camera and uploading resources, still requires significantly more time and energy than other online communications formats. Then again, we have webcams on our computers and handheld video cameras are only a couple of hundred dollars these days, so maybe there is no excuse not to include at least some simple video on our sites and in our marketing materials.

Note: The Design and Construction Report (http://www.dcnreport.com) includes some effective video.

See the clip on the Page 4 of this reprint, or more accurately, "eprint" of the special feature about Homestead Renovations in Northern Virginia.

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