Moving Images
Will Move Clients and Staff

There is no such thing as modern-day commu­ni­ca­tion with­out video. This has long been true of the construc­tion indus­try as well. A 2016 study by BauIn­fo­Con­sult  showed that what construc­tion busi­ness­es enjoy the most are tuto­ri­als, instal­la­tion and prod­uct videos. The COVID years with their social distanc­ing restric­tions and no fairs to attend certain­ly did their part to accel­er­ate this trend. And so the first post of our series on commu­ni­ca­tion in the construc­tion and real estate busi­ness revolved around the fasci­na­tion of moving images: Site cameras provide vivid contents that hard­ly anoth­er indus­try would have access to. In this Valdivia Expert Tip, we are cast­ing a light on this from a much broad­er perspec­tive: How can you use video clips as a market­ing tool for your enterprise?

Emotions Will Give Extra Impact to the Facts

Pure­ly image-relat­ed films rarely appeal to their audi­ence. This is the clear result of the above-mentioned study. People watch­ing videos – regard­less of type and length – are look­ing for infor­ma­tion, genuine bene­fit, some­times also entertainment.

This does by no means have to lead to dry and boring videos for the experts in the construc­tion and real estate indus­try. Like no other media, moving images are ideal to show tech­ni­cal matters in an emotion­al and there­fore inter­est­ing way. One way to achieve this is through inter­views with people who show commit­ment and enthu­si­asm for the matter at hand. Other emotion­al­ly effec­tive styl­is­tic means include creative camera work, a good cut and imple­ment­ing music, which is easy to find in the inter­net royalty-free.

Vari­ety Will Best Exploit Your Topics

Tuto­ri­als and prod­uct demon­stra­tions were among the most popu­lar cate­gories in 2016. They clear­ly put prac­ti­cal useful­ness in the fore­ground. Howev­er, even with this in mind, there are still count­less options when it comes to the choice of topics. These are just a few examples:

• Portraits of projects with a montage of short reports from the very first plan­ning steps to final inspec­tions and formal accep­tance, espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with tricky or unusu­al assignments
• Inter­views on tech­ni­cal matters, conduct­ed both with inter­nal and exter­nals experts
• Contrast­ing histor­i­cal construc­tion meth­ods, for instance, a ’now vs. then’ perspec­tive – a cate­go­ry espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing for long-estab­lished enterprises
• Work safe­ty and protec­tion measures on construc­tion sites
• 3D tours of properties

It is not only the audi­ence of tech­ni­cal experts or your B2B clients that can be addressed via video. You will also reach private clients with this chan­nel, just like investors and other clients from outside the indus­try, should they also count as your target group.

Videos could also target the short­age of skilled person­nel: With a profes­sion­al­ly produced docu­men­tary or a live­ly inter­view with the CEO, you may win experts and junior work­ers on a tech­ni­cal and an emotion­al level alike. Or else, you leave the camera and direct­ing the film to Gener­a­tion TikTok: This way, you will moti­vate your staff while reach­ing younger applicants.

A Good Exam­ple Will Make the Start Easier

Allow your­self to be inspired by good exam­ples with your topics and meth­ods! Apart from well-known video plat­forms, such as YouTube, there are numer­ous special­ized portals in the inter­net, provid­ing great exam­ples from the construc­tion busi­ness in terms of contents and creativ­i­ty. These are a few examples:

• Zukun­ft Bau (Future of Construc­tion), an initia­tive of the Feder­al Ministry for Hous­ing, Urban Devel­op­ment and Build­ing, and the BBSR (Feder­al Insti­tute for Research on Build­ing, Urban Affairs and Spatial Devel­op­ment (Bundesin­sti­tut für Bau‑, Stadt- und Raum­forschung)) have a video collec­tion
• The media library of the Central Asso­ci­a­tion of the German Construc­tion Indus­try (Zentralver­bands des deutschen Baugewerbes)
• The video list of online maga­zine Baugewerbe (Construc­tion Industry)

Here is a very special tip from Switzer­land: Immocreate.ch is a video plat­form special­ly designed for the construc­tion and real estate indus­try with a content focus on inno­va­tions. It can be used free of charge by private users, clients, as well as the industry’s employees.

How You Will Find Your Audience

As a plat­form for your own produc­tions, it is primar­i­ly the chan­nel YouTube that stands out; Vimeo, anoth­er broad­ly used chan­nel, would rank second. Even if TikTok plays an equal­ly impor­tant role with the younger demo­graph­ic: You need to make sure that portray­ing rather down-to-earth subjects from build­ing and crafts­man­ship will need to be enter­tain­ing to a certain extent.

Yet, how do you reach your audi­ence? Certain­ly, your own media library on your website is a part of this, and so is post­ing new videos on Face­book, LinkedIn, and X/Twitter. Other suit­able places for your clips are newslet­ters, tech­ni­cal forums, your e‑mail signa­ture, a QR code on print mate­ri­als and on construc­tion site signs – in short: all those places you are already using for visibility.

As the sources of inspi­ra­tion we have list­ed show, the videos are no longer an exot­ic rarety in the construc­tion and real estate busi­ness. Many enter­pris­es are gath­er­ing insights in it and the target audience’s expec­ta­tions are grow­ing with the devel­op­ment. Conse­quente­ly, you should use the agili­ty and authen­tic­i­ty of moving images for your enter­prise, too: Enthrall your clients with attrac­tive, creative produc­tions show­ing tradi­tion­al contents in a whole new light!

(Image and Video sources: istockphoto.com)