Last updated on June 14th, 2024
Today Will Rosebrock of Texas Green Plumbing talks about video marketing for local businesses.
GUEST: Will Rosebrock of Texas Green Plumbing | YouTube
HOST: The VidAction Podcast is hosted by Dane Golden of VidAction | LinkedIn | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden:
It’s time for HEY.com. This is the podcast where we give you video content marketing tips to help you get your customers coming back to your videos again and again. My name is Dane Golden, from HEY.com, and today we have Will Rosebrock, of Texas Green Plumbing. Welcome, Will.
Will Rosebrock:
Hey Dane, thanks for having me on the show, I’m really glad to be here.
Dane Golden:
Thank you. And this is actually the second take of the show we did. We recorded this before, at Video Marketing World, ’cause I was so excited to hear you, but my audio didn’t work, and I appreciate you coming on again.
Will Rosebrock:
Absolutely, anything for you.
Dane Golden:
Now the reason I’m having you on is ’cause I was so astounded by your approach. Most people think, “How could possibly a plumbing company have anything original to say about video marketing?” But you guys have a very interesting story, and it’s, I think it’s of particular help for people who want to do how-to video marketing, but on a regional basis. So tell me what you do.
[Facebook video example]
Will Rosebrock:
Yeah, absolutely, so as you know, plumbing is a very regional industry. We don’t have a national product to sell, so everything we do is really targeted to our area, which is the Dallas area. And we do a lot of how-to videos, we do a lot of instructional videos to give to our customers, via Facebook and YouTube, and a little bit of Instagram and Twitter as well, and we do that just to build a relationship so that whenever they do decide that it’s time to have some plumbing work done, they feel like we’ve already been there to help them, even though they might’ve not ever called us before.
Dane Golden:
Okay, alright, well that’s fine, but why not just do Facebook, rather, but why not just do Google ads, just pay per click?
Will Rosebrock:
Well, you know, we did that for a long time. A lot of plumbing companies do that, and it’s great, but we’ve got some huge plumbing companies here, and we’re a really small shop here at Texas Green, but we’ve got some huge competitors, and their budgets are very big, and the Google cost of pay per click for our key words in our area were getting up to be over 100$ per click. That’s not a job, that’s a click to our website was over 100$, and we were going to be out of business in months at that rate, so we decided that we needed to do something else, and we needed to do it better than Google could do it, and that’s how we got into video.
Dane Golden:
And I mean, yes, plumbers are expensive, but $100 just to visit your website seems to be a lot.
Will Rosebrock:
Yeah, it’s insane, and if you’re a small company just starting out, like how we are, it’ll put you out of business real quick.
Dane Golden:
So you decided on video?
Will Rosebrock:
Yeah, we did decide on video. We decided that this was a good way for us to reach the people that cared about us most, which was people in our community who we’ve already touched through Facebook. And we decided that we could put out videos, and that we could create a relationship, so that before we ever went out to their house, they knew who we were, and that we wanted to help. And it’s worked out really well so far, we’re actually really surprised.
Dane Golden:
Why not just make a video that says how awesome you are, and how smart you are, and how happy people are to work with you? Why do how-to videos that show them how to do what they should pay you to do?
Will Rosebrock:
Well, if we did videos about how awesome we are, it’d be an ad, and everyone gets ads every day, and we all just scroll through them, but how-to’s catch their attention. And you know, we do how-to’s on everything, and we’ve noticed that even though we give a how-to video on something as easy as changing a simple piece in a toilet, most people won’t do it anyway, and they’ll end up calling us themselves. We’ve actually had people who’ve called us, and we’ve said, “You know, we have a video on how to do that on our YouTube channel,” they go, “Yeah, we saw it, but we want you do to it, ’cause we don’t want to mess with it,” so we end up doing it anyways.
Dane Golden:
So you’re saying you have a video, and they watch the video, exactly showing them, step by step, how to do it, and then they called you to do it?
Will Rosebrock:
It happens, every now and then we have people who will call and say that they have attempted to do it themselves, and it didn’t work. Or we do have people who call, and say, “Oh thanks, I saw your video and I did do it, and it did work, and it saved me a couple bucks.” But yeah, at the end of the day, you know what? If someone’s willing to work on it themselves, and at least we help them, that’s more important to us than getting every sale, you know what I mean?
Dane Golden:
And what type of … is there something more than you’ve shown them how to do something, and maybe they did it themselves? Is that the end of the relationship?
Will Rosebrock:
Absolutely not. A lot of times what happens is they do something simple for themselves, and then they’re very happy ’cause they saved a couple hundred dollars, but you know, something big might happen, like they might end up having a water leak under their floor in their kitchen, and that’s not a DIY project, that’s a project that definitely needs to be handled by professionals. And then they remember that that little company that put up the how-to video that saved them a couple hundred bucks on their toilet, and they call us out, and then we ended up doing big jobs for them, where we replace water lines or sewer lines, or gas lines, whatever it may be, and that’s really what’s important to us.
Dane Golden:
Also, even though you’re showing somebody how to do something, and they may now know how to do it, sometimes people will call you in a crisis, is that correct?
Will Rosebrock:
Yeah, there’s always crisis that are happening. Plumbing emergencies happen all the time, unfortunately. And in those cases, I mean at the drop of a hat, we’ll make sure we get someone out there, and sometimes even we can diffuse a situation over the phone, and turn it from a emergency into a priority.
Dane Golden:
But, what I’m getting at is, even if you’ve done a video that shows somebody how to let’s say repair a flooding basement. It’s not something you want to sit and watch a video, step by step, know how to do it. As long as you know how to do it, they’re happy to hire you, they don’t want to have to figure it out in the middle of a crisis.
Will Rosebrock:
Absolutely, yeah, crisis, no wants to … if you call with an emergency, and I say, “Go check out YouTube,” you’re not going to be very happy with me, but if we build that reputation beforehand by teaching them how to do little things, then when the big thing come, then they remember us, they know us, they like us, they trust us, ’cause they’ve already seen us help them through video, and then they call us for the big problem.
Dane Golden:
What about the idea that people don’t actually need to know what you know, they just need to know that you know it?
Will Rosebrock:
Well, if they know that we know it, that means that they trust us, ’cause they know we’re the experts, and that is, that’s really what it’s all about. Like we said earlier, a lot of people, yeah we’ll show them how to do something, but they’ll call anyway, and they’ll say, “Yeah, I saw how to do it, and I don’t want to do it, but I know you know how to do it, ’cause you showed me how to do it.” So that’s what it’s all about.
Dane Golden:
“I don’t want to put my hands in my toilet, but I’ll pay you to do it.”
Will Rosebrock:
Absolutely, and our plumbers are happy to put their hands in the toilet.
Dane Golden:
And that is a metaphor for many business situations, I can tell you.
Will Rosebrock:
Oh, I imagine. You know, people say plumbing is a crappy job, and that’s a pun, but I don’t think it’s that crappy.
Dane Golden:
And now, what is your job at the company?
Will Rosebrock:
Yeah, so I am the media director, social media director, video guy, office millennial is somewhere in my title as well. I do everything that involves our presence on the internet, whether it’s filming, editing, scheduling posts, communicating with people online, I do it all, and I film with iPhones and iPads, and I do really basic editing on Apple’s native editing software, Final Cut, and then I post it all over our social media page, and I engage with the people who engage back with us. We get a lot of messages on Facebook, because of all this, and I reply to all those, too. A lot of comments on YouTube. And that’s what I do. I actually do have a plumbing apprentice card, but I don’t do too much plumbing these days. I mainly stay in the office, and work on videos and such.
Dane Golden:
So let me get this straight, so you’re a plumber who makes videos full-time.
Will Rosebrock:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Dane Golden:
I’m wondering, do you think you’re probably the only guy in the country working for a plumbing company, doing video full-time?
Will Rosebrock:
You know, you’d be surprised, there actually are some plumbers out there doing video, but I don’t think they have their own in-house video team, and I think they hire to come do videos, but the people that come do videos for them make a bunch of ads, so I really haven’t seen any other plumbers that are doing this kind of thing, other than people who’ve had TV shows, on like HGTV.
Dane Golden:
And I think this is something that could work for various regional services, but what you don’t do know, most of what I advocate for is YouTube, and Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn video are certainly important, but in your instance, you’re very regional, and Facebook and Instagram particularly, have really good targeting for specific people, and it sounds like you’re doing mostly Facebook. Could you tell me a little bit how that works?
Will Rosebrock:
Right, absolutely, so we do have a YouTube channel, and our YouTube channel gets content to people across the nation, and we’ve even had a few people see our videos from other country, but plumbing is very very regional, so with Facebook we can do some paid targeting ads, and we can really get specific on people in our area, and our prime customer. We’re not everyone’s plumber. We have a very specific demographic that we target, and we can do that-
Dane Golden:
How wide do you go?
Will Rosebrock:
We go within a 15 mile radius of our home office. So in the Dallas metroplex area, that’s a lot of homes, but 15 miles in Dallas traffic sometimes can take a long time, so we try not to go too far away from that. But Facebook is really the only way that we can really get our message out to the people who we’re trying to.
Dane Golden:
I don’t think that people are going to be targeting by interest of plumbing, but sort of, how do you do it? Just anyone in a regional area?
Will Rosebrock:
No, no, so actually Facebook is … they’re coming up with their updates on their ads soon, so we might lose some of our targeting, but we actually target homeowners, that’s an actual category that we can target. So homeowners, within a 15 mile radius of us, and then who have a certain income. We are not the cheapest plumbing company in town, and so we don’t advertise to be the cheapest, we advertise to be the best, and so for that reason we only advertise to people who know have an income that can afford our services.
Dane Golden:
Oh, that’s pretty smart. And what does the video do, on average? What do people see, when they’re scrolling through their feed, and they see some guy fixing a, I don’t know, a water heater? What is it?
Will Rosebrock:
Yeah, absolutely, I mean the long form videos that we make, the how-to’s and everything else, I mean, they’re filmed like your typical YouTube video, you know. We’ve got the hook in the beginning, and then a cool little bumper, then content, and so when you’re scrolling through, you won’t see something that says “Texas Green Plumbing, oh you should call us if you need us to work for you,” you’ll see something that says, “Hey, do you have a running toilet? It might be this problem. Watch this video, and we’ll show you how to fix it.” And then they go through.
Dane Golden:
I wanted to ask you about your content distribution, and reuse, which I call content multiplication, and it sounded like you will film some videos, and then use them in multiple ways, and maybe you’re doing even in multiple dimensions, meaning some are square videos?
Will Rosebrock:
Right. I actually learned about this from Gary Vaynerchuk. He released his team’s content multiplication strategy on his website. And I saw that, and I read through it, and he gave me the bright idea, hey, instead of just posting these long form videos, we should take a really short snippet, I like to call them blurbs, take a one minute little blurb, I should put it in a square format, refit it in a square format, and put titles on it, and then we’ll post that on our LinkedIn, our Twitter, and our Instagram, and it’ll drive traffic back to the long form video. I call those Roger Rants, ’cause Roger’s often ranting about something in that one minute.
Dane Golden:
That’s the plumber you work for.
Will Rosebrock:
Yeah, that’s the plumber I work for. He’s the expert plumber, that’s actually our YouTube channel name, the expert plumber.
Dane Golden:
Now, for people who aren’t sure why you’re putting subtitles in, why would you put subtitles in, bake them into the video on a Facebook and an Instagram?
Will Rosebrock:
Well, if people are watching on mobile, which Instagram is obviously only mobile, Twitter is mobile, LinkedIn is more often than not mobile. A lot of times they’re going to be somewhere in public, and they don’t want to turn the sound on. So if we put those subtitles in the video, I edit them in, in there, they don’t have to worry about not hearing what we’re saying. They can see what we’re saying, and it’ll keep them engaged longer.
Dane Golden:
Alright, so the idea is if they’re not watching with audio, they can read it, and they can watch it, and they can get the same message if they’re waiting in line at the supermarket, but don’t have their earbuds in.
Will Rosebrock:
Absolutely.
Dane Golden:
And the idea is you’re making videos once, but you’re using them in multiple ways, for different audiences, and understanding that on some platforms, they might watch longer, and some they might watch shorter?
Will Rosebrock:
That’s correct.
Dane Golden:
Okay, now if you had one word of advice for a regional business, and whether they should use how-to marketing, and how to do it, what would you say? ‘Cause I think people are going to be skeptical, that they should hire a full-time video guy to do this.
Will Rosebrock:
I would say you don’t need to hire a professional videographer. I got into this with no experience at all, and learned it by watching YouTube videos. I would also say, another important piece of information, is when you decide to do these videos, I really wouldn’t even pitch your company too much in the video, I would just say, “Hey, here’s the content, I want to help, do with it as you will.”
Dane Golden:
Do with it as you will. And I want to add, on YouTube, and I don’t know if you’re doing this yet, but YouTube has also some really good regional targeting, for pre rolls, et cetera, so you can do that on YouTube, with the same videos. Have you taken that on yet?
Will Rosebrock:
We haven’t jumped into running advertisements on YouTube yet. We’re still trying to … we’re very early in this stage. We just started doing this video full time, just a few months ago, and once we figure out exactly what the whole point is, and the whole endgame of our YouTube channel is, then we’ll probably get into the advertisements on YouTube. But for now, we’re just trying to find that balance between being able to make the videos, to help people, and actually run the plumbing company itself.
Dane Golden:
And so overall, has this video approach been the right move for your company?
Will Rosebrock:
I think so. Our business is actually up, even though we’re not advertising on Google. Keep in mind, though, we do have awesome SEO going, so when you Google, “Plumbing company,” in our area, in our you know what I mean? We do pop up on the first page. We do have good SEO, but the real important thing is that people will call us and they’ll say, “Hey I’ve never called your company before, but I’ve seen your YouTube video, will you come help?” And that’s really what’s important to us, because we’re building a relationship, and that relationship creates lifelong customers.
Dane Golden:
It’s interesting you said … and that is very powerful, but it’s also interesting you said that your YouTube video, I wonder if they think they’re seeing you on YouTube, but they’re actually seeing you on Facebook.
Will Rosebrock:
You know, I don’t know. We actually are starting to implement in our dispatching, whenever they call and said that they’ve seen us before, we’re asking, “Where have you seen us? Give me any information we can,” so we can track that better.
Dane Golden:
But I think that sharing what your expertise is through these videos, I think you’re really building a likability factor, a trust factor, and if they want to call someone, it sounds like they want to call you.
Will Rosebrock:
They do, and you know what? If they call us, and they decide they don’t like our prices, and they call our competitor, oh well, they still saw our video, and we still impacted their lives.
Dane Golden:
Probably for a lot cheaper than $100 each.
Will Rosebrock:
Oh yeah. A whole lot cheaper for $100 each.
Dane Golden:
Now Will Rosebrock, where can people look at the Texas Green Plumbing Facebook channel, and YouTube channel, and Instagram channel, so that they can see what you’re doing, and try to learn from your lessons?
Will Rosebrock:
Absolutely, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, at Texas Green Plumbing, you can go to our YouTube channel, The Expert Plumber, and that’s the best way to see what we’re doing. If you want to see more video content, I would stay on Facebook, that’s where we drive the most, so Facebook, Texas Green Plumbing, that’s where you’ll find us.
Dane Golden:
And even though people from out of the region won’t be targeted, they can look at the Facebook page, and scroll through some of these videos?
Will Rosebrock:
Absolutely, absolutely, we have people from Austin. We’re a few hours away from Austin, we have people from Austin that watch our videos, and will comment every now and then, “Hey this helped me at my house,” or whatever. They don’t get our ads, but they’ve … someone shared one of our videos. We’ve had a mutual connection or something, and they liked that, and they decided to give us a follow on Facebook.
Dane Golden:
Fantastic, thank you Will Rosebrock, of Texas Green Plumbing, for being on the podcast.
Will Rosebrock:
Absolutely, thanks for having me Dane.
Dane Golden:
My name is Dane Golden, and I want to thank you for listening today. HEY.com is about helping you get your customers coming back to your videos, again and again. How do you do this? By sharing your expertise, because when you share your expertise in a way that helps their customers live their lives better, or do their jobs better, you’ll earn their loyalty, and their trust, and their business. Thanks to our special guest, Will Rosebrock, of Texas Green Plumbing. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app, and on YouTube, HEY.com, and wherever you watch social video. And please follow me on LinkedIn. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.