Why Should Homeowners Pick You? | RA Summit 2025

Aaron Horner
So today’s topic is on why they should pick you. How to showcase your unique value on your website. And first to introduce myself, I’m Aaron and I looked at all of the other speakers for this event and they are business owners and CEOs and ex contractors, current contractors. I am not those things. I don’t know how to run a business. I haven’t done that before. I’m not going to tell you this is how you should run the business. I’m not a contractor. I have done some remodels in my own home. But I won’t talk about that very much or show you any pictures because I would be afraid of what you would say. So I will move on from that. So what I am is a traveling videographer. So for the last three years I’ve traveled with our company, Contractor Growth Network and done.

Aaron Horner
Thank you. And I’ve done testimonials with people all over the country. And over that time, I mean we’ve literally been all over the place. These are all videos that we have worked on. It’s been over. We’ve talked to hundreds of homeowners at this point. And one of the things that I can offer you is some insight into what is important to people across the country. What are some common trends that I’ve seen and what really matters to people. Obviously there’s a lot of variation when it comes to who you’re selling to, what they’re looking for, what they really want, what makes them buy, what makes them choose you. I’ve been able to have conversations with these people where I’ll sit down and have 20 minute interviews with them from a non unbiased third party perspective of why did you choose this contractor?

Aaron Horner
Why didn’t you choose another one? And really the simple answer when it comes down to it at the end of the day is they want to know. The one question is, can you actually do what I’m looking for? Which is very vague and open ended, but for each person it means a different thing. And so we’ll kind of dive into today what that is and how you can help answer that for your clients. So the whole goal for today’s presentation is just to answer this question and give you a little bit more ammunition for how you can do this both through your media, your photos, videos. Does anybody in here, do you guys have like a relationship, ongoing relationship with a photographer, videographer? Where are we at with that? Okay, so most people. Cool.

Aaron Horner
So hopefully this will give you a little bit insight into how to utilize that stuff. A lot of times what happens is people will collect it and they won’t know what to do with it. Hopefully this will help you have some sort of, hey, this is actually how we can get the most ROI from it. Here’s how we can use it. But really, at the end of the day, we’re just trying to answer this question of can you actually do what I’m looking for? So we’ll walk through how not to answer it, How I’ve seen a lot of people try to answer it. The common mistakes and pitfalls that people go into. The best answer that we’ve seen so far, how it typically works. When I’m talking with homeowners, what typically has been the.

Aaron Horner
The straw that broke the camel’s back, why did they move forward with that person? And then a real example of on our sites, how we take that and carry it out. And whether you’re working with CGN or not, you can take this stuff and use it in your marketing. The whole goal is that you should be able to have some practical takeaways for, okay, our site’s currently probably in this spot. Here’s where we’re lacking and maybe here’s where we can improve it. So the first part of the topic is how not to answer most people on their website. I don’t think people typically think homeowners think this way, but it’s what people do in their actions on their website.

Aaron Horner
They say they will answer the question of yes, we can do what you’re looking for and they’ll have a bunch of text on their website that says, yes, we can do this and do this and do this and just list a ton of things for a ton of different people. The first talking point, both for your testimonials, your photos and your website itself, is you got to limit who you’re talking to. You have to limit who you’re talking to and what you’re telling them. There’s a few ways to do that we’ll get into, but that’s the first thing is a lot of times what happens is people will on their website, they will list out a bunch of things that they want. They have buzzwords. You know, people say we do custom builds, we have quality craftsmanship, modern design, we’re the most trusted.

Aaron Horner
Premier is another big one where the premier builder, we deliver on time, we have communication. It’s really just a spitball approach of let’s do all the things at once. Let’s try to be everything to Everybody. And while I don’t think most people think that’s what they’re doing when it comes to the site, it’s just that from my conversations with people, the way it’s worked is a lot of times we just can’t say no to things. We’re like, well, but we do have good communication, so we need to say that and we do it on time, so we need to say that.

Aaron Horner
And so it’s not like you’re going in thinking you need to be everything to everybody, but then it just kind of slowly builds and builds and at a certain point you just have a mess of text and you look just like everybody else. Everybody has that stuff. And so when this happens for homeowners, what happens is they look in and they see all these different websites when they’re trying to make a decision, everybody looks the same. And when everybody looks the same, they aren’t sure what single thing makes each company stand apart. They don’t know how to quickly categorize all the different companies. And so the biggest fallback that everybody goes to is just price. Like if you cannot differentiate yourself in some unique way, then the differentiator will be price. That’s just the way that people function.

Aaron Horner
Instead of them trying to take the time to learn all about who your company is and what you do, if you can’t find the time to, if you can’t really dissolve that down into a single takeaway of what you want them to get from your site, then the single takeaway will be the price. So with that, I would say is thinking about who you’re trying to target and think about like, literally ask yourself, like as you’re here, what single message am I trying to get across with my website? And it’s not like a. Well, I want them to get across like, we are good and we do this because again, you fall into that same trap. But what is the single non compound sentence way that people are understanding you when they go to your website asking yourself that.

Aaron Horner
So the way to fix this first of all is limiting who you’re talking to. This is just for kitchen remodels. I’m assuming a lot of you guys are in here doing kitchen remodels.

Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Horner
So these are four examples of different people that I’ve interviewed all over the place. And you have, you can see here, each one of them has a different background, a different issue that they’re trying to solve. And because of that, they have different Features that they care about. So with our first one, this was Taylor and Joe. This was with Ranney Blair Weidmann in Roswell, Georgia. And for their remodel, it was very simply, their kids are getting older, and they wanted a kitchen that was more functional for their family. They wanted the kids to be able to come and cook with them. They knew they didn’t have forever with the kids in the house. So they wanted a place that was more functional, easier to clean, because with kids, then you make a big mess. So then we got into things like backsplash.

Aaron Horner
They had the whole granite backsplash, so there wasn’t any grout lines cleaning that. We put that stuff in the testimonial, because now that becomes relevant to her. And as she’s talking about cleaning with her kids, other than that, there was also the safety features of the kitchen. So then we talked about different options that they provided for the stove. And the reason she ultimately went with Ranney Blair is because while there’s a ton of design build options in the area, the thing that was most important to them was the functionality. And so what we do on Ranney Blair’s site is we try to emphasize the functionality of their design. It’s not designed to make things as pretty as possible, but it’s what’s the end goal of what you’re trying to accomplish, and how can our design make sure that we’re solving your problem?

Aaron Horner
And that’s why she went with Ranney Blair, was because we emphasized those things. Next, we have the holiday host. So this was Brad in Holly Springs, North Carolina, which is where we’re from, North Carolina. And this is a lot of times what people are wanting is they are going to host maybe for the first time at their own home, and they want to have a much better space. Now, this is this. Well, for him specifically, he had two main concerns, and he hired enhanced renovations. And his main thing was, I need to know that it’s going to be done on time, because if. If we go over time, like, there’s no point in doing it. Like, I want to have it for this.

Aaron Horner
So one of the things that we had to emphasize with both his testimonial and with the page was the fact that the contractor could hit timeline. Same thing for that is he had usability features that he wanted to have. So he wanted it to be as functional of a space as possible. He wanted to make it nice and big so we can get a ton of people in there. Then we have the Empty Nester, Fred and Empty Nester. We had Fred and Beverly out in Maryland, and they were torn between, do we move? Do we not move? Maybe we’ll buy a new house. And ultimately, what they ended up deciding was they could just work on their own space.

Aaron Horner
They love their neighborhood, they love the proximity to their kids, but they needed a space that actually was able to invite everybody back in and have their kids and grandkids over more often. And that’s very different from somebody out in Palm Springs where they have a vacation getaway. So this is Holly, and her main thing was she lived a few hours away. And so what happened with her is all of a sudden, the communication became very important. She was looking for somebody that had good communication lines. They used builder trend, they could send daily pictures, things like that. So then thinking about when I am showing off my projects on my website, talking to prospects, instead of just giving a barrage of all these different features, you can see how each of these features are good and you probably do all of them.

Aaron Horner
But there is a point to highlight specific ones in specific instances. So for her, we really hit on the communication because it’s in the Palm Springs area. There’s a ton of people that are looking to get vacation homes and things like that, and they can’t always be there. So having that trust with the contractor makes a big difference. The other thing with that one as well was the design styles. Being a vacation home in Palm Springs, she wanted somebody that would make a home that was beautiful. She was buying something that was like an 80s, oh, it is ugly. There’s carpet in the bathroom and all that kind of stuff. And she just. She had to get that fixed too. So how can you kind of take all of this and put it together? What’s the single way to do this?

Aaron Horner
It’s really not overly complicated. The first thing to talk about with this is, does anybody have a guess as to the most visited pages on remodeling companies? Websites about us Portfolio people pages, homepage. Okay, I was cheating. You work for us. So the first one’s the homepage, which is no surprise. That’s the one that when people look you up, they come to. I’m not really interested in that. I don’t really care about that because that just makes sense. The thing that is surprising, I think, to more people is that the second most visited page from all the sites that we’ve had. The analytics show it’s the featured projects page. So same thing as a portfolio page. This is the page that answers that question of, can you actually do the thing that I need all of the other pages on your site are good.

Aaron Horner
They will at some point. Once somebody establishes that you can do what they need, then they can head to the other pages. But if you’re thinking about it in terms of the funnel, the most important section of your website is your featured project pages. This is where somebody can come in and immediately get answers to, okay, how credible are these people? Where can I see real examples of what they’ve done? Instead of somebody just talking on and on with words saying, this is what we do and this is what makes us good. I want to see physical proof of them doing this in somebody’s home. And there’s ways to mess these up as well. I think the most common way is people have a portfolio or a gallery page and it will be just photos of their work.

Aaron Horner
It will just be photos without context. Like maybe you have it divided up into kitchen remodels and bathroom. Or some people even go and then have the projects themselves, but then we’ll just have the photos without context. The thing that makes the feature project pages most powerful and what I’ve seen actually talking with homeowners, the things that have actually sold future work, was when people can come in, they see excellent media. So if you do not have media that shows off your work in the best light, like you have to invest in that, you can do everything else on the web. I mean, we’re a website company. We don’t even sell media right now. But I will tell you straight up, media is just as, if not more important than the website, because we can make you a beautiful website.

Aaron Horner
But if you don’t have photos and videos of your work, it’s just words. We need to be able to show people that. And so even if you have a photographer or videographer right now, a lot of times people get in a situation where they have somebody, they kind of check the box and it’s fine. I would highly. Again, this isn’t good for my company because now I’m telling you got to spend more money before you work with us. But I would highly recommend investing in a high quality photographer, videographer. At the end of this, I can answer some more questions about how to find that person. What makes a good fit for that.

Aaron Horner
This is specifically about website, but having my background being a videographer, hiring videographers, myself, coordinating with that kind of stuff, I can answer some questions if you guys have that later. So first thing is having the media, but then it’s also putting that in context of your client’s story. The photos Themselves are fine. But what helps people differentiate you from another contractor is being able to remember stories you guys have probably. Well, I remember last year they opened the conference by saying, like, storytelling is how people remember things. That’s how they do it. And a lot of times people hear that and it’s a fun buzzword, but they don’t really understand what it means. You can see the same photo of a kitchen, or let’s take the granite backsplash like I was talking about earlier, for example.

Aaron Horner
That can just be a nice, cool feature if you just have a photo of it. But if you put it in context of how Taylor and Joe were actually using it, how they were able to then make that work for their lifestyle, that now gives the photo so much more oomph. I don’t have a better word than that right now. It gives it so much more credibility. So much more.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Aaron Horner
To people looking at it can all of a sudden resonate with people more. So then somebody who comes in like Taylor and Joe. Now instead of just seeing it like a possible feature that you can do and maybe anybody else can do, they can see exactly how that feature ties into what they’re hoping to have done. So the best answer that we’ve seen to this question so far, and we’re always adapting, always changing, seeing what people and homeowners want across the United States. But basically the best answer we found so far is we can solve that for you. And we have. And here’s where you can take a look at it. This works for just having it on your website. We’ve seen examples where people will Google. We had one fry remodeling out in Arizona.

Aaron Horner
I did a project for him and it was a weird remodel. It was such a one off. They had a split level island. And went in and we’re like, okay. It wasn’t a very large project, but they went through and had the whole remodel afterwards. And it was. They wanted to have their kids and grandkids over. And because of the split level island that a lot of people had in that area, the kids couldn’t come up to full height and like, they couldn’t actually like do their cookie bake with them. They wanted the kids to come over and bake cookies and have all this. These time and these memories with them. So we made a video on that. And then I don’t know, I think it was three months later, somebody in the same area, Vail, Arizona, looking up split level Island, Vail, Arizona.

Aaron Horner
And they had the exact same problem. They were like, we have little kids, we have family over, we want to have more functionality with our island. We found your page, we saw your video. Can you do exactly that for us? And that led to another sale. So now we have two feature project pages on that one website with basically the exact same remodel. Because instead of it just being a feature like here’s something we do, we put it in context of here’s what we’ve done for somebody else, here’s why it was important to them, and you can look at it for yourself. So last thing I want to do is take you through an example of one of our most recent feature project pages. So this is for Joe Fry with Fry remodeling out in Arizona.

Aaron Horner
So this is the person that had that cookie bake remodel that I was talking about a second ago. And this project right here is specifically for an aging in place bathroom in Oro Valley. So instead of it just being a bathroom remodel, there are a couple things that we want to establish right away at the top of this page. Actually, let me back up a second. So when you come to his website, you can click on the featured projects and then in here you can see all the different projects he’s done. So like for example, this here’s that cookie bake remodel that I was talking about. And then here’s the second cookie bake remodel that happened. But you can come in and see which ones apply to you. Or as a salesperson, you can take these and have these as sales tools.

Aaron Horner
When people are coming in and they have a problem, you are able to take them and have a single resource to send them. Like, hey, before we jump on that next call, take a look at this page. And it has both the testimonial video, the project walkthrough photos of it, and a bunch of context on pricing and all that stuff as well. So they can be fully informed of what you’ve been able to do for someone else before hopping on that call. So with that context in place, the first thing that we have at the top of these pages is a header here that says aging in place bathroom in Oro Valley. The reason we do this is a couple reasons. One, it helps orient people as to what exactly they’re coming in.

Aaron Horner
It’s not just a bathroom remodel, but it’s an aging in place remodel. It’s theme of the project. What was the deeper thing behind it? It also helps with SEO. So same thing with the cookie bake remodel. Like we saw earlier, having this in plain text right at the top helps tell Google and helps tell even the AI at this point helps it understand what this page is about. So when people are looking you up, this page is more likely to come up. So we have that and then we have Keeping Shelly’s parents safe in their home. This is the core part of the page. Having Shelly’s parents safe in their home. I didn’t film this one. We actually have a ongoing relationship with his videographer now where he’s filming and then sending him back to us and we’re editing for him.

Aaron Horner
But as I was going through the testimonial itself, there’s a bunch of. Again, it’s a 20 minute testimonial. There’s so many different features. But as soon as Shelley mentioned keeping her parents safe, that was the driving motivation to everything else that happened. Without that, she doesn’t do the bathroom remodel. And so if you can remind people of what’s really at stake, that helps them understand. Now they’re not thinking so much about the price, they’re thinking about the consequences of not doing it. And so this right here gives people immediate context for what the page is going to be. We have the video playing here so they can come in and I’ll show you a second of this.

Testimonial (Shelly)
My name is Shelley May and I live in Tucson, Arizona. My parents have aged and I needed to make sure they were safe in their own house and keep them comfortable where they are familiar. That’s why I contacted Frei Remodeling. We started with one area, just my parents bathroom.

Speaker 4
What we did is we completely demoed the bathroom and made a big walk in shower, put in a walk in tub and something that was big and.

Aaron Horner
Functional for the maze.

Speaker 4
Really updated the vanity and the flooring and everything throughout.

Testimonial (Shelly)
So they’ve really enjoyed their new space. It’s far more user friendly because everything is level and there’s no steps anymore. I trust that my parents are safe in their bathroom.

Speaker 4
Once we completed this bathroom project, the maids were so thrilled and excited with the way it turned out that we ended up doing these other two bathrooms for them and just really updating it and I’m giving them a fresh new look.

Testimonial (Shelly)
I think my favorite part of the project. Oh. Is probably my bathroom. I absolutely love my new space. I go in and I feel like I have a spa bathroom. Even when I put out ideas that were not necessarily doable. Joe was able to come back with, okay, see that? Let’s Try it this way and make it work. It feels like mine now. Not the bathroom I grew up in, but actually an adult bathroom that you want to go into and use. It’s beautiful.

Aaron Horner
So that video is the entire testimonial again. A lot of times what happens with these testimonials is you’ll film for your 20 minutes sometimes and then you’ll cut it down to seven minutes and it’ll be the homeowner saying a ton and a ton of nice things. The goal for this video is to get it to you understand by the end of it. She was trying to help her parents and she had such a good experience that she bought again and Joe was able to come through for her multiple times. That’s the idea. There’s no better way to show that you have good service, good quality of work that you’ll come through than showing that somebody is a repeat client. She doesn’t have to go through and go on and on about how much she loves him and what she liked about him.

Aaron Horner
We just need to show that she bought again. Showing that there’s so many ways to say the things you want to say without saying them. And that in that testimonial, that’s one of the ways we do that. So we have that right up top. So people can get a good overview of the project if they want it. AUTO PLAYS HERE so as people are coming in, they can just. If they’re not interested in looking at it just yet, then they can see it, get a good idea for the visuals of the space, and then they can go on. We have a contact Us form here, so they take us immediately to the contact page if they’re ready for that. Or they can go through and explore more bathroom remodeling services.

Aaron Horner
But then once we go in, here’s where we get some more details about the project. So this really comes in and relies on the contractors themselves to give us good information. So this is everything about project cost, timeline, location. Now we’re getting into the tactical examples of when somebody is saying. Instead of saying, we stay on budget, show people you stay on budget in here. We show them, here’s our expected cost, what we thought it was going to be. Here’s. And here was the actual. And we also have a budget notes here. You can see even on this project, it looks like it went over budget, which is something that most people wouldn’t show. But in the effort of transparency, we put that here.

Aaron Horner
But the whole reason that it was is because she ended up wanting to have a nicer vanity in the bathrooms. And so there was a cost upgrade there. It wasn’t anything that Jo did itself. So we have notes about the project there. So as we come back up, we have project cost, timeline and location. Somebody immediately can tell, okay, they stayed on time and stayed on budget. And they’re in my area again. We hit them with a quote from the video, the main idea. So if somebody isn’t watching the video, they can still get the main idea of the page. My parents have aged. I need to make sure they were safe in their own house and keep them comfortable where they are familiar. That’s why I contacted Frei Remodeling. Very simple gets to the heart of the issue.

Aaron Horner
Then as we go down again now, those key features of the project, rather than just being a big long. Well, what we used to do was list as many as we could think of. A big long list of bullet points. Because again, while we don’t know what people’s gonna be interested in, we’ll just list out every cool thing. What we found works better is having a few bullets, the most impactful ones with images with them as well. A lot of times what happens when you have a big long list of something or a big long paragraph is people scroll right on by. This stuff is important to you as the contractor to the homeowner. You’re just one of the people that they are looking at.

Aaron Horner
And so they do not have the same buy in to go through and read through the page that you would have yourself. So we go in, we have the professional photos of the wet room that they did and then the design that they did for Shelley’s bathroom. Showing off the two different sides of this project. As we go down, we have some more before photos problems that they had with the space as to why they were contacting them in the first place. These things right here we specifically make to be relatable with other people in the area. So like one of the things you can do is look at like when the homes were built in the area specifically, this was in an area with a ton of outdated 1970s designs. So people can come in, look, they see the.

Aaron Horner
I guess in the 70s we thought that was a good idea to do the glass tile like that. And they’d be like, I had that, I have that in my space. And here’s what it turned into. And it just helping them visualize. Okay, okay, this could work exactly for me. That helps build up the trust even more. So then we go through. And if they’re Curious about the process, we go through and show them the design build process. We don’t go super in depth, but it’s just kind of three steps. We have their personalized design, we show them. So we have a little thing here about how we have 3D renderings. We’re prioritizing age in place features. And then if people want to go and learn more about design services, we have that link there that’ll take them to the design services page.

Aaron Horner
Then we go through. We have the phase one remodel. They go through. They do the bathroom. It’s phenomenal. She loves it. And so then we do even more bathroom remodels for her. Now at this point, then we just do our photo gallery. A lot of times, like I was saying at the beginning, this is a lot of times what people have as the entirety of the page is just this. But you can understand now without the context of the video, how some things like this, you would just breeze right over the. The usability features, the key features that were important to her now are going to stand out to you more in these photos. You’ll have more context as to how, why these things are important.

Aaron Horner
Then lastly, on here, we have an interactive area again, thinking about different ways that people are interacting with the pages. Some people are just going to scroll through, right through the text and different people would like rather go through. They see an interactive element and now they can kind of see different features of the project itself. We wrap it up with another testimonial from Shelley, final notes. And then they can view more featured projects. So that’s how we create one of these pages. And there’s. We have longer ones and shorter ones, but the same basic principles hold through all of them. The whole idea is create a page that tells the story of your client instead of just appealing to every single person for a bathroom remodel, creating separate feature project pages for each individualized case.

Aaron Horner
Like the four people I showed earlier, all of them were kitchen remodels, but all of them had different things that were important to them. There are different features that they cared about and they had different reasonings for finally pulling the trigger with those contractors. So it’s not enough just to have a kitchen remodels page, but having one that specifically targets the deeper underlying issue of what your clients are dealing with. That’s. That’s everything. That’s. That’s the page itself. So if you guys have any questions, we can do that, especially if there’s anything about, like more on the videography side. Happy to answer that. But if not, then you guys can enjoy the rest of your time and then get back to it at 1.

Speaker 5
So how many featured project pages do you recommend for a website?

Aaron Horner
It depends on your clientele. Like what I would say is I would prioritize thinking about. I would prioritize the ones that you often get a lot of. Like agent place is an easy one. You get a bunch of those. You don’t have to have a ton of agent place. But what I would say is have a few of different kinds. So think about who your ideal clients are. If you have a few different groups, I would have one for each. And then after that then you can keep updating and adding because then things like the design trends will get outdated. It also helps to show that the work was recently done. Showing that you guys are still doing this kind of work is a good trust signal, both with Google and with people. But you don’t have to go overboard on that right away.

Aaron Horner
I wouldn’t say. I would just think about who are the most common trends that we see and then trying to think, okay, these are the ones we really hit. And prioritizing that.

Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6
So when you were in the feature project, in the gallery section, when you hovered over image, the cursor, they were changing color. A lot of times you see, oh, it’s not up a little higher. I think that section.

Aaron Horner
Oh yeah, this right here.

Speaker 6
So a lot of times click on that, it’ll flip. Or does that just bring up the bigger.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. So then what that allows you to do is then come in and see it full screen if you’d like. So in that first context, everything is cropped to a square just to make it look nice on the page, but then to see the full photos themselves once you click on it, the changing color is just to let you know that something will happen if you click on it.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Speaker 7
So I would love to hear from you, like just top tips or a couple of cool pointers on finding a group videographer or photographer. Are they one in the same in some cases? Are they not? I know, like throwing in like multiple questions. Yeah, like top tips and you know.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, I would recommend probably a separate photographer and videographer. Like for me, I’m a videographer. Do I shoot photos for people? Yes. I don’t think I am as good of a photographer. It’s a different skill set when you’re looking for a videographer. Yes. You want somebody that can make pretty things like have footage that looks good. But a lot of people have that what you really need is somebody that either already has the information of what am I going to do with the video? They’re thinking about it in that way, how are we going to get ROI from that? Or you need to have the capacity to train them to do that. And so whether that’s, if you bring somebody in full time, then that’s easier said than if you’re just outsourcing to a company.

Speaker 7
So maybe more outsourcing question, like you’re interviewing somebody then.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. The things that most people don’t think about is what are their interview skills, where their people skills. What will happen a lot of times is you’ll get somebody that will really care about the color grade or they really care about some of these technical details. With videography, they wanted to be like a filmmaker probably and they can’t quite make that work. So here they are. You’re looking more for somebody that probably somebody that strikes you more like a YouTuber, somebody that’s thinking about the end message. Maybe they don’t have the exact same skills with thinking about the technical details, but it’s way more important that they have the overall big picture of how is this video going to be used, how can we use it? I’ve seen people with beautiful looking testimonials and they’re eight minutes long and you can’t get through them.

Aaron Horner
I mean, I don’t know for sure what that does for people. To me, I would think if I can’t make it through your testimonial, like, I don’t know, you want people to be excited at the prospect of working with you. So another thing on that, while I’m saying it, when you’re doing testimonials, think about this. Everybody wants to pack in as much things as possible about like they like this, they’re saying this good thing about me, this good thing about me. It’s not interesting. We know they’re doing a testimonial for you because they’re going to say good things about you. When somebody’s coming in, you can sprinkle some of that in, but sparingly. One of the things to do is have them say good things about you while you’re showing imagery of the project. Because think about it from the homeowner’s perspective.

Aaron Horner
They don’t care about them saying good things about you. They’re doing a testimonial for you. They know they’re going to say good things about you. The thing that would be cool is if they said Bad things about you, then people would find that interesting. But what I would say is have it short and sweet. What they’re coming in for is they want a better look at the project itself. They want to. The benefit of having video is they can go through, they can see it move around and things like that. They can get an idea for it in the space. So I hope that answers some of what you’re asking.

Speaker 7
It does, it does. I mean the point about considering all satellites, there are four their ability to understand, get what you’re trying to do with the video, then be able to.

Aaron Horner
Explain, to talk about it is exactly. Yeah, I, I think that is one of the skills that people don’t think to look out for when they’re hiring videographers.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Aaron Horner
And then photographers as well. I think the main hangups there is thinking about not just can they, most people, what they do is they hire a real estate photographer. It seems like it’s industry adjacent, but what you’re looking for is either an architectural photographer or an interior design photographer. Because these, the real estate photographers, their goal is to make the space look big and bright. They’re trying to sell a home. And once you see the photos of that, then you can come in and you can look at the closer details yourself. Interior design photographer is more likely to show off those smaller details. Like if you’re trying to show off your craftsmanship, instead of saying we have quality craftsmanship, get somebody that has close up photos of your work, like showing the details that you put into your work.

Aaron Horner
So that’s the main thing I would say for photographers. Making sure you’re finding somebody that’s an architectural or interior design photographer. And then lastly somebody that will set, dress or stage the space. It makes such a big difference. I honestly, I almost think staging is more important than the photos being somebody being able to picture themselves in the space. Instead of what they are not buying is an empty kitchen. What they are buying is the possibility to use the kitchen. And so by staging a space, putting it look, making it look like it’s lived in helps people picture themselves in that space. And it sounds silly, I know, but once you start looking for it, if you go through. And now when you’re judging photographers work, you’ll be able to see the people who staged stuff and the people who don’t.

Aaron Horner
And then you’ll be able to understand why some photos feel cold and stale and other ones feel like they have life in them.

Speaker 8
Yeah, it’s kind of a question, kind of like to open up for to hear what my peers are doing here. We, you know, we’ve got a professional photographer and I’d never considered that you should have a videographer and a photographer.

Aaron Horner
Different skill sets.

Speaker 8
Then we’ve also had some of our interior designers act like photographers slash social media types. So I’m debating in my mind on Instagram it’s perfectly acceptable to just hold your phone and walk through a project.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Speaker 8
Versus something like this. It’s real professional. And I’m wondering about one if I’m going to decide between someone in house, you know, a glorified interior designer. Hey, by the way, I also want you to stage it to fit. Can I buy some for a reasonable cost? Some video equipment that would do cool walkthrough shots like that. And a camera.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, the equipment’s not really the thing. It’s. It’s the hands using it. People, you know you like. One of the YouTube video series I like to watch is people that are pros with, you know, new like iPhone and then people that are amateurs with the cinema level equipment.

Speaker 2
The.

Aaron Horner
The pros with iPhones always win. An iPhone can look extremely good if you know how to use it. There’s settings you can change. There’s different ways. The cameras itself is not the limiting factor at this point.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Aaron Horner
Now a good photo, a good videographer, good photographer will have a nice camera. Don’t. Don’t hear me say that. Like if they show up with a phone, you’re like, great, they’re awesome. Yeah. That would still be a red flag.

Speaker 5
But use this analogy. If you were telling your customer and they’re like, oh, my brother in law does drywall. Or like even of all the fanciest tools, it doesn’t make you good at it, right?

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6
I have a videographer and a photographer and they’re like your children’s personalities. They’re just two totally different, you know, and bringing them together, they work great together. But one has got one mission and another one’s got another mission and they don’t. They show same clan.

Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6
They’ll go to the same job to do the same thing. One is doing still photography and one is doing videography. But they both got two missions in mind. Two different missions in my. Who then combines the still shots and.

Speaker 8
Videos to make all your videos?

Speaker 9
Something like that.

Speaker 6
So the videographer creates the videos and the photographer creates the still shots. And so on the website then. Then I’ve got someone that just handles the website that is bringing both pieces together to showcase the job. I’ll schedule a day. And it’s like we’re trying to accomplish the long form or trying to accomplish the short form or try and accomplish B roll or all of the things in one. And then when it gets to where I don’t need to be involved, where they don’t need my face and my voice explaining, then I’ll peel off and they’ll do the B roll of shooting the appliance or stuff that I don’t. I don’t have to be there on. But they’re using my voice as the overlay of. As they build it all.

Speaker 9
What I think is really important is kind of what he was saying. You’re using these professionals. What they need from you is the story. What. What is the direction you want to take this in? Even your questions, you’re going to ask the client. You, you want to them to tell the story. You don’t want them to say, you are great at craftsmanship. You want them to tell the fert the story, the pain they fixed.

Aaron Horner
And we have anybody that. If you want to come by the booth, I have a list of testimonial questions that I use on every project. So I can give you guys that if that would be helpful. We are at 12:58, so about time to wrap up, but thank you guys very much. Sa.