The strongest marketing a trades business owns is footage of its own work. A thirty-second clip of a clean panel upgrade, a tidy roof tear-off or a before-and-after basement tells a customer more than any slogan. We direct that content: what to shoot, how to shoot it on a phone, and how to edit it into short pieces that look like your brand.
What the service includes
- Shot lists by job type. One card per common job: what to capture before, during and after, and from where.
- Simple filming rules. Hold horizontally or vertically depending on the destination, steady shots of five to ten seconds, no talking over machinery.
- Branded templates. Title cards, lower thirds and an end frame with your name and number, matching your identity.
- Editing. Footage from your crew turned into short clips, before-and-after pairs and photo galleries.
- A content calendar. Which clips go where, and when, so material isn't wasted in a camera roll.
- Consent templates for customers whose homes appear, worded in plain language for you to adapt.
For larger productions, such as a recruiting video or a company story, our sister site video.agency covers full video production and video marketing.
Who it suits
- Project trades where the result is visual: roofing, landscaping, decks, painting, kitchens, flooring.
- Service trades that want to show care and cleanliness: plumbing, electrical, heating, drain cleaning.
- Companies recruiting, because good tradespeople also want to see what working for you looks like.
If your brand isn't settled yet, start with identity and workwear first. Footage of a crew in mismatched shirts beside an unbranded van is harder to use.
How a month of content usually runs
- Week 1: we agree which job types to feature and send the shot cards.
- Weeks 1–3: the crew captures footage on normal jobs and uploads it to a shared folder.
- Weeks 2–4: we select, edit and return clips with captions and suggested posting dates.
- Ongoing: you or your social manager publish. For posting strategy by platform, trades.social has detailed playbooks.
A realistic target for a small crew is four to eight usable clips a month. That's enough to keep a Google profile and a social account active without anyone becoming a full-time filmmaker.
What makes trades footage work
- Show the problem before the fix. The before shot creates the reason to care.
- Get close on the craftsmanship. Neat solder joints, straight lines, clean cuts.
- End on the tidy site. Homeowners worry about mess. Show them there isn't any.
- Keep faces and voices optional. Many crew members don't want to be on camera, and the work can speak for itself.
- Captions on everything. Most people watch with the sound off.
- Brand lightly. A logo in the corner and an end card is enough. The crew's shirts and the van do the rest.
How we measure it
Video is judged on whether it gets watched by the right people and whether those people then call. We keep the measures simple enough to check monthly:
- Profile and website engagement: photo and video views on your Google Business Profile, and time spent on service pages that carry video.
- Calls and messages from social channels and pages with video, compared with pages without.
- Output: clips produced and published per month against the plan.
Mistakes to avoid
- Filming without permission. Always ask, and keep addresses and personal details out.
- Stock footage pretending to be you. Customers notice, and it undermines the trust you are trying to build.
- Over-produced edits. Fast music and flashy transitions make real work look like an ad.
- Footage that never gets edited. A system beats a burst of enthusiasm.
Call, text or email with a couple of phone clips from a recent job and we'll tell you what we could make from them. See the services overview or pricing for how this fits a plan.
Frequently asked questions
Do you send a film crew?
Usually not. Most trades footage is best captured by the crew on the job with a phone, following a shot list we write. For a bigger shoot, such as a brand film, we can plan it and brief a local videographer you hire.
What do my guys actually have to do?
Follow a short list for each job type: a wide before shot, two or three detail shots during the work, the finished result, and ten seconds of the tidy site. It adds a few minutes, not an hour.
Can customers' homes appear in the footage?
Only with permission. We recommend a simple written consent for any job you film and keeping addresses, house numbers, faces and personal items out of frame unless the customer agrees.
Where does the video get used?
Your website service pages, your Google Business Profile, social channels and sometimes paid ads. One good job can produce several short clips and a photo set.