Context, perspective, and focus all figure into how Van Millwork operates. This Needham, Mass.-based business doesn’t ask customers to imagine how a tiny molding sample would look in a home; it has a design center consisting of nine fully finished rooms, each in a different style, so that people “can get a feel for what goes together and what’s a good fit,” business development manager Lisa Fabiano says.
“People are so relieved when they get here,” adds Jonathan Van, the company’s vice president of operations. “They can finally see what will be in their home.”
That different way of seeing figures just as much into how Van Millwork is promoting the design center. When the company wanted to create even more awareness for its unique showroom, Van says it concluded that “only a video would accurately convey the scope and feel of the space.”
So the company hired Clear Vision Video, in Boston, to produce a video that, for just $6,000, impressed ProSales’ judges and landed Van Millwork 2015’s only Excellence Award for advertising.
The two-and-a-half-minute video not only shows off the rooms but also provides customers with a quick education on how decorative millwork can complete the look of a space. It shows craftsmen at work in Van Millwork’s production facility in Bellingham, Mass., as well.
Fabiano wrote an initial script for the video, and then she, Van, and Clear Vision executive producer Midge Galligan worked together to create the final version.
The quality of the video also plays into the business model for this company, which opened in 1967 and exclusively focuses on interior molding.
“Our business model is based on being the right fit and a great value for our customers, but not necessarily the cheapest price,” Van says. “Anybody can sell something at a cheap price. But to deliver great value with a professional product, that’s what we’re looking for. We think it’s an excellent investment, seeing that it has an unlimited shelf life.”
The company did a soft launch of the video on July 1. It appears on the homepage of Van Millwork’s website and on YouTube, Houzz, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.
But the real launch takes place this month, when the company debuts a redesign of its website that puts the design center in the spotlight. “We wanted the website to be showroom-centric, for lack of a better term, because we feel that this is such a wonderful selling tool, and an effective means of communicating what we do,” Van explains.
Once the new website goes live, Van Millwork intends to promote it with an email blast. “And then we’re going to track very closely our search terms, and our visits,” Van says. The company will measure the return on investment not only by Web traffic, but through in-person showroom visits and social media reactions. Van Millwork expects to pick up Web traffic through ad campaigns in a couple of local high-end design publications.
The investment in the video could potentially be small compared with the ultimate value.
“Our experience with this showroom has been—when we’re in a competitive situation—that if our potential customer visits our showroom, we have an extremely high success rate as far as getting the business,” Van says, “because the customer, whether it’s a builder
or a homeowner, feels such a degree of confidence in both what they’re purchasing and who they’re purchasing from. They understand, by visiting here, our level of expertise.”
