A trade business already produces the raw material for video every single week, in the form of questions customers ask on the phone. Each recurring question is a video, and the answer is already in your head because you have given it forty times. The five below need no props, no location and no planning beyond picking which question to answer.
1. The question you are sick of answering
Pick the question that comes up on nearly every quote call. For a plumber it might be why a dripping tap is worth fixing now. For a mechanic it is often whether a service is due by kilometres or by months. Answer it properly, once, in about forty seconds. This video pays for itself by shortening every future phone call, because you can send it instead of explaining again.
2. The expensive mistake you keep seeing
Every trade watches customers make the same costly error. Chains left until the cassette is ruined, gutters left until the fascia rots, brakes left until the rotors go. Name the mistake, say what it costs to fix early against late, and give the real numbers. Specific figures are what make this land, because a viewer can compare them to their own situation immediately.
3. What the job actually involves
Customers hesitate to book because they do not know what they are agreeing to. Walk through what happens: how long it takes, whether they need to be home, whether the water goes off, what gets moved. Removing that uncertainty converts more quotes than any discount.
4. How to tell whether you need us yet
Give away the diagnostic. Tell people the three signs that mean call somebody and the two that mean keep an eye on it. This feels like turning work away and does the opposite, because the person who followed your advice and waited comes back to you when the sign appears.
5. The thing you just finished
Stand in front of a job you completed today and say what the problem was and what you did about it. This is the easiest of the five because the context is right there, and it doubles as proof of work.
Getting all five done in one sitting
Film them back to back rather than one a week. Batching removes the setup cost, and the awkwardness of being on camera fades noticeably by the third one, so the later videos are usually the better ones.
| Step | Time |
|---|---|
| Deciding the five questions | About 10 minutes |
| Getting a script for each | A minute or two each |
| Recording all five | About 15 minutes |
| Captions and export | A minute or two each |
Where people go wrong
Three failures account for most abandoned attempts. Trying to make it look professional, which introduces lighting and framing decisions that stop the thing being made at all. Talking about the business rather than the customer’s problem, which produces a video nobody outside the company wants to watch. And filming with the sound as the only carrier of meaning, when most viewers see the video muted first, which is why captions are not optional.
The short answer
Answer five questions you already answer on the phone. Film them in one sitting, in whatever you are wearing, on the phone in your pocket. The version where you explain it plainly to a customer is the version that works.
Last updated 4 September 2026