Video Communications the New Age Marketing Tool

Video Communications the New Age Marketing Tool
Copyright 2006 Jenni Baty

If you’re a small business, you know how hard it is to
compete against larger, wealthier competitors.  Indeed,
today’s small businesses face a dilemma. While they need to
sell their products and services as much as any Global 1000
company, many lack the marketing resources big firms take
for granted. For example, large companies have highly
aggressive sales people driving sales. These people contact
customers and prospects regularly, reminding them of a
product’s or service’s existence as well as its advantages
and benefits.  Unfortunately, many small businesses lack
the resources to do this and employing other traditional
marketing methods, like print advertising and direct mail,
is not always financially feasible either. To compensate
small businesses must find a way to ratchet up their
marketing communications programs. What’s needed is a
dynamic, cost-effective way of marketing products and
services, one that helps small businesses battle
competitors and capture market share.

The Internet has been a viable alternative marketing method
for small business. Publishing a Web site is a proven way
of selling one’s products and services, and an effective
means of reaching a worldwide marketplace. In fact, it
costs less to build a site than most people think,
particularly when compared to the cost of rent for an
off-line business. Web sites also offer benefits other
marketing tools don’t, such as regular contact with
customers and prospects and the ability to convey large
amounts of information quickly and easily. In addition, Web
sites offer consumers access to a company’s products and
services twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all
year long.

But Web sites have one major drawback— anonymity. Consumers
are reluctant to buy from someone they don’t know. Other
drawbacks include the possibility of misinterpreting the
marketing message, the limitations in demonstrating
product’s features, and the difficulties of incorporating
customer service. Even adding e-mails to the marketing mix
doesn’t always help. While email marketing is a
cost-effective to send, easy to create, and fast to
distribute, they’re often boring, making little impact on
the viewer. And the proliferation of e-mails means that
your marketing message often gets lost in the clutter.

Video communications, which includes video e-mails, video
streaming, and live Web casts, represents the next wave of
marketing for small business. It’s proving to be so
powerful it’s revamping the way businesses communicate with
customers and each other.  Simple and easy to use, video
communications puts a human touch back into the process of
communicating with consumers, enabling sales reps,
consultants, and professionals to generate “face time” with
consumers, clients, and businesses without spending a great
deal of time and money. It’s a win-win situation for all
involved, and it’s proving highly effective for small
business.

Video communications is ideal where personal communications
is an advantage. Even political candidates are using it to
communicate with their constituencies. Howard Dean, for
example, helped transformed the face of presidential
politics by being one of the first candidates to harness
the power of the Internet. Dean broke new ground by being
among the first presidential candidates to use streaming
video on his Web site to communicate broadly and
successfully with American voters.

One of the most effective uses of video communications is
video e-mail, which the corporate world is quickly
embracing. Once dismissed as a gimmick, video e-mail is now
making in-roads into business communications. As the
technology has been refined and costs reduced, Global 1000
corporations have begun using video e-mails to reach target
audiences.

Sheridan Square Entertainment, a New York-based firm,
employs video e-mail not only for corporate interoffice
communications, but also as a way for its artists to
communicate directly with their fans. With offices in four
U.S. cities, using video e-mail cuts down on flying time
and its associated costs while generating awareness and
visibility. Organizations such as the Miami Dolphins,
DaimlerChrysler AG, and Eli Lily use video-e-mail for
everything from internal announcements to market surveys.
They also use the technology for sales training, public
relations, customer updates, and product releases.

Using video e-mails and adding streaming video to your Web
site is simple and easy.  In fact, it’s as easy as sending
text e-mails, and cutting and pasting text. Most small
businesses already have all the necessary skills to send
video e-mails and post streaming video online. And thanks
to the emergence of video portals, offering video e-mail,
video on demand, video instant messaging, and live Web
casts, businesses now have a mechanism for sending video
communications to buyers quickly and easily without
investing a lot in additional software or computer
equipment and without the platform incompatibility or long
download problems associated with Windows Media Player,
Real Player, or Apple QuickTime. In addition, proprietary
bandwidth protection enables videos to stream at the speed
most appropriate to each viewer’s connection.

Video is a boon to business marketing. It provides small
businesses with an economical yet powerful way to reach
buyers. Delivering the impact of television, it generates
higher click-through rates and increases brand recognition,
as well as shortening the sales cycle. Simple and easy to
use, video communications is the ideal way for small
business to compete against firms with more resources. It
gives them a powerful competitive edge that other
businesses don’t have, and it’s becoming the accepted way
of delivering personal rich media. More important, it
boosts sales and profits. If you’re a small business, you
can’t afford not to use video communications to market your
company.


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Article by Jenni Baty, publisher of "Boost Profits with
Innovative Marketing – 10 ways video communications can
drive your marketing", a FREE report available with
brandable distribution rights at