This week I bought a table tennis table for our son.  I thought this would be a simple purchase (dumb of me, I know).  The more I delved into the subject the more confusing it became.  So I turned to the forums – big mistake.  Now I had people’s opinions to contend with alongside manufacturer hype.  Needless to say I became very confused, very quickly.  Eventually, I alighted upon a website which had product videos showing a walkthrough of their features, how the tables folded up and down and even how to put them together.  That was a godsend.  Now I could actually see the tables in action and get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses – that website got my business because they made the presentation of the information quick, easy and clear.

This is a lesson for us all as multimedia represents a huge opportunity to present our businesses with greater sophistication and clarity yet multimedia is sparsely used on websites to sell products and services.  There are two principal barriers as to why businesses don’t use multimedia;

1. they think it’s too ‘technical’ to implement
2. they think it needs to look ultra-professional

In reality neither of these apply.

All you need is a basic camcorder, some simple video editing software (Adobe Premier Elements or Sony Vegas, for example) and a YouTube account.

Don’t worry about producing an unpolished video as the more ‘real’ your efforts look the more honest they appear.  (Most people would rather buy a car from an oily looking mechanic than an oily looking salesman!)  If, however, you want a more professional feel and have a little money to spend you’ll find lots of small video companies operating at very reasonable rates.

The key here is to just try the multimedia experiment because it can create the much needed differentiation between you and your competitors.  Here are some examples of how you could use video.

1. Demonstrate your product or service.
2. Interview a customer.
3. Interview a salesperson.
4. Show the results of your product or service (or the results of NOT using your product or service).
5. Do a mini presentation.
6. Be instructional (www.howcast.com are great at this).
7. Show your team at work.
8. Shoot an event, conference, keynote presentation.
9. Shoot a ‘Day in the Life of…’
10. A tour around your workshop, factory, premises, etc.

Do a quick spot check just now – go and see how many of your competitors are using video and I think you’ll quickly see how underused this medium is – and as you know, wherever there’s a gap in the marketing there’s an opportunity for you to flourish.

Jed Wylie is the author of Make Your Website Sell and works for Morgan Wylie a web design and digital marketing agency in the Midlands.