It’s always amazed me how many things exist in this world that I am not aware of until I have the need to find out about them. Researching a variety of topics this term for my emerging media class has shown me just how many aspects of emerging media tools are being used within the Integrated Marketing Communication discipline. Whether it is the growing use around mobile marketing or another topic I studied this term: Short Films.
I ran across films with elaborate productions, like those produced for Pirelli tires. One of their first films produced in 2006, was The Call, and starred John Malcovich and Naomi Campbell. It consumed 60 percent of Pirelli’s marketing budget that year according to reports and was used to set the stage for the company’s slogan, “Power is nothing without control.”
We reviewed a number of other short films from companies as varied as hotels, energy, soft drinks and automobiles. Some were short and to the point. Others didn’t seem to make a point. These short films lasted anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes and it got me thinking about how video can be used as an effective marketing communication tool to build online demos to help sell products, such as software.
According to a MarketingProfs article by Amy Gesenhues of Autodem, online demos can be an effective tool for customers still in the researching phase and should last in length from 3 to 6 minutes at max. From personal experience I would agree. A Marketing Sherpa Case Study on creating demos cited technical companies being successful with online demos lasting 10-15 minutes in length. Of course, the article qualified the times noting that content elements and audience target played an important role in establishing the right length of time to play a demo.
From my own experience, I know that videos can be some of the most accessed elements on a web site, but there are some key considerations that should be followed to be successful:
1) Make the videos easy to find. There is no point investing a lot of time and money on a video that visitors must hunt for to find.
2) Be sure to test your content with current customers or channel partners to be sure they are receiving the message you are intending to send.
3)Invest in making it look professional. Like the rest of your web site, if the quality is poor, chances are the prospect may infer that the quality of the product you are trying to sell is poor.
4) Find some videos that you like, and use them as templates to build the video you want for your own product or service.
Online demo videos, short films and live online demos are great uses of multimedia that provide another effective means to communicate with your customers.
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