No matter how you look at it, when you use a screen cam, a webcam, or a camcorder, there is just so much you can capture with your camera. And believe me, after over fifteen years creating videos, I can tell you that what your camera captures can be very boring.

Several years ago I did a video interview with Jerry Buchanan of TOWERS Club fame. I wasn’t real sure I was getting the video since I was using the lighting in his office and a wireless microphone. So I borrowed Jerry’s television and patched in my camera to review some of the footage.

Now my video teacher had years before told me never let the customer see the raw video. And that’s what I planned. Except Jerry and his partner came into the television room and saw some of the raw footage.

Their comments were, “BORING!”

Well, if you were an amateur film maker you’d stop right there. Too bad the video is boring. Maybe the next one won’t be. Or maybe I can use this anyway. Maybe not everyone will be bored!

But the professional knows that you can”t take raw video and use it to impress others. You have to enhance it. And one of the easiest ways of enhancing video is to use “cutaways” or “B rolls”. This is the technique of inserting images or other video over the original video to add interest.

In the case of Jerry’s video, I had taken extra shots outside and inside his home/office. I had lots of extra footage that could be inserted when Jerry talked about a particular subject. I even used a special opening sequence where Jerry answered the telephone and said, “Good morning, TOWERS Club” to open the video.

These were the things that
the amateur would not do.
But as a professional I did.

The results were spectacular. This “boring” video became Jerry’s primary video for his business. It went from “boring” to “love”. All because I added that extra WOW! factor.

And you can do the same thing. One of my favorite resources is Digital Juice. This company gives the professional (and amateur) videographer the tools to take boring video and turn it into “must have” video. They have video backgrounds, B roll videos, music and images. In fact, the biggest problem is that they are like a candy store for videographers. Just too many things that you want to have. The prices are reasonable considering the wealth of material you get from them. However, one thing to watch for are their monthly and weekly specials. They often reduce certain products and bundle prices by 50% to 75%. These specials are limited to time or quantity. Get more information at http://digitaljuice.com/.

With these tools your video should never be boring again.

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I know you’ve probably heard the definition of copywriters as creating “salesmanship in print”. But when you check out some of the latest things happening on the Internet maybe that definition is becoming defunct. Maybe it should be “salesmanship in multimedia”.

For years direct marketing has been controlled by the best copywriters. With one you can make a fortune. And without one you’ll be luck to just break even on any marketing campaign.

And for a number of years what has sold on the Internet has been a version of the direct marketing sales letter format. Go to just about any seminar on Internet Marketing and one of the experts will be a copywriter. And I must admit that I studied copy writing with some of the gurus of direct marketing. So even though I’m a videographer, I still use a standard sales letter to sell my videos.

But a short time ago I ventured a little away from the classical sales letter and added some videos to help demonstrate and sell my products. You can see my first results at http://instantwebaudios.com/. This program is delivered with two software programs and two teaching videos. But what I did was to actually put those teaching videos right online in the sales letter. I wanted to prove my claim that anyone could create and upload their own audio to the web using my software. The only difference in the training videos is that when someone orders they get to download the videos.

And I thought this was a neat way of using multimedia to sell a product.

Until I saw a sales letter that is basically three videos, some testimonials and the order form!

That’s it!

The author has actually split tested his software product sales using a conventional long form sales letter and the one you”ll see on his website. The video sales letter won HANDS DOWN!

So will copywriters become screenplay authors? Or will they just become extinct?

We’ll see.

Meanwhile, go to http://www.underachievertoolkit.com/killer.php to see this video sales letter. I believe you”ll be impressed. [Note: this link has been changed by Frank Kern, the fellow who originally told me about this video salesletter. So it no longer works. The current website is at http://www.keywordcompanion.com/ and has been changed a bit from the original one I saw. But it still uses video.]

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Why the multimedia love affair by big companies on the Internet?

Probably the best answer is that multimedia gets results. According to the Internet marketing research firm Millward Brown Intelliquest, streaming media is five times more effective than the traditional ad banner that most websites typically use. Plus the results show that Internet streaming media has had at least as much impact as television vertising.

So how can you use multimedia?

Perhaps the easiest way to learn how to use multimedia is to do some basic research while you surf the web. Today you’ll find many sites are using multimedia to capture as many web surfers as possible. But not all are really using the power of multimedia positively. So let’’s take a look at one company that is.

Recently Google added a new service called Google Checkout. It’s another way of taking money for your items online. And when you combine it with Google Base you can actually be selling items online without having a website.

But how did Google use this new service plus a video to create a buzz on the Internet? For one thing, Google has a good name on the Internet. So they used that positive image and great streaming multimedia to show why customers would want to use Google Checkout

Before we continue take a look at their video at https://checkout.google.com/buyer/tour.html And yes, their animated video is very entertaining. About the only thing they could have added was an automatic redirect to their Google Checkout sign up page. Instead they have a hot link at the end of their streaming video. One of the reasons we teach using the automatic redirect is that your customer has one less thing to think about. The hot link is good but not everyone will see it. The automatic redirect will send your customer to the very site that you want. And by using anchors on your web page you can even put them right where you want them.

Just another way of using multimedia to sell your products and services.

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