Projecting success

As consumers’ love for online video builds, retailers fine-tune their rich media strategies

By Paul Demery

Watching the development of online video as a merchandising, marketing, branding and customer relationship-building tool is like watching a fast-paced movie that mixes fast-forwards to new technology with flashes from the past in the basic rules of marketing.

Tools and strategies are more readily available today than just a year ago for creating and distributing videos on retail e-commerce sites as well as through video-sharing sites like YouTube and a growing number of specialty content portals, where video content can coincide with Buy buttons to drive direct sales as well as support brand marketing campaigns.

Circuit City, for instance, has identified a two-part mission for CircuitCity.com: to serve as an engaging online store to build on its sharp growth in online sales and as a source of consumer education to support multi-channel sales, Lesperance says.

Product tours and demos

It is working with three video program vendors—WebCollage Inc., Easy2 Technologies, and SellPoint Inc.—to present product tours and demos from manufacturers. And it’s developing how-to videos using its own high-definition camcorder to shoot videos of tech staff and salespeople showing, for example, how to add memory to a laptop.

“One of our goals is to bring the customer as close as possible to having an in-store experience without having to leave the house,” says Rob Roy, a video content specialist at Circuit City.

To read this entire article, please visit: http://www.paradigmshiftpr.com/projectingsuccess.htm