We were talking about multimedia marketing the other day at a team meeting when we realized that we should totally be telling you guys about multimedia marketing! Why didn’t we think of this sooner?

Multimedia is super exciting stuff because it can help build brand awareness in a very unusual and powerful way! The term “multimedia” covers a lot of different platforms. It describes things like Flash animation on websites, podcasting, photography, videography, video reports, radio spots —all sorts of great stuff that, when combined with other great stuff serves to diversify your marketing mix and broaden your reach. Today, we’re going to cover three of our favorite items on the big multimedia list: photography, videography, and mobile marketing.

Photo Sharing:

People love to look at pictures. We have already done a big post about photography and how important it is to have polished and professional pictures, but what do you do with those pictures once you’ve invested in them?  Use them to their fullest wherever you can as part of your marketing strategy, of course!  Photo sharing is a great way to do that.

Online communities like Flickr exist so you can upload and share photos with the Internetz. Lots of businesses have taken full advantage of this to help with their marketing efforts. For example, if you’re in the fancy cake making business, you could have someone (ahem, US!) take some great shots of your cakes and post them on Flickr. It’s a great way to share photos of your gorgeous work and drive traffic to your website. And, foodies will love all your cake porn!  But the cool thing about Flickr is that it’s a community. You get to participate in that community and interact with everyone there who loves cake and pictures of cake, and when somebody needs one, they’ll call you! It’s a fun way to build brand awareness as well as get to know some people who love what you love.

You can also share photos on Twitter to spice up your tweets a bit!  Check out TwitPic, or you can use Instagram if you want to share with Facebook, Twitter AND Flickr! 

Video:

We are huge fans of video because there’s so much you can do with it. You can film customer testimonials, how-to demonstrations and facility tours and post them on YouTube. You can create in –house presentations, trade show videos, television commercials, and promotional videos for events. Basically, if you can dream it, we can film it (and produce it, and edit it)!

Recently, we helped create digital annual reports for Delta Dental and Altus Dental. Those reports included flash animation and video to add a new twist on what would normally have been a traditional annual report. The reports were very well received and even award winning!  You can really get some attention when you mix it up a bit and do the unexpected.

Mobile Marketing:

Lots of businesses are choosing to jump on the mobile marketing bandwagon. With this advertising strategy, companies can earn huge profits without spending a ton of extra money. Sure, multinational companies are pursuing mobile marketing too, but really, it’s a great option for any business, big or small.

As you know, everyone (well, all the “awesome” people at least) has a smart phone these days. Mobile marketing allows marketers to put ads on smart phones in the form of either applications or mobile websites. The benefit to a mobile website is in its scale--a normal website is very distracting with banners and pop ups and links everywhere, but a mobile website has very little screen real estate. There are no distractions like there are on a computer screen--it’s just the user and a phone. A phone the user has with them 24/7, everywhere they go.

Some people even sleep with their phones under their pillows. You could totally be whispering your message to them while they’re sleeping and they’ll wake up and call you immediately.

Not really, but wouldn’t that be amazing?

No matter what way you go about it, getting your message out there isn’t simply about using Twitter or Facebook effectively or having a slick website. While you absolutely need to do those things, you’ve also got to think about adding some other stuff into the mix. It’s all about being everywhere and doing all kinds of things to broader your reach.