If you’re looking for ways to kick your skills as a marketing professional up a notch, there’s nothing better than getting comfortable with video conferencing technology. There are so many ways that video can be used to level up your marketing game, client-side, from the point of view of their customers, or even for yourself and your colleagues in marketing.
Getting Started
The first step to getting started with video in your marketing efforts is choosing the right platform or provider. While there are plenty of options online today, for small businesses and independent contractors a service designed for businesses on that scale—like Bluejeans ever popular video conferencing platform, particularly Blue Jeans marketing collaboration—is the best choice. These services offer economic solutions for smaller groups, while most video conferencing services make all clients and collaborators pay the for the same features, many of which are only necessary or useful to large businesses.
In general, you want to be sure that your chosen video conferencing platform has the following features at minimum:
- File sharing, in order to easily pass documents and materials back and forth as needed.
- Screen sharing and easy presentation, to make sharing slideshows and digital presentations easy.
- Recording functions, allowing you to review and share your meetings and presentations after the fact.
- You or your company may require other features, such as cloud storage and a high attendee limit, making it important to carefully assess your business needs before signing on with any particular service or platform.
Marketing Collaboration
For many marketing professionals, working for a single client or in a single location is a rare thing. As pointed out by The Muse, traditional office work is counterproductive to everything the best marketers stand for, from creativity in marketing strategy to observation of consumer and client behavior in order to better implement that strategy. Working in a cubicle may work for some marketers, but most need the opportunity to roam free and broaden their horizons in order to do their job properly.
This fact brings up the assumption that marketing specialists are “work from home” professionals, which is only partially true. While digital marketing consultants, product marketing managers and content strategists may be seen doing the brunt of their work from their home office or other location of their choice, this isn’t the whole picture. Instead, marketing professionals need the chance to be mobile, to follow the trends and take the time to research them, to explore different company locations in their own time and better understand what works and what doesn’t on a macro scale. Achieving this is difficult enough on work/life balance, but can also make it difficult to maintain a healthy working relationship with your marketing colleagues—especially considering they’re usually all over the globe.
Thankfully, this is where video conferencing comes in. The right platform allows you to communicate with marketing professionals from anywhere at any time that is convenient for both of you. Whether you’re hosting a seminar with greenhorn marketers, going over analytics with your business partner or connecting with one of your own mentors to help you learn and grow in your field, video conferencing is the absolute best way to keep in touch. Working face to face eliminates the disconnect created by too much distance, and helps keep a mobile worker grounded in their job no matter where they go.
Client Communication
If meeting with colleagues via video is the best choice, there’s no doubt that your clients can avail of the same technology. By using video conferencing to meet up with clients, both current and future, you can extend your reach to a global scale without having to actually travel the globe yourself.
CIO reports that one of the biggest stumbling blocks to maintaining good client relations is faulty or insufficient communication. You can’t just hop a plane out to Dubai to help put a client’s worries to rest with regards to their current marketing strategy, but a phone call just isn’t sufficient for making them feel like they’re having a real conversation with you; this is where video conferencing comes in. Enjoy all the benefits of a face to face meeting with next to none of the costs.
As a final point, once you’ve come to understand everything video can do for your business, you can offer your clients the chance to utilize it for interaction with their own customers. The applications for video in customer relations and engagement are plentiful to say the least; if you want to make sure that your clients are getting the most out of their online presence, make sure you’re not the only one with a video strategy. With No Jitter reporting growth in the video market in the areas of new applications, this is the time to get on board—and make sure your clients are on board with you.
Full Utilization
Video is just one avenue to explore in upgrading your marketing skills, but that doesn’t mean being lax in your application and usage. If you want to be one of the best marketing professionals online today, making sure that your clients are able to utilize up and coming technology with the same proficiency and focus as you do yourself is a step that you can’t afford to overlook.
