Transitioning from traditional text-only methods of advertising/teaching to multimedia ones can seem like a daunting prospect, but for marketeers today it is far simpler than it sounds.

Webcasts - also referred to as webinars - are just one example of using multimedia as a means of presenting one’s value proposition and targeted messaging to the masses in a streaming, live, interactive format. And for those of you who are under the impression that you essentially require a video studio in your office to put on a good webcast, rest assured that is not the case! And the benefits to using webcasts as part of your integrated marketing campaigns are multiple.

Webcasts are easy to produce.

Online tools like WebEx, GoToWebinar, On24, and Webcasting.com offer even the most technologically-inexperienced individuals the opportunity to produce webcasts with simple, intuitive formats. These service manage everything beginning with the registration process to providing dial-in numbers to putting on the actual live webcast to ultimately recording the event so that you may offer it on-demand. Plus, you can produce a webcast from anywhere you like, so long as you have a stable Internet connection, and not all presenters need be in the same location at the alloted time. For a presenter, doing a webcast can be as simple as clicking through a slide show in PowerPoint. And I know you corporate folks are capable of that.

Webcasts are cost-effective.

Yes, you can pay upwards of $30k to have a webcast managed, promoted, and produced by an outside vendor, but think of it this way: if your webcast generates 800 leads, which with a broad subject they are very inclined to do, that’s a very acceptable $38 per lead; in addition, paying an outside vendors means you get a guaranteed number of leads anyway, which is usually in the 400 range. For those of you who have tight budgets, there is inexpensive webcasting software to be had. GoToWebinar, for example, which my company uses for all of our internally-driven, very technical webcats, runs at about $100 a month. You get just 20 people to sign up and that’s five bucks a lead right there. The possible downfall to this is that you must do your own promotion, but that does allow you the flexibility to decide whether to hire an outside firm to run banner ads or email blasts for you or simply hitting your own internal database, which costs you nothing.

After you’ve run the webcast and have recorded it for future use, hosting it on your site or elsewhere allows you to enjoy a stream of interest long after the live event has taken place, thereby constantly improving your return on investment (ROI).

Webcasts are versatile.

Yes, you can simply give your presentation with PowerPoint slides, but webcasts can also incorporate Flash, video, and even live demonstrations via desktop sharing. An effective method for me has been to incorporate two or more of these; for example, have a few PowerPoint slides at the beginning, describing the company, the speakers, and what is to come, and then share the desktop so that the presenter can walk through a demo of, say, the cool features of your product.

Webcasts fit the criteria of social media.

My previous post about building the social media foundation mentions the importance of communicating with, not to, your prospective customers. With a webcast, you can present your message in an honest, clean format and then answer questions that have been directly fed to you by the audience. By discussing topics about which the attendees themselves have asked, you are nurturing the relationship between you and your following. In addition, by offering an on-demand recorded version after the event, you provide a means of spreading your message indefinitely, be it through a post on YouTube, links from other sites, email blasts, and so forth. I am still generating interest from a webcast my company hosted back in March of this year, simply because it’s available on-demand and is easily accessible.

In May of this year, Frost & Sullivan released a white paper for On24 (which I suggest you read) that discusses the increased use of webcasts as a marketing tool. “Smart companies use technology to its fullest potential,” it says. “The ubiquity of the Web offers avenues to make a message heard, and powerful web events can be a critical tool in a corporate communications arsenal.” That is, utilizing webcasts within your marketing program can be an extremely worthwhile, cost-effective method of spreading your message to a wide audience.

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There’s a new form of marketing in town, and if you’re prepared to do some work, a lot of doors will open for you.

[enter social media marketing stage left]

Wikipedia defines social media in its broadest form as “an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.” In essence, social media - or ‘new media,’ as it is often called - encompasses various methods of communication that go beyond the age-old standard of a marketing team talking to potential customers by adding conversation, fluidity, and collaboration into the equation.

Social media is available in many forms, including blogs (Blogger, Wordpress), microblogs (Twitter), photo sharing (Flickr, Photobucket), video sharing (YouTube), RSS, social networking (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn), wikis (Wikipedia), social bookmarks and commentary (Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit), instant messaging (AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger), podcasts (Podcast Alley, iTunes), webcasts and video blogs (Rocketboom), online communities (MyBlogLog, Plaxo, Google Groups), consumer-owned shopping sites (Zazzle), and even virtual worlds (Second Life). This list does not by any means encompass all social media outlets - and, of course, more are being created and developed every day - but it’s a good start.

“This doesn’t sound like anything I have in my so-called ‘integrated’ marketing campaign. Why would we use any of these strangely-named sites for marketing?”

Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe because over 112 million blogs are already being tracked by Technorati, a number which doesn’t even include those sites not submitted to the leading blog-sharing site. In January of this year, 79 million viewers watched over three billion videos on YouTube. User-generated content attracted 69 million visitors in 2006; that number is expected to jump to over 100 million visitors in 2011, generating $4.6 billion in ad revenue. These are just a sample of some absolutely huge numbers, people. Would it make sense to ignore all of these individuals by disregarding social media, one of the biggest - if not the biggest - consumer influencers? Because let’s be honest: consumers trust other consumers more than they trust any advertisement your creative minds could possibly think of.

HubSpot, now one of the leading internet marketing companies in the country, was a no-name startup just two years ago; it got to where it is now through the use of social media marketing tools like blogs and webcasts that deliver honest and useful information to the masses.

And it’s not just start-ups that benefit from social media marketing. Coca-Cola saw sales of Diet Coke skyrocket after they started creating professional-looking videos on YouTube that demonstrated the wonders of adding Mentos to the popular soft drink (and in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, watch one of the hundreds of videos available).

For further examples, the Internet Advertising Bureau released a study this year on user-generated content and its effects that includes a number of case studies similar to the ones above (and does, in fact, mention the whole Diet-Coke-and-Mentos thing). It’s only about fifteen pages long, and well worth a read.

In short, social media is everything ‘old media’ is not: fluid, transparent, consumer-driven, and open to conversation and collaboration. Remember: it’s only too late to embrace the ‘new’ when you realize your competitors have run you right out of business by doing it first.