If You Want Your Marketing To Be Profitable…Read This!

Brandweek, July 10, 2000 by Brandan Nakamura

Recognizing the growing boom in marketing with videos, DVDs and CD-ROMs, both the United States and the Canadian postal services have lowered costs associated with mailing marketing media.

While the costs of producing, duplicating and mailing videos, DVDs and CD-ROMs has dropped significantly, the key here is the return on investment. Dollar for dollar, because of the highly targeted nature of marketing with video, DVD and CD-ROM, nothing else is coming close to this option when it comes to return on investment. While many Internet companies spend as much as $100 to secure a single new customer, marketing with video, DVD and CD-ROM does the same for a buck. One dollar. It's like comparing apples to bowling balls.

What are the Differences Between Marketing with Video, OVO and CD-ROM?

Once you've acknowledged the powerful impact of marketing with video, DVD and CD-ROM, it becomes necessary to differentiate between the three similar, yet slightly different, formats.

Video offers convenience and the highest market penetration for its medium. Most homes (over 93%) and even most businesses (over 65%) have a VCR. Many of the attributes of video also apply to DVD and CD-ROM. For instance, video is multi-faceted and allows you to effectively combine ideas, benefits, incentives, testimonials, and (most powerfully) emotion all in one dramatic package. Videotape takes direct response and makes it multi-sensory. Video entertains, informs, creates an impression, and evokes a response. All of these attributes also apply to DVD and CD-ROM.

Since most U.S. households now have a computer and most computers now have CD-ROM drives, the CD-ROM has increasingly become the choice of direct marketers. Why? Because it allows marketers to take advantage of interactivity CD-ROMs allow a consumer to navigate the content of the marketing tool. Consumers find it a positive experience to load a CD and then navigate between subject matters and features, While a CD-ROM can contain video, it can also contain detailed information on a product or service. For instance, a CD-ROM marketing an automobile can include several screens of technical data on the engine, as well as comparisons against similar models. All of this provides the consumer with valuable information and goes a long way toward customer confidence. The final, and perhaps most compelling factor, for choosing a CD-ROM is the fact that it can link the customer directly to a company's Web site. Theoretically, once a customer has considered the information on the CD-ROM, that customer can then click on a link to the Internet and order the product immediately. CD-ROMs allow the consumer to close the deal. As the Internet continues to grow, CD-ROMs will become more and more pervasive as a marketing tool. As new technology increasingly allows for personalization and customization, CD-ROMs will also become the best way to meet specific consumer demands (see side bars on new CD-PROM technology).

DVDs are really the next logical step beyond both video and CD-ROMs. Take all of the ease of use of video and combine it with the navigational option inherent to CD-ROMs and you've got DVD. As DVD players become more and more common in U.S. households, marketers will find it to be the ultimate in marketing impact. Imagine a consumer popping a DVD into their DVD player at home, sitting back, and clicking through an interactive menu that allows them to find out everything they could possibly want to know about a specific product or service. They can view high-quality, full-motion, digital video of the product or service with the push of a button--instantaneously, at a time that is convenient to them, and in the comfort of their own home. No boring sales brochure or inept salesperson. When the time comes for the consumer to actually purchase the product or service, they simply click on a button and they are seamlessly connected to the Internet, where they can order the product or service in a matter of minutes and seconds, and have it delivered right to their doorstep overnight or in a matter of days. If this sounds like a marketing dream, stand back--it's also a consumer dream. And it's coming true. For once, in all the history of mankind, marketers and consumers are sharing the same dream. This is powerful stuff and business decision makers will do well to take advantage of this.