From animation and VR to photography and video; establishing a successful – often multi-stranded – approach to digital marketing is vital. You’re not just competing with your neighboring high street SME anymore.

Through the rise in globalization and the evolution of the supply chain, you’re competing with every heavyweight conglomerate and entrepreneurial SME the world over in the present day. To this end, customer attraction, customer service, and customer loyalty form a trisector of necessities you must satisfy in order to thrive.

At each stage of these three parameters, the effective use of multimedia tools can often prove to be the difference between success and failure, so here are 10 routes, strategies, and tools you can leverage to become a multimedia marvel.

1. Videos and photography

The trick here is to opt for exclusivity over volume. You could be forgiven for thinking that by making your online and social channels more visually engaging that it will result in higher volumes of traffic. Even if this is the case though, as Shopify evidences, it is unlikely to result in heightened sales. And ultimately, your visit-to-sale conversion rate will become every bit as poor as your reputation.

Instead, strive for higher resolution, more mobile and dynamic versions of the same exclusive image to better demonstrate the product and service on offer. In doing so, you will also make the chosen media more attractive across your YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest accounts too.

2. Instagram

Tied in nicely with the effective online usage of media is Instagram – the original, visual, social channel. It’s far more than a peacocking-effect in the present day, however. Much in the same way as Facebook and Twitter, Instagram can now take your content marketing to the next level through heightened sharing opportunities and through the formation of a collaborative scene. Eyebuydirect’s #ItsHowYouFrameIt campaign, for instance, not just showcases a dynamic display of our eyeglass and sunglass range; but, it fosters a platform for much broader discussion, chat and sharing among potential shoppers.

3. Virtual reality

VR has the potential to be the ultimate in interactivity. Consumers will soon be able to visualize how an item of clothing or furniture looks in their chosen surroundings without having to go to a store. And once retailers have found a fitting use of VR specific to their needs, there will also be the opportunity to jazz up what a shopper sees in this virtual or augmented world. Multimedia tools and promotions will soon have another new domain from which to work their magic.

4. Pinterest

Pinterest at its core promotes collaboration. In achieving the same dynamism goals as those earmarked for online photography and indeed your Instagram site, Pinterest will go that one step further in letting members of the public do the rest of your marketing for you.

Creating a subsequent snowball effect, if your video or image is commercially strong enough, while maintaining integrity, it can become a runaway train in terms of socially-driven interest (and hopefully, sales).

5. Chatbots

Most of us are fully aware of how important chatbots are now to service providers, both in B2B and B2C realms. But who says that communications must be limited to advice, or link redirection, or complaints?

There is the opportunity now for these individual conversation lines to be used as a platform for careful, tailored promotion. Rather than slipping into advertising spiel, though, an opportune image, video or link to your Instagram/Pinterest page, will both advise and promote simultaneously; in a way that also resonates with those who still prefer traditional brick and mortar style customer service values.

6. Podcasts

While not applicable across the board, businesses can tap into largely-followed trends via podcasts. There is still a huge market out there for those who want to lie back and be informed in an entertaining and enthused way. Sport and entertainment leverage the portal every day, but B2B operators, in particular, have the ability to do the same.

Just ask yourself whether you’d rather read an 80-page whitepaper over a few days, or listen to passionate, expert-led debate in half-an-hour, and you’ll realize why.

7. Live streaming

Jumping back over to the B2C side, and live recordings and streaming can achieve a similar, perhaps more informal effect to podcasts. Fashion, automotive, sports apparel, music, television… all these sectors require huge consumer interest to thrive, and these customer bases also bring a sense of fanaticism along with them.

To offer 15-minute displays of new clothing lines or the application of a new tech gadget will have a much more positive effect than the adverts you painstakingly sit through on TV. Mostly, because it will be tailored for you and your likes, and often through social media channels you already spend so much of your life on.

8. M-commerce

Mobile offers its own nuances to consider when deciding upon a multimedia strategy. Yes, you could simply adjust your existing online campaigns for the smaller screen; but, you’d be advised to be a bit more innovative than that.

By making your videos and photography more suitable for the smaller screen, more tailored to the age and gender groups you know will be using mobile platforms and then making the media more shareable as a link; you’re more likely to achieve that glorious snowball effect of consumer interest.

9. Webinars

In the small gap between podcasts and live streaming, the B2B community again has a fantastic opportunity to engage potential buyers and service users. Beyond that though, for businesses themselves, it’s a way to use media to garner ideas for their own marketing strategy. Marketing for the marketers, if you will.

10. AI

In the same category of ‘decision making assistance’ falls artificial intelligence, or machine learning. Rather than being a direct media aid, it instead will help decide when and where to target this media. Subsequently ensuring that your fantastic high-resolution, moving and interactive 360-degree image doesn’t go to waste, AI technologies will figure out the opportune time to post it, social media channel to exercise, and demographic to target. The rest should then take care of itself.