In our short marketing course today, here’s a quick look at one of the most important marketing tools for most businesses, demonstration video. For many of you watching this short marketing course today, creating and using a powerful demonstration, especially if you can post it on a YouTube video, could really boost your marketing results while reducing the chance people will miss the key benefits of your product or service.

For today’s short marketing course, as I was searching through Google, I came across an example of something I thought you’d find really interesting. It supports a previous video I created about how easy and affordable it is to create and use Internet video to simplify the selling of your product or business.

Here are several companies promoting that their vacuum cleaners are so powerful, they can lift a bowling ball. In previous short marketing courses we’ve witnessed some strong claims. But this one really grabs your attention, doesn’t it?

The first ad says… so powerful it can pick up bowling balls…

But scan a little lower and you get, “Electrolux Intensity picks up FIVE bowling balls.” WOW! And it’s a YouTube video.

So, with today’s short marketing course, first notice that in Google’s search results, a YouTube VIDEO stands out more than an article. Plus, the claim that this one can pick up FIVE bowling balls really grabbed my attention.

So I clicked on the video, and got a terrific explanation of why their product works so well, followed by a demonstration of the lifting of the bowling balls, all in a 58 second video that many of you on today’s short marketing course could also do pretty easily.

Here’s what they say as you watch the video.

First they announce the product –

This is the new Electrolux Intensity.

Then they make their claim of why their product is better than competitors—

It delivers 50% more suction power than the leading upright vacuum.

Next, they explain why this is possible –

How is this possible? It’s really quite simple. We eliminated the 30″ hose found on typical upright vacuums. And replaced it with a 3″ air pathway. After all, the shorter the air pathway, the more powerful the vacuum.

Then they demonstrate —

So exactly how powerful is the Electrolux Intensity. Watch as we place five 16 lb bowling balls into this airtight tube. Now watch as we create an airtight seal and turn on the Intensity.

Then they remind us of the product’s name, and make the conclusion of why you should buy their product, with their brilliant tagline —

The new Intensity from Electrolux. If it can lift 80 lbs of bowling balls off the ground, it can certainly lift the dirt off your floor.

Finally, they remind us again of the product name—

The powerful all new Intensity. Only from Electrolux.

In 58 seconds they created a convincing presentation of why we should buy their product. Wasn’t that great?

If those of you watching today’s short marketing course were in the market for a vacuum cleaner, would you consider theirs?

Now, for a real contrast in today’s short marketing course, let’s go back to Google and check out the OTHER guy.

Actually, it turns out this other guy is a vacuum reseller. Ristenbatt vacuums. With the headline, So Powerful That It Can Pick Up Bowling Balls – but it turns out he’s trying to debunk the idea of lifting bowling balls with a vacuum cleaner, saying it’s just a simple trick.

His headline isn’t bad…

When really clean is important, get the facts about vacs.

And the top of the page has that great headline, “So powerful it can pick up bowling balls.”

In fact, lower on the page there’s an even more powerful hyperlinked line, although scary…

So powerful that it can lift an adult human.

Yikes!

But strangely for today’s short marketing course, he’s trying to get you to buy his vacuum cleaners by putting down others. He’s explaining how the lifting bowling balls and people are somewhat hoaxes, nothing more than simple parlor tricks. But I don’t find this approach motivating me whatsoever to buy his products, even if he is technically accurate. Frankly, there’s a little too much tech for me to even read.

So a few points here for today’s short marketing course.

The first is, video beats text. Can you see that?

Watching a video of bowling balls being lifted by a vacuum cleaner is more powerful than reading an article.

If this guy created a brief video showing how easy it is to fake the results, and then demonstrated what you should really look for in a vacuum cleaner, he would have engaged us and hooked us more easily on buying from him.

As I mentioned earlier, in a previous short marketing course video, I show how easy it is to create these kinds of videos, for FREE – so there’s no excuse.

Also, if you can somehow have a demonstration of your product or service in action, especially if you can come up with a dramatic way to show how it works, as they did with lifting the bowling balls, this can go a long way to winning many more customers to you.

This bowling ball video in today’s short marketing course reminds me of another dramatic demonstration video.

One of the hottest viral videos on the Internet is Will It Blend, by Blendtec. To date they’ve had more than 13 million people watch their food-and-drink blender grind an Apple iPad to dust in an outrageous demonstration.

They claim their sales have quadruped in just the couple of years since they posted their first videos, showing an iPhone and other surprising objects being ground to dust.

So the point for today’s short marketing course is that creating a video of your product or service in action could be tremendously valuable in boosting the persuasive power of how you market.

Plus, if you could somehow create an outrageous or funny demonstration of your product or service in action, like the vacuum cleaner lifting bowling balls or the blender grinding an iPad, the viral impact could keep your cash register ringing for months, and perhaps even years to come.