In our short marketing course today, here’s a quick look at how creating and using video could dramatically boost the selling power of your presentations, your website, your emails and much more. And as you’ll see in this short marketing course, it’s much easier and more affordable today than ever before. Mastering video marketing will help you win more customers and close more sales while helping you sleep better knowing your message is being properly told to enough people.

I’ve created today’s short marketing course because so many people don’t realize how much video can add to the effectiveness and impact of your marketing, or they don’t realize how easy it is to create your own. Especially today, with so many free and low cost resources, there’s almost no excuse for not having video as a key part of how you let customers know about your product or service.

As you’ll see in this short marketing course, it almost doesn’t matter what kind of product or service you offer. Everything from corporate jets to consultants, motivational trainers to authors, product and service providers, using video has suddenly become an essential part of how more and more people are doing business.

To create a video, you could do it yourself with a video camera or with presentation software like PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote, or you could hire someone to do it for you. In this short marketing course I’ll show you how to do both.

A few years ago I created a simple video for a friend, Don, a civil engineer, so I could learn how easy or difficult it was to create a marketing video for someone.

Especially for a civil engineer, having video on his website did not seem that critical.

But guess what?

A few months after I put the most basic of videos I created for him, on his website, he won one of his biggest clients ever, one of the movie studios in Hollywood.

The client told Don that watching the video of him somewhat nervously describing his business helped the client get comfort that Don knew his stuff, and that he was a real person, easy to work with. It was as if the client had already met Don before he actually picked up the phone to call him.

Let me explain right now in this short marketing course how we created the video for Don, so you could understand how easily you also could do it, perhaps without spending even a nickel.

For Don, we created a mini-teleprompter that he could read his script from. We did it by creating a PowerPoint presentation, which explained a little about his business, how long he’d been around, listing some of his clients, and so forth.

We put the presentation on a laptop computer and gave Don a wireless clicker that we bought from Staples or Office Depot for about $20, so he cold easily advance the slides.

Next we sat the laptop on a stack of boxes so it was eye level, and put it about 7 feet away, so Don could easily see the slides. We placed a small video camera just above the laptop, pointing at Don. This way, when we filmed him, even though he was reading the slides, it looked like he was actually speaking into the camera, because the camera was so close to the laptop.

To make the sound better, we bought a clip-on microphone from Radio Shack for about $20. All in all, the only thing that cost anything was the microphone and the wireless clicker, and frankly, even those weren’t absolutely necessary.

Next, we used free software from Microsoft to do simple editing. Today we use more sophisticated equipment, but the equipment I just described can be perfectly fine, and that initial video is still on Don’s site today, and it’s still helping him sell new clients.

Here’s a trick for today’s short marketing course. As long as your audio quality is clear, most people will be fine with your video, even if it doesn’t seem as slick as the pros have. In fact, in some ways, the less slick your video, the more people will tend to like it, in many cases.

Here are a few more short marketing course tips.

If you’re not crazy about speaking on camera, you could create a PowerPoint or Keynote slide presentation. Newer versions of these programs will let you post the finished presentation, complete with audio, sound effects and music, directly onto YouTube.

You could also upload your slides to a free or low-cost service like BrainShark or Animoto, which make it easy to add audio and even video if you want.

And voila! You suddenly have a professional presentation for your product or business. Check out BrainShark and Animoto. Their basic services are absolutely free. You won’t believe how easy it is to produce professional-looking video that helps explain and sell your products and services.

Now that you’ve created your video, the next step in our short marketing course is posting it online.

Although many services are available, YouTube is definitely the easiest. And it’s absolutely free. They even recently eliminated the ten-minute limit and allow you to post just about any length video on their site.

Simply go to YouTube, create a free account, click the UPLOAD button and your video will be uploaded.

Now that your video is uploaded to YouTube, the next step in our short marketing course is embedding it on your website.

Simply click the SHARE button below the video, then click the EMBED button and copy the embed code, which you then paste onto your website.

And suddenly, you have video for your product or service, right there on your website.

Here’s a short marketing course tip that may be helpful.

Before you capture the EMBED code from YouTube, make sure you uncheck the box that says, “Show suggested videos when the video finishes.” If you don’t uncheck that box, YouTube will display competitor videos once yours is finished playing. Uncheck that button and your video will simply stop when it’s over.

Although it’s generally not necessary, if you want to jazz up your video with a professional narrator’s voice, you could hire one at one of the numerous sites, like voices.com.

The last tip in today’s short marketing course is for those who’d rather hire a professional videographer to create your video.

If you’d prefer to have a professional create a video for your product or business, a great source is TurnHere.com. They have great prices and use freelance videographers located in just about every city in the US and Canada, who are trained to give you a professional video quickly and hassle free.

Whether you do it yourself or have someone do it for you, as you’ve learned in today’s short marketing course, adding video to your marketing could dramatically boost the selling power of your presentations, website and emails, greatly simplifying your ability to win new clients.