It has gotten to the point where virtually everybody has watched some kind of video on You Tube. You’ve gotten an email with a link to some wacky individual stunt or some political candidate’s flub or dare say, you may have even posted something there.  The reality is that a new Kelsey Group Report reveals that even though video snippets have been available on the web forever, YouTube has made them – oh, no, don’t say it – mainstream.  That’s right, mainstream to the point where now several ad agencies are offering affordable pricing to small businesses to offer video ads to their customers.

What this means is that the small business entrepreneurs now have a new arsenal of marketing tools.  Small businesses no longer have to live with very one-dimensional existence, which in recent years has become more rich online.  Even to this day, a stack of phone books is occasionally dropped outside the front door of my home.  Within these thousands of pages are lists of  business names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers and some website addresses. Unfortunately, most of these books go right into the recycle bin.  Why search through a cumbersome, not-so-user-friendly book when I can go to an online director or Google or Yahoo! the company to get what I need.

 The savvy business owner can use multimedia tools to bring his or her business alive.  The combination of three factors – (1) the continued penetration of broadband access, (2) the wider acceptance of  short-video technology and (3) more effective of online advertising targeting are the ingredients for success for a small business in the 21st Century.