“Blending” Viral Marketing into Your Marketing Strategy

Are you familiar with the ever-popular Will It Blend campaign from Blendtec? If not, you’re depriving yourself from one of the best viral marketing campaigns ever.

George Wright, the Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Blendtec, gave a keynote at PubCon, in which he explained the strategy behind their campaign. In the above WPN video, Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick, Inc. tells how Blendtec had to go out on a limb to get their brand name out there.

Blendtec offers high performance blending and dispensing equipment for restaurants, but also has home editions. George realized their need to raise brand awareness. He knew they had great products, but no one knew about them. The concept was there for the “will it blend” idea, but they didn’t have a big budget to do a commercial.

George took his budget of $50 and bought the domain name willitblend.com, a lab coat, a six-pack of Coke, and supplies to blend. The first experiment included marbles, a rotisserie chicken, a rake, and a McDonald’s value meal. Their small budget only allowed them to use social media outlets, so they launched their campaign over YouTube.

Now, some 70-75 videos later, they’ve made history. Blendtec blends iPhones, iPods, and even rake handles just as George did in his keynote address! The only item that has been too powerful for them to blend is Chuck Norris…

Since their campaign launched, Blendtec’s sales have been up 700 percent. George realized Blendtec’s need to prove that their product was better than the others by actually showing it instead of simply talking about the mechanics. Viral marketing is creating fun content that people want to talk about and putting it into social media sites.

Ironically, Blendtec pitched the Food Network prior to the campaign with no luck, but after the campaign began, the Food Network contacted them.

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What the Heck is Search Engine Optimization? A Beginners Guide

What the Heck is Search Engine Optimization? A Beginners Guide

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Social Media Strategies for Link Building

Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting in the above WPN video encourages people to “think big” when using social media to build links. This practice is not only for large companies, but should be applied to small businesses also. Just because you’re small doesn’t mean you can’t accomplish big things.

Your social media strategy should include a specific angle. Have a goal from the beginning and don’t wander from it. If you keep a steady focus, you will be able to build upon it.

In the Real-World Low-Risk, High-Reward Link Building Strategies session at PubCon, Tamar Weinberg recalls Eric saying:

1. Study what has worked before
2. Write a compelling article
3. Write an interesting description
4. Vote for posts in front of you on the upcoming pages
5. Make sure you stand out!

To elaborate on that last point, you want your content to be unique and authoritative. However, it still needs to be relevant. If your content is great but no one associates it with your brand, you probably won’t get a link.

Know in advance to be ready for criticism. Critics will be watching closely and waiting for a mistake. Remember to keep your focus in mind at all times.

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Making Your Social Media Campaign Work

Social media has taken over. Honestly, everyone is using it now and not simply for social reasons. Companies now realize how powerful it is for raising brand awareness and engaging with customers. But a lot of money can be lost if a social media campaign is not efficiently conducted.

When you begin your social media campaign, make sure your viral content is relevant so customers can immediately associate it with your brand. Also, work closely with the search team in order for potential customers to be able to find you in their searches.

Just as Eric Enge emphasized in his WPN interview, have a specific goal for your campaign and stick with it. Understand that you can’t just abandon your campaign if it isn’t working. It will almost definitely need adjusting and you need to be prepared in advance.

Your ultimate goal with these efforts is profitability. If you remain invisible to your customers, you will not bring in revenue. In the above WPN video, Vanessa Fox of Nine By Blue, stresses the importance of having an “obvious” call to action.

Once you’ve positioned yourself, don’t throw your efforts away by hiding your call to action. Make it simple but prominent, so customers can complete their transaction and you can gain your profit.

This is a lot to take in, but don’t get discouraged before you start your social media campaign. Simply research and know your audience and have a solid plan before you launch your

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PubCon: Understanding How the Big Boys Operate

Did you ever wonder how large companies keep up with all the pages on their websites? As he explains in the above video, Bill Hunt of Global Strategies knows all about this since IBM is one of their clients.

First, know whether or not the search engines are indexing all your pages. If they aren’t, then you need to check a few things out. Make sure you have a sitemap that is working correctly, and check your own spider to make sure you’re being seen. Also, look at your combined PPC and organic data to find out what is converting and what is not.

Although having a big site or numerous sites might seem like a pain, there are some perks involved. You can create a set of templates and use them multiple times and optimize them accordingly.

Another hint for managing a large site is to make sure your links are specific. Inbound links that only link to your homepage aren’t really benefiting you. For instance, if someone is using your products or services, have them link to that page instead of the homepage. This method will help both the searcher and the company.

Large sites are a bit overwhelming, but just need to be broken down. Everyone simply needs to work together and focus on the end user’s wants and needs.

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Microsoft's Revenge

Microsoft's Revenge
Henry Blodget | November 15, 2008 9:27 AM

Microsoft has been kicked around the block in the Internet business for going on 15 years. Now it is potentially payback time.

While everyone else hunkers down and fights to survive, Microsoft gets to sit back and decide who to buy. When it decides, it can dig into a $20 billion cash pile that will nearly replenish itself this year with $15 billion of free cash flow. No one else, including Google, will gain this much of a relative advantage from the global economic collapse.

(Google, moreover, is now hamstrung by alert regulators--thanks, in part, to Microsoft's lobbying--and is focused on cutting costs and narrowing its ambitions. These should keep it distracted for the next couple of years.)

Who could Microsoft buy? Some obvious names, and many smaller not-so-obvious ones.

But the first thing Microsoft needs to do if it is to succeed long-term in the Internet business is build a central consumer brand that it can hang everything else off of. (Alternatively, it can focus on the back end, via search and other technologies, but this likely won't be as profitable. The vast majority of Google's immense profit comes from searches on its own site, not third-party sites, and the same will hold true for Microsoft).

The big consumer Internet brands other than Google include:

* Yahoo
* AOL
* Facebook
* MSN, et al (Microsoft needs to consolidate ALL its Internet brands into one. This one's probably the most prominent).

Microsoft could probably buy Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook today for $20 billion of cash. It could then consolidate them under a single brand and build a strong alternative for advertisers vis a vis Google. (Vastly easier said than done, but possible.)

If Microsoft isn't willing to put all its weight behind a single brand, it will probably fail regardless of what it buys. This has been Microsoft's Achilles heel for the past 15 years--an unwillingness to commit to one Internet brand and strategy--and we're not optimistic that it will be able to get out of its own way this time either.

We still think the smart play here would be for Microsoft to spin its Internet operations OUT of Microsoft and INTO Yahoo and then build everything around that brand as a separate public company. We think Steve Ballmer is congenitally predisposed against this approach, however, even though it would likely be a great move for Microsoft shareholders (who would own most of the new Yahoo AND the original Microsoft).

But, in any event, as the Valley goes into the fetal position, Microsoft's relative position is growing stronger. And we imagine this is not lost on the folks in Redmond.

Article Marketing Explained

Article Marketing Explained

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