“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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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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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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