With Halloween fast approaching this coming Saturday, along with it comes the usual wave of last-minute costumers eager to make a cleaver, funny or scary splash on the 31st. “Halloween” is consistently trending on Twitter, and there is an exponential jump in Halloween-related searches, so now is the time for savvy marketers to pull something out of their bags of tricks.
Zeta Marketing Solutions for the Halloween holiday
Top seasonal retailers HalloweenMart and Spirit Halloween have a web-based retail environment in dire need of a refresh.
HalloweenMart suffers from a bland layout, with no notable call-to-action, compounded with oversized images that further distract from the product listings.
Spirit is at the opposite end of the spectrum, having an overwhelming number of category listings, field entries and a harsh color scheme.
Create a revamped website based entirely on a dynamic usability study, whilst conforming to their established brand identity and product lines.
To drive additional traffic, the retailers should create some branded content for distribution directly to customers
A photo-editing suite that “Creeps-out” a portrait you upload, inserting some Halloween-themed images (smoke, bats, pumpkins, etc.) on top of your picture
While costume retailers seem to be fairly active on twitter (smart move) the other important aspect of Halloween (Candy) has gone unrepresented.
Hershey’s, arguably the largest candy brand worldwide, has no active twitter presence. While they do have a corporate profile, there have been no updates at all.
Mars also has failed to create a Twitter profile.
Both brands should take obvious first steps (Create optimized twitter profiles, update constantly, and link to profile on website homepage, etc.)
Tweets should highlight seasonal recipes created solely with their products.
Costumeideazone.com; the first site that appears in organic search results on Google under “Halloween Costume Ideas” should make better usage of their company Twitter account to build brand awareness and drive traffic to their site.
Currently the account has only 13 Tweets and 14 followers
To foster fans’ creativity; Costumeideazone.com should host a Twitter based contest where users submit their most unique, original and creative ideas with the winning costume being furnished by costumezone.com or a partner
The contest will be cross-promoted on the costumeideazone.com where users can submit their entries and ultimately vote on the winning idea
Costumeideazone.com should offer weekly newsletters via email marketing throughout the month of October in anticipation of their highest traffic month
Capture visitor’s email addresses by partnering with a site that actually sells costumes such as halloweenexpress.com to offer discounts and specials
Organizations nationwide, both for-profit and non-profit, have taken it upon themselves to infuse Breast Cancer Awareness into their product and service lines. With companies as traditionally feminine as Estée Lauder and traditionally masculine companies like the NFL all showing their support behind the cause, this creates a unique opportunity for active companies to not just gain some good PR, but to turn increased attention into mutually beneficial arrangements with worthy charities.
Zeta Marketing Solution for Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Companies whose target market is usually male-dominated should utilize this opportunity to target the female audience by developing charitable incentives.
Gamestop could donate 10% of all orders $100 or more to the NBCAM.
Promote this through their existing social media channels (@gamestopcorp), showing daily examples of what you could get for the required $100
Online retailers such as Zappos and Amazon should prominently feature breast cancer awareness products (pink colored) on landing pages and prior to checkout.
Low-cost items such as ribbons, magnets and stationary should be pushed during checkout, as customers will be more likely to purchase these along with larger orders than by themselves.
Offer free shipping on all pink items as further incentive for charitable contributions
NBACM should develop a series of social media-applicable downloads and skins for promoting the cause.
Similar to green overlay developed in support of the recent Iran protest, a series of adaptable pink icons and backgrounds should be distributed so individuals can become actively involved with little cost.
Last week, MediaPost had an interesting piece on how the “It’s not my job” mentality of many agency search specialists is causing wide-ranging client dissatisfaction. They backed up their assertion with some fairly meaty survey data, which helped drive home the point with empirical evidence from the client pool.
As I read through Forrester’s recent Wave Report on listening platforms and think through some of the innovative conversations we’ve been having with clients and colleagues, a simple thought has begun to manifest itself.
It recently occurred to me that just as Google made the inbound link (and anchor text) a valuable commodity - hence the rise of the paid link - Twitter has now made the retweet (a.k.a. “RT”) a valuable commodity as well.
Some folks are apparently unclear on the concept of basic algabraic logic (you can’t compare apples to oranges) especially as it relates to comparisons between social media and email. Maybe this little short will help out.
Every so often, I’ll talk to a company or two that utterly and completely reaffirms my belief that some large companies are still very fuzzy on the true meaning of social media.
Here are some examples that help illustrate this stance…
The stats tell the tale in dramatic fashion. Over 525 print magazines were shut down in 2008 and thus far this year through the first quarter, over 87 magazines have been shuttered. Closed – not because consumers have stopped reading news and feature related material – but because these print vehicles, whether they are newspapers or magazines, failed to make the shift to the digital publishing platform in time.
Besides the costs of paper, printing and postage growing each year, there was also a shift of the behavioral and media consumption profiles of their subscribers from corner newsstand buyers to internet newsstand buyers. The dramatic shift of advertising revenue away from legacy offline channels to the interactive arena all impacted the balance sheets of these hordes of magazines.
How the current generation of College graduates has taken possession of Social Media
After a recent post here on the Zeta blog spoke to the wide sweeping assertions some major news publications and traditional media channels have been making about the rising popularity of online networking channels, it got me to start thinking about my personal role in that rise.
I came to Zeta straight out of college because I was fascinated by the idea of an integrated online marketing agency; all of these seemingly independent fields of online marketing combined into something greater than the sum of its parts. “Cool” was probably the most apposite descriptive term that I would apply to my mindset at the time. However, before my initial interview I was under the impression that I might not have full technical expertise. While in some cases this turned out to be true, I was taken aback by some of the experiential questions being asked of me.
Last week, Reuters published an article entitled Online networking more popular than email. It made the rounds on the various mainstream online media channels, getting picked up by countless outlets including USA Today. That means that over the past few days, millions of people have likely been exposed to this rather wide-ranging assertion.
Sadly, the entire premise of the article is based on a very flawed assumption and a very thin body of research. Rather than misconstrue what I read, I’ll quote verbatim:
