Integrating Offline Marketing With Social Media
Five lessons learned from Radio Shack for integrating your online marketing efforts.
Five lessons learned from Radio Shack for integrating your online marketing efforts.
I’m always intrigued when companies start to integrate their offline advertising campaigns with online marketing efforts like social media, search engine optimization (SEO), and pay per click (PPC) marketing. Companies often miss great opportunities to integrate these channels. Every once in a while a campaign comes along that actually gets things right on one or two channels, but misses some key opportunities to capitalize even more. Such is the case of Radio Shack.
Now wanting to be known as “The Shack,” it has launched a catchy television commercial campaign. It worked well enough for me to be interested to Google what was in the commercial. Unfortunately, though, it wasn’t the products that it sells that caught my attention, but the characters within the commercial – a couple of squirrels. Because the commercial shows these animated squirrels watching a YouTube video, guess what I did? I Googled “squirrel sunglasses,” which is the name of the video shown in the commercials.
The Shack’s team got this right – it’s ranking in first place (on both Web browser and mobile browser) for the term “squirrel sunglasses.” That wouldn’t be that difficult since it’s not really a term people are searching for that often.
Not being privy to the end goal of the strategy that was launched, I would have to guess that one of the goals was to drive people to follow The Shack on Twitter. That’s very clear towards the end of the commercial (and video). The following screenshot shows the ending of the video on Radio Shack’s channel (all of its videos that feature the squirrels end this way) promoting the Twitter account.
Where The Shack missed the opportunity to capitalize even more was in its titles, descriptions, and tags on the videos. The company also missed out on promoting its own website and, in some ways, promoting the products it sells.
People in general still don’t know that “The Shack” is actually Radio Shack, so ensuring they know what website to go to is pretty important here, especially if you were in a situation where you hear the squirrels say “The Shack” and don’t see the video. By adding your URL to your site in the beginning of the description, it gives the viewer something to click on after the video. It could even link to the actual Twitter account as well, if that is the true end goal.
Instead of using tags of what the squirrels are saying, what about using the terms “iPad,” “mobile phone,” “iPhone,” or “Bluetooth headset” – all products featured in the video? That would definitely get the interest of anyone looking for these terms if the video pops up with it.
When I see opportunities like this, I relate it back to audiences as clear opportunities for improving your own efforts. So here are some quick tips to keep in mind when you’re strategizing to integrate your online marketing efforts: