Sunday, February 24, 2008

Are Webisodes Just for B2C? Who Hired Bob?

Kraft has an interesting new microsite that follows the life of Bob at his workplace and his quest to replace the existing coffee machine with a Kraft Tassimo. Bob is one of those crazy co-workers that has a few screws loose. In fact, you could probably open a Home Depot with the trail of hardware he leaves. However, as someone that has seen like 20 different coffee machines at work over a span of three years that all produce putrid coffee that makes me run to the local Tim Horton's (Dunkin Donuts for the Southern Folk and I go for Starbucks when I'm working around the clock and need something superhuman to keep my eyes open - what is in the bold coffee? Probably something that Nasa found on mars), I can sympathize with Bob. You can check it out at www.whohiredbob.com. Here is a clip I found on Youtube.



While I think the webisodes are funny and entertaining, will it bring Kraft the desired effect of getting businesses to use Tassimos in the workplace rather then just at home? Possibly. I watched the first video and I got bored fairly quickly. There was little mention of Tassimo and what it can do until well into the video. What I did like was the contest that was encouraging web visitors to submit stories about their own Bobs to win a prize. We'll see if this site brings about the desired objectives but I think it's a step in the right direction on how to use video and user generated content (of course the fact that I'm blogging about this probably helps. You can thank me later Kraft).

Using Paid Search to Enhance the Campaign

I would use a tool like WordTracker to see which terms are searched on the most in search engines like Google and Microsoft but Tassimo may want to consider creating sponsored ads on Google for Keywords (have you checked out www.google.com/trends? it rocks!). I checked out SpyFu which tells you which keywords your competitors are bidding on. They don't seem to have any Google AdWords that are specific to this campaign. Here are some examples of keywords for Kraft to consider if they go this route:
  • Tassimo
  • Crazy co-workers
  • Coffee in the workplace
  • Bad coffee at work
  • Who hired bob
  • Don't you hate when someone drinks the last cup of coffee at work and doesn't make another pot? Don't you want to find that person and hunt them down?
Ok, that last one may be a bit extreme but it may also be part of the long tail of search. Some additional ideas may include advertising on The Office's (TV show) official website.

Webisodes and B2B Companies

The budget for this Tassimo campaign is probably out of the reach for most companies and is most likely only doable on the B2C side. However, B2B companies are creating entertaining videos to draw attention to their product and services. Here are a few samples (click on these - they're great!):
Well, I hope you enjoyed these. Let me know if you're company has done anything similar or if you're planning to.


Chad H.
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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Anything Goes Marketing is Attracting Attention

Although I`ve slowed down my blogging (too many things going on and I have a new project brewing - more details soon) I`m getting some attention from around the marketing universe.

Bulldog Solutions has quoted me recently on their BullBlog from my post on using video with email: ``Anticipating concerns about the complexity of video, blogger Chad Horenfeldt of Eloqua notes, "If a three-year-oldcan play Guitar Hero and have it posted to YouTube, your marketing team can handle this." Thanks Bulldog! You even spelled my last name right (it doesn`t happen very often).

I also just found out that my post on Google Customized search was selected as one of BtoB Magazine’s Blog Posts of the Week. Thanks BtoB Magazine!

I will write more soon but I thought this post may inspire other bloggers out there to keep writing as your posts do get noticed. I would be interested to hear from Bulldog and B2B Magazine how they found these articles. I suspect it was through searching or via a customized RSS feed. In any case, people are listening out there and blog content is like a search engine magnet or a web traffic firecracker.

Chad H.

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Thursday, February 07, 2008

Give web visitors the resources they need - Customized Google

Raise your hand if you answer yes to all of the following questions:
  • My company has a website
  • We have great resources on our website
  • Some of these resources help our customers and prospects learn more about what we do and affect the buying process
  • It's difficult to find these resources on our site
Your hand raised? I've got a fairly simple solution. If you're on my blog (that's directed to my RSS reader friends), you'll notice a shiny new Google search box at the top of the site. This is an example of AJAX (new technology that doesn't require the browser to reload). Try it out! Search for anything you want (here's a good one: "Google Rocks"). Notice how the search results appear as a layer over the current page - isn't that cool? What I like about this is that you don't need to worry about the design of the search results pages and you get the power and authority of Google on your site. In addition, with this Web 2.0 technology, you never leave the page you are on so it's a better web experience.

The best news is that it's easy to implement Google Custom Search Engine and it's FREE. Here's what you do:
  • Go to: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
  • Click on "Create a custom search engine"
  • Fill out the form fields on the next page (add in any number of sites you may want to index)
  • Within the search results hosting option section, select the new "overlay" option. The drawback for bloggers is that you can't get Adsense but hey, if I was blogging for the money I would have quit long ago.
  • Copy the code and paste it on your site
  • You can customize this but I really didn't do any customization and it looks fine.
There is also a business upgrade for $100 a year. I've set this search engine up for a non-profit site (because I make tons off this blog - heavy sarcasm) which means that no ads will appear in the search results. Businesses will probably want to purchase the business edition as you'll not want ads on your internal search engine (could be competitors). I think it may be the best $100 your company has spent. If you don't have a site search, you're missing out on an opportunity to help web visitors to find information on your web site and better leverage your web and overall marketing investments. The easier it is to find the right information, the better chance at conversions and eventually closed deals. I haven't tested this out but you can probably use Google Analytics to track what people are searching on and additional data. If you have an enterprise site, you may want to look at some of the more feature heavy tools out there like Inquira.

Let me know if you have questions or tried it out.

Chad H

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