Written by Fernando Maciá
What do large companies do when they know that an avalanche of users are going to type keywords related to their brand or business into search engines? Are they really taking advantage of this opportunity?
There is ample evidence that web traffic increases significantly when an off-line phenomenon occurs. The most obvious proof of this theory occurred last Sunday, February 5, with the broadcast of the Superbowl.
As is well known, the commercials shown during the halftime of the Superbowl game is the most expensive time slot on American television since it is the time slot where the highest level of viewership in the United States is concentrated. This is one of the most important moments in strategic marketing for companies that advertise in this space.
Google searches after important events
There is a very interesting relationship between the commercials shown during the Superbowl and the keywords used by Internet users in search engines in the days following the broadcast of the soccer game.
For example, the keyword search “cadillac escalade” registered a 75% increase in Yahoo usage after the match. This was due to the fact that one of the superbowl spots was for the “Cadillac” car brand corresponding to its new “Escalade” model.
The keyword “V for Vendetta” registered a 400% increase on Yahoo after the game. The reason: the airing of the trailer for the movie of the same name during the Superbowl commercials.
This is not a new phenomenon, it has been happening year after year. According to repeated research by Internet users, it has been proven that a television commercial seen by a large audience results in an exponential increase of web traffic in search engines with keywords directly related to the product or business promoted in the commercial.
How to take advantage of these searches to get traffic to our website
Knowing this golden rule, the Internet marketing strategy is easy to formulate: We must have our web page in the first positions of the search engines and additionally we must have our web site in the best conditions to convert that pack of visitors into profitable clients.
But the reality is different. On the one hand we have companies that took advantage of this opportunity very well and on the other hand we have companies that did not take into account web traffic as a channel to reach customers.
The group that did take advantage of this opportunity purchased sponsored ads on the major search engines for an extensive list of related keywords, in addition to the typical promotion of placing the web address of their site at the end of the spot.
Among the group of winners, it is worth highlighting the great strategy of Burger King and Honda who bought sponsored links in search engines for the keywords “Burger King Super Bowl” and “Honda Super Bowl” respectively.
In the group of losers or those who did NOT know how to take advantage of the avalanche of web traffic from the Superbowl, Disney stands out, which with the trailer of the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean 2” had to be satisfied with seeing how other unofficial pages of the movie captured the traffic originated from the keyword “pirates of the caribbean” in the search engines. The search engine positioning of Disney’s website was much lower than that of its competitors and to top it off, the commercial for this movie did not indicate the official website address.
Choose your strategy wisely
All the companies that invested in TV advertising at the Superbowl have big budgets, but that doesn’t mean they all have the same business acumen to take advantage of clear opportunities like the ones outlined in this article. You just have to be attentive to identify where off-line actions generate on-line opportunities and invest a little imagination and common sense.
