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Regardless of what you think of Britney Spears' singing skills,
the pop princess can offer some guidance on how to market
a business through a strong web presence and proven web marketing
strategies.
Let's break down the web marketing practices on www.britneyspears.com
to find out if Britney knows as much about web marketing as
she does about navel rings.
1. Link Popularity - When you're an internationally
famous pop star, getting people to link to your site is as
easy as getting into a hot nightclub. Britney has thousands
of inbound links into her website from news stories, concert
sites, fan sites, her hometown's website, fan's profile pages,
lyric pages, etc. If you don't happen to be a pop star, getting
inbound links to your site involves a bit more work. Try running
reverse lookups on your competitor's sites to find out who
is linking to them. If they're linked somewhere you should
be too, send a quick link request. Yes, it's labor intensive,
but it's an effective way to get your site listed where your
potential clients and customers are hanging out online.
2. Site stickiness - Britney knows that a stale website
makes a pop princess seem soooo 5-minutes ago. To prevent
this, she publishes fresh content on her site on a regular
basis about tours, new albums, videos, appearances, etc. Yes,
this is also labor intensive, but fresh content entices visitors
to bookmark her site. What does it take to keep a site fresh?
A press release, a fresh jobs page, a tip of the day. Be creative,
but do something to keep things fresh. Britney can't keep
touring on "Oops!
I did it Again" and neither can you.
3. Directory Submissions - Britney's fans run searches
online to find her site so she's taken the time to submit
her site to Yahoo!,
Looksmart
(powers MSN.com
results), and the Open
Directory Project (feeds AOL).
Was it worth shelling out $299 each for Yahoo! and Looksmart?
Of course it was for the multi-million dollar enterprise called
Britney Spears. Is it worth it for your business? In almost
every case, the answer is yes. Take a look at the Jupiter
Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings to get a grasp on the
reach of these directories. An effective directory submission
will deliver traffic for keyword related searches beyond your
company name. Consulting with an experienced search engine
optimization to make sure this is done right. If your directory
submissions are done poorly, you'll have as much chance getting
them changes as you will getting Britney to return your phone
calls.
4. Discussion Group Buzz - Are people talking about
your business? Word of mouth is a great way to generate qualified
leads. Customers love getting information from trusted sources
and they trust other customers much more than your biased
opinions of your own company. Britney has buzz. She's mentioned
in over 300,000 posts on groups.google.com,
Yahoo!
Groups has over 1700 groups dedicated to Britney, and
thousands of messages are posted every day on messages.yahoo.com
(not all favorable, but any press is good press, right?).
Do you contribute to any online discussion groups related
to your company's business? It's a cheap and effective way
to build credibility and get in front of your potential clients
and customers.
5. Call to Action on Site - Britney knows visitors
to her site are there for a reason. First, she hits them with
a pop-up window promoting her 2002 tour with the wording "BUY
YOURS HERE" and "AVAILABLE NOW." A call to
action and a sense of urgency bundled into one small window.
While you don't need to use a pop-up window to do this, does
your site guide visitors to buy your products or fill out
a contact form? If not, you're missing an opportunity to capture
a sale or a future sale.
6. Newsletter Subscription - If Britney doesn't entice
you with the pop-up, she'll at least try to get you to subscribe
to her newsletter. "Get the Newsletter" (call to
action) with "SIGN UP" as the wording on the subscribe
button; easy, simple, fast, and effective. Britney wants to
turn a visitor into a fan, and making it easy for visitors
to join her email list is a perfect strategy for building
a online fan base. Can people subscribe to your site? Do you
send a regular email to your site's subscribers? For more
information on why this is important, check out Permission
Marketing by Seth Godin.
What Britney still has to learn:
Britney's hit song "I'm
not a girl, yet not a Woman" is a great metaphor
for her current web marketing accomplishments. She's doing
a lot right, but still has a few things to learn before reaching
web marketing maturity.
1. Page Titles - While Britney sees the value in picking
unique song titles, she overlooked the importance of well
written web page titles. Britney may be able to get away with
this due to her link popularity, but chances are that your
site could benefit from page titles that accurately describe
the content within your pages. Britney's home page title is
"Britneyspears.com." Do people search for that term?
Yes, but it's already the site's address which will be enough
to get the site to come up in most search engines. A better
title (not the best, but better) would be "Britney Spears"
since it receives thirty eight times more searches per month.
Does every page of your site have exactly the same title?
Are you using your domain name as your title? Does all of
your site traffic enter your site through your home page?
Is so, you're missing a lot of easily targeted traffic from
search engines like Google.com.
2. International Site Versions - Britney has become
an international success yet her site is only available in
one language and uses a lot of image embedded text within
the site. Jessica
Simpson offers visitors five international site versions.
Get with it, Brit. Should you consider international or multiple
language versions of your site? For international sites, spend
some time deciding whether it's realistic to expect to sell
your product or service in another country before making the
investment. When considering language versions, in some cases
you can get away with having only an English version of your
site due to the increase in online website
translation services. However, the translation services
cannot translate text that's embedded in images like Britney's
navigation. Be sure to include appropriate keywords and search
phrases in the native languages of your international customers.
3. Pay Per Click Advertising Brand Protection - With
such a well indexed website, Britney can probably skip using
Pay Per Click advertising through Overture ,
Google,
or Findwhat.
But this doesn't mean she should ignore the Pay Per Click
industry. Many companies are making money off her trademarked
name and copyrighted images and the Pay Per Click industry
is profiting by allowing advertisers to promote
their websites for a fee. In order to protect her innocent,
down home image, Britney's peeps should work with the Pay
Per Click industry or hop onto the Body
Solutions lawsuit to shut down this trademark violation.
Are other companies using your trademarks to market their
websites? If so, the first step to take is to contact the
violating companies directly to straighten things out. If
that fails, the Body Solutions lawsuit should offer some guidance
for your next move.
She's So Lucky, She's a Star
According to the footer on her website, Britneyspears.com
is part of the Signatures
Network. Signatures Network appears to have a great sales
staff and a graphic design department, but no one specializing
in Search Engine Optimization on staff. This shows the value
of consulting with a search engine optimization firm in addition
to a web design firm. To be fair to Britney, her web peeps
are doing a lot more things right than wrong, and let's face
it, she'll do just fine either way.
By taking a web marketing lesson or two from the Pop Princess,
maybe your company can become the Britney Spears of your industry.
Ed Kohler is the president and founder of Haystack
In A Needle - a full service web
marketing and search engine positioning firm based in
Minneapolis, MN. Britney does not return Ed's phone calls.
Click here to find out more about Haystack's services and
to request a free quote.
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