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I followed a retweet to Dan Zarella’s site – he is “The Social Media Scientist”.

Given my background as a SEO and with a Social Media degree, its definitely a site I would have a look around on and see if the content was worth further following or follow Dan on Twitter.

Aggressive pop ups

I was immediately struck by the aggressive pop ups to sign up for something or other. I closed it and went to a second page – pop up again. I closed it and went to a third page – pop up again.

Normally I would have been annoyed and left that site and never come back. But I decided to ask Dan on Twitter about maybe using a different approach.

Now of course I know that numerically those goddamn pop ups give more sign ups. If you use your email list to make your money, that is a very important channel for you to maximise

The conversation was something like this:
@danzarella if i close your website pop up but still navigate your site, it means I am undecided about you content. Spamming it won’t help

@firstconversion It goes away after a few views.

@danzarrella I see now, mighty annoying, must shoot up your exits something fierce ^^ How about goes away after 1 but comes back after 5?

@firstconversion no, it actually slightly reduced bounce rates and skyrocketed subscriptions.

@danzarrella Certainly people like me may be interested enough to subscribe after a bit of info, would be turned off by the aggressiveness

@firstconversion the net effect in the end was positive

@danzarrella I know it improves your numbers, but I think may lose you a certain quality of follower as well

How do you assign a value to a follower? Only short term?

What I was trying to suggest via the stunted medium of Twitter, was that he may be harvesting low value signups via that form; people don’t know enough about his work to make an informed decision to follow him. He may be losing higher value signups by the constant harassment of the form, where more savvy people just close the site

Test Pop up cadence

What I wanted to suggest he test; after people close the first pop up, you wait for them to navigate 2 or 3 more pages, getting a good feel for your work, before popping up the signup box again

If I have more time to understand what you do, I am more likely to willingly and happily sign up, instead of ignorantly being badgered into it

I have no doubt Dan gets more signups with pop ups than without and he strikes me as the type of guy who knows how much each of his signups is worth to him in $. But not every follower can or should be measured in short term numbers or $

I just suggest a trial with a different cadence of pop ups to try catch the engaged types without annoying them

I’m thrilled to be joining the SEOgadget team

I saw the ad for www.warrenevans.com on the tube this morning. They make beds.

Their tag line was: love making beds

I thought this was cute, funny, practically descriptive of what they did and memorable. A super tagline in my book.

Marketing can be all about fashions and fads, and knowing which ones to follow and which ones to leave well alone will ultimately decide the extent to which a brand will be successful. Moving with the times is crucial for any brand no matter how big or small the company.

There have been some high profile viral casualties over the years where the biggest players have pitched viral wrong.

Marks and Spencer, the leading UK retailer was one such victim in 2001, where their failure to market the right product to the right customer led to plummeting sales.

So in constantly changing times, how do you balance marketing an established brand with keeping up with the times and creating a feeling of vibrancy around your company?

The current marketing fashion is centred around creating an online viral hit, and if your target market is aimed at 18-30 year olds the pressure is on to go digital in order to keep up with your audience.

The question is if you represent an established brand, how do you reinvent yourself to take advantage of the growing trend for social media marketing? Let’s take a look at the exploits of three companies that have successfully moulded themselves into the digital age.

Gillette

With their established image and world famous tag line, “the best a man can get”, Gillette have built themselves into one of the world’s most recognisable brands. Over the years their adverts have featured global superstars in the likes of Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, but recently they tried their hand at social marketing and did it with an uncharacteristic sense of humour.

They developed a spoof YouTube ad for their “80 blade razor” which humorously challenged critics of the ever growing collection of blades that appear on their product. The ad linked to their Facebook page which promoted their real latest razor and showed how with a touch of imagination, you can successfully use your established brand and the perceptions around it to create an entertaining viral hit.

Pizza Hut

This is another company that have recently broken from their established brand image to keep up with their audience. Pizza Hut teamed up with Channel 4 to launch a series of exclusive adverts for their delivery service on digital channel E4. In this way, Pizza Hut could break with their “family friendly” image and appeal more to the 18-34 year old market for takeaway pizza.

Although not an online strategy, this is a good example of brands that are breaking from their established image to fit in to the digital age in order to appeal to a new audience.

Foster’s

Foster’s had things easy when the digital age came along. Their recent campaign, featuring their chirpy Aussie duo Brad and Dan, pulls together all of their “no worries” brand image and gives it a natural home across all media. Their characters have over 20,000 Facebook fans, have their own Twitter feed and are an example of how the right brand can transfer naturally across both social media and TV advertising. This is a perfect example of how you can roll a brand out online and keep hold of your existing identity without having to make any changes to appeal to your target audience.

So what can you take away from this and employ in your own digital strategy?

The key thing to remember is that so long as you have a product that will appeal to social network users, you have the ability to create a social hit. In the case of Gillette, where they successfully overhauled their established image to appeal to the online market, they tool a product that many would think wouldn’t be interesting on the internet and made it into a viral success.

No matter what you sell and no matter how established your brand image is, you have the ability to come up with a successful viral hit. Make fun of yourself, use the internet as an opportunity to create a newer, fresher brand image and most importantly, create something that your target audience will engage with and share with their friends. This doesn’t mean overhauling your existing brand, simply developing it for the new digital age.

This is a guest post by Alan Grainger:

Alan Grainger is an in-house B2B web marketer and manages the SEO for The Corporate Gifts Company, a leading UK specialist in the business gifts sector. He writes articles exploring the issues faced by the B2B web marketer, giving an “in the trenches” view from an in-house SEO department.

References:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1071483/fosters-seeks-digital-consistency-push/

http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1055447/pizza-hut-delivery-launches-spoof-ad-exclusively-channel-4

http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1050447/Gillette-mocks-itself-spoof-ad

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2725809/Trouble-deepens-as-Marks-and-Spencer-sales-decline.html