links from traditional media

Posted by on January 27, 2009 in geeky stuff | 0 comments

There’s a growing problem for campaigns across mixed forms of media, how do you link back to your internet page/site from a TV, radio or print advert?  Friendly, memorable URL’s are becoming scarcer as the internet gold rush means that most are already taken (even if not in use).

Some campaigns get it very right, using memorable URL’s for a campaign: how could you forget “Compare the meerkats”?

Others go for a subdirectory like “example.com/offer09” – not bad, but harder to remember and more likely people type it incorrectly, although they’d still end up on your site, its harder to track which visitors were arriving as a result of which elements of the campaign.

Recently there’s been a trend towards “search for:” for example the new “Search for: Change 4 Life“.

Are these a good idea? Well there are a few points to consider:

It allows your competitors to sponsor the exact phrase you are paying to advertise – see the PPC ads now listed against the pharse above.

Other entries could overtake your own as the number 1 ranked spot, a blog entry discussing the campaign is already in 4th place.

It IS more memorable, the campaign can be built around a pharse, which you’ve heavily SEO to appear.

Radio ads don’t need to clarify spelling “Connections, with an x” – great for remembering it, but uses up valuable Ad time.

For some campaings, a variation on this kind of advertising is “Search Facebook for:” and then using the group/fan page name as the phrase – that will avoid PPC targetting and it would be easier to complain to Facebook about rivals targetting a specific phrase, but parody groups/pages could easily rank next to your result.

Certain products are experimenting with 2D barcodes, too techy for most, although good if you’re targetting the geek niche I guess.

What are your preffered ways to spread the URL love? Did I miss any?

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