Feb 23, 2010 - Comments: 0

Case Study: Snowmageddon + Social Media = Sales

Posted by Heidi Strom Moon under CDG Culture , Interactive Marketing , Social Media

Snowpocalypse WordStream recently wrote a great case study detailing a link bait campaign they created and launched that used a hot news topic as a peg to drive interest--and ultimately an inbound link from the New York Times.

While we can't claim attention from the New York Times, we were also recently able to capitalize on a buzzworthy topic--DC's recent back-to-back Snowmaggeddon storms--to drive interest and sales.

Here's how it happened, and what worked.

While much of the city was snowed in at home, CDG Interactive was open for business. Most of us telecommuted, but Creative Director Matthew Snyder was in the city and in the office.

Meanwhile, Art Director Jeff Walter riffed on the Snowpocalypse theme of the storms by creating designs and posting them online. When President Obama used the word "snowmageddon" to describe the weather, Jeff made a version for that, too.

The two creatives quickly realized they had great designs for T-shirts, not to mention a fantastic opportunity to test different marketing channels to promote their creations.

They uploaded the designs to a Zazzle store, then began driving initial traffic. Matthew used Google to search for blog mentions of the storm and related topics, like traffic and Metro information, then left comments that included inbound links to the store. Jeff posted links on Facebook and Twitter.

Once that seeding was established, Matthew sent out a press release via PR Newswire for additional link and SEO benefit, keeping the store in Google results.

Finally, to maintain the traffic momentum, he set up a small buy on Google AdWords, targeting words related to the storm, such as "Snowmageddon" and "Snowpocalypse."

The result? An effort of 3-4 hours of time and less than $200 of expense ($80 for the press release, $100 in AdWords) yielded sales of over 250 shirts. And valuable data on the timing and use of PR, advertising and marketing channels to drive traffic and revenue.

Your Turn

  • Have you capitalized on a buzzworthy topic or event to drive interest to your site?
  • What worked for you?
  • What didn't?

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