I was inspired to write this post after reading an article in todays Calgary Hearld titled, “Grisly Workplace videos return just before Halloween.” The article deals with a new campaign here in Alberta (Canada) titled ‘Bloody Lucky‘ which contains a strong message about workplace safety, told through a series of dramatic and bloody videos.
The general consensus, including my own, is that these videos are very well tuned to ‘actually’ speak to teens; a demographic which tends to be very hard to reach.
After reading the article I immediately went online to find the videos on the campaign web site bloodylucky.ca, the result of which is the ultimate inspiration for this post – as there was bloody nothing online for this campaign.
Attempt 1:
Very interested in finding the Bloody Lucky videos, and too lazy to type the domain name into the address bar, I quickly Googled the phrase “bloody lucky videos” – the result of which had no relevant content for what I was looking for:
Attempt 2:
Phased but not ready to give up I quickly repeated my search, but this time for the phrase “bloodylucky.ca” – again I met with failure.
At this point in time I was really confused. Here we have a great write up from a major publication on this promising online marketing campaign and I can’t find the site through a simple (or very specific) search. Lets find out why.
Investigation
Finally I broke down and actually typed in the domain name, www.bloodylucky.ca, and just as quickly all my questions were answered.
There isn’t a site there, at least there might as well not be from a search engine strategy point of view. To summarize what is online, there is just an image. There is no title tag, no heading, no copy of any sort. For you developers out there, it doesn’t even have <html> or <body> tags – see for yourself:
To quickly run over the very basics of making a web site accessible to search engines:
- Include a title tag relevant to your content/subject.
- Include a heading and copy relevant to your content/subject.
- Use ALT tags on your image (again relevant to content/subject).
The list could go on, but even if those very basic 3 points are implemented on a web site, you will rank (especially when you have exposure throught the press).
Arguements
One could argue that the campaign doesn’t launch until tomorrow, thus these things were not necessary. At the same time, tomorrow when the campaign kicks into gear, you can’t find the site if you search for it. The only way to actually get to it is:
- Type www.bloodylucky.ca in your address bar
- Go to a web site or article featuring the site, and click through from there.
Either way, this campaign has fallen short and fails users by being hard to find. Especially when you have quotes in the news like, “Alberta’s bloody videos are online primarily because teens are more likely to visit them and share them with friends if they’re on a website and YouTube.”
Conclusions: How To Avoid Poor Campaign Execution
My reason for bringing this to light isn’t just to spout off about the merits of a good search strategy, rather to suggest that a marketing campaign can be that much more successful if marketers considered their users.
Here we have an awesome campaign, a great message, I see no reason that it would not be successful. Yet at the same time you have a teen demographic which is highly advanced online – and you can’t Google the bloody site (pun intended).
Here are some easy tips to avoid this in the future:
- Be Proactive about Search
- Optimize every page for search engines, even landing pages and temporary sites.
- Think about how people search.
- Integrate SEO with your Branding.
Please feel free to post your comments or thoughts, you can also find me on twitter @miketighe.
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