In the wake of Charlie Sheen’s recent shenanigans, companies with smart marketing people are jumping on the chance to capitalize on the buzz. In case you missed it, Sheen’s been quite busy the last couple of weeks. He’s ranted his way through several interviews, been fired from his hit TV show Two and Half Men, and even set a new Guinness World Record for Twitter for the “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers”. Oh, and who can forget his totally winning Ustream channel.

Sheen’s created quite a buzz recently and companies are cashing in, check out how these four companies have capitalized on Sheen’s buzz.

Poster Revolution

Poster revolution quickly grabbed a promoted tweet on the hashtag #tigerblood and #planbetter which started trending quickly after the ABC interview which aired the evening of March 1st and has been going strong ever since.

Why #tigerblood? Well that was one of the references Charlie Sheen has used during his recent interviews. Poster Revolution seized this opportunity and purchased a promoted tweet on the hastag and has been running this tweet on the stream to sell their Winning poster of Sheen.

At the time of this screen shot, the proted tweet has already received 825 retweets. I betcha they’ve sold a couple posters with this move. Pretty smart move I’d say.

Ford Vs. Iffinity

Car makers Ford and Iffinity have also jumped at purchasing promoted tweets on Charlie Sheen related hashtags. They’ve chosen to run on #Winning and you can now catch promoted tweets like this one from Infinity at the top of the stream for #Winning.

Infinity has chosen to tie the hash tag to a current promotional giveaway for a trip the NCAA Final Four. I’m sure they’re promotion has caught a bit more attention using these promoted tweets and surfing the Sheen wave then they would otherwise. Great job Infinity!

Spirit Airlines

Another interesting campaign that caught my eye is from Spirit Airlines. These guys have tied the Charlie Sheen phenomenon to a sale on airfare. They’ve dubbed it the “Living The Dream Sale” and are using tag lines like “Winning Fares”, and “Tiger Blood Not Required.

All of these companies are seizing the opportunity to jump into a conversation sparked by something totally un-related to their business. They’ve jumped outside the box and found a way to capitalize on a high volume conversation that’s already been ignited.

Don’t be afraid to try something different in your marketing mix, you can even celebrate your success with a Charlie Sheen cookie or a Charlie Dog topped with #tigerblood.

Did anyone notice that you can specify a service area in your Google Places Listing? Google Maps began rolling out this feature in late March with little publicity. This is quite a feature for businesses that want to publicize the different locations they serve; a great feature for businesses that will come to a home or for businesses that are actually based out of a home.  Service areas listings give access to areas on the map where you may not have a physical address.  For example, your business address may be in Tempe, Arizona, but in reality you can service any location within the Phoenix metro area.

Anyone can change their business service area by logging into their Google Places account and editing your business listing.  Look for the section labeled “Service Areas and Location Settings”.   Below we are using an example from a WebShare client that sells custom doors and windows in the Orange County area.  As you can see, you can choose between specifying a radial distance from your location or simply listing the locations you want to show that you serve.  If you have multiple business locations, be sure to edit all of them.

Distance from one location view:

List of areas served view:

Below you can see an example of what a listing will look like in Google Maps.  This client has four showroom locations but obviously they install door and windows anywhere within Orange County. Now customers can clearly see what areas Renaissance services if they are shopping for a door and window contractor.

It appears that the search market is alive and well. ComScore released the findings from their report showing the worldwide search activity in August of 2007. Google is still the worldwide leader with over 60% of the market share. It is interesting to note that Youtube searches (5 billion) account for a little over 13% of all Google searches. Yahoo comes in at a distant second while Chinese search engine, Baidu comes in third place. Microsoft continues to hold a minor presence in the search market in fourth place.

We should note that this data does not include searches conducted on public computers or mobile devices. This would indicate that there are actually even more people performing searches on the internet. As mobile device and wireless technologies continue to become more prevalent, the number of searches performed will continue to grow. A couple of interesting notes include the fact that the Asia-Pacific market has the highest search volume of all regions, while the Latin America region having the smallest internet population has the most searches per searcher. If these markets continue to grow at their current rates, they could open some great international search marketing opportunities.

To put this all in perspective, let’s take a look at the average number of searches in a little shorter time period. Breaking down the number of worldwide searches conducted in August of 2007, you can see that the average number of searches performed worldwide on a daily basis is nearly 2 billion! That’s over 22,000 searches conducted per second, which presents a whole lot of marketing opportunity!

With an audience that size the question isn’t, “Why would I start a search marketing campaign?” It’s “Why wouldn’t I start a search marketing campaign?” WebShare is a Google Website Optimizer and Analytics Authorized Consultancy as well as a Google Adwords Qualified Company. We offer a variety of services including search engine optimization and search and conversion marketing to help you make the most of your search marketing efforts, and get an edge on your competitors.

This week we’ve rolled out a new service in response to the overwhelming need we’ve seen recently for a solid email marketing solution that allows for easy management, conversion testing, and perhaps most importantly, industry leading deliverability.

Frustrations with the management and legal aspects of opt-in list management are commonplace these days, and being able to perform A/B/N split testing or even

multivariate testing on your email blasts is becoming a necessity in the online marketing world. And once the mails are sent, keeping your email broadcasts out of the SPAM filters has become a problem that requires an entire department to manage.

We’re proud to offer our clients access to a system that can address all of these concerns and more – and has been helping businesses for more than 6 years and boasts over 10,000 users around the world. Depending upon your level of expertise or customization, we offer services from complete self-service email marketing to advanced services such as statistical experiment design and analysis of individual email broadcasts.

If you’re already doing email marketing, then you know that mailing lists, newsletters, email blasts, and customer communications can mean a big boost to your website’s ROI, and using professional hosting can help you make sure that you’re getting the most out of these efforts.

If you haven’t yet explored the powerful tool of email marketing, then what are you waiting for? You could be reaching your customer base and tapping into a fantastic

source of traffic and conversions for just pennies per email!

Find out more about WebShare’s email marketing solutions here and contact us when you’re ready to take your email marketing efforts to the next level.

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