February 19, 2007

Walkears - Are Red Ears the New Red Nose?

Last week at SES London, I enjoyed an impromptu lunch with Rebecca Lieb and Rand Fishkin and as any true marketer would - they followed the call to action on the back of their bag of Walkers crisps to the Walkears website. None of us are Brits, but I have been here long enough to know about Red Nose Day. This is the first I'd heard of Red Ears! However, I noticed today that the Walkears (and Walkers) websites have seen their traffic climb pretty dramatically in the past couple of weeks.

The following chart shows the market share of visits to the Walkears, Walkers and Red Nose Day websites.

The market share of UK internet visits to Walkears increased five fold last week and is up nine fold in the past two weeks. Last week, the site ranked #1 in our Community category, which includes websites for community and charitable organisations. Was the increase caused by offline (TV and back of crisp bags) adverts?

Above the line advertising has had a huge impact, but the story is much more interesting than that. 23% of traffic to Walkears last week came from a search engine. Most of that traffic seems to have been driven by above the line advertising, with the terms "walkears", "walkears.com" and "www.walkears.com" accounting for 56% of the site's traffic from search. Most of the top terms sending visits to the site were from brand or navigational searches, likely driven by offline advertising.

However, 13.5% of the site's traffic came from websites in the Net Communities and Chat category and 6.6% from Email Services. This is viral marketing at work. Consumers becoming brand advocates to spread the word of a campaign. MySpace was the #4 source of traffic to Walkears last week, accounting for 4.29%. Bebo was #6 accounting for 3.34%.

Hitwise UK: Top 10 Upstream Websites for Walkears.com, Week to 17th February 2007

I did a search on MySpace to see what the community was saying about Walkears. I came across a number of comments on profile pages about the outtakes on the Walkears website and the form for ordering Red Ears.

I also looked at our lifestyle and demographic data and it seems that lower income families in the North East and Wales are most interested in the latest Red Nose Day accessory.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 05:20 PM

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Comments

Posted by: lichilee at March 1, 2007 01:20 AM

Posted by: james lee danton at March 1, 2007 11:05 PM

Posted by: patrick at March 12, 2007 12:31 AM

Posted by: darry-anne at March 15, 2007 06:22 AM

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