Opportunity Marketing

Anytime a fortuitous opportunity presents itself a company should be ready to jump on its PR bandwagon and reap the rewards of timely attention grabbing marketing.

Though opportunity marketing is difficult to plan for, if it’s part of a company’s culture, opportunities will be discovered, discussed, and readily acted upon.  It’s a good idea to make this type of thinking an integral part of a company’s overall marketing plan.  Thought it’s not necessary to set up an official campaign, an action plan should be in place ready for implementation as opportunities come along.

Good examples of opportunity marketing were illustrated yesterday in a CNET article which reported on the ways YouTube, Google, and a few others took advantage of April Fools Day.

YouTube displayed the contents of their pages upside down; video and site navigation alike. They then wrote a whole page about the different ways you can read upside down content.

Google launched a new brain search feature for mobile that claimed to be able to read your mind.  By indexing the content of your brain they alleged to help you retrieve your memories. Following the instruction, the brain search feature in fact took you to the process for installing Google’s updated mobile search bar. For the record, I followed Google’s instructions because I wanted to see how far Google took the gimmick, not because I believed there was an actually brain search application :)

These and other jokes banked on April Fools Day for some social marketing, viral marketing, and media attention.  The result was increase in website traffic, links, and brand awareness.  Other companies have taken significant events, whether they were positive or not, as an opportunity to react.

Most bloggers are opportunity marketers. In hopes of getting visitors’ attention they will write about what they see, hear, read, or think the moment it happens.

To really take advantage of opportunities, a company needs to be in a ready to react frame of mind.  Having internal or external resources available to execute timely marketing ideas is key.  In the right time and place the attention obtained can be priceless.

Comments

• The Brain Search App is awesome. Google really put in a lot of effort to pull of their prank. The instructional video was a nice touch.

  Comment by Marta — April 3rd, 2009

• Amazing, google is a real prankster, they definately stands out that’s for sure. I just like them for their simplicity, which (I would imagine) is key for any successful interaction with any market.

  Comment by Shameer — April 9th, 2009