A subtle mix of tantalizing facts about the most controversial internet industry displayed provocatively on a semi-naked female body can turn into a traffic whirlwind.
Whilst Youtube and Myspace don’t seem to consider the content of the video NSFW, I have taken the opportunity to mask certain references.
No pictorial content would be looked on as NSFW in most countries I am aware of, but there is certainly some female flesh shown from below the neckline.
It should be noted that this was intended at least in part to be a viral marketing campaign for Good Magazine, but there has been an evident boost in traffic in other directions.
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Front Page on Myspace
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Massive YouTube Hit
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Who Am I? (Personal Branding)
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Vital Statistics
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Billboard
Note: these were from before the video
It is important to place advertising on prime real estate, and in the case of a URL, in a clearly visible location just begging or tempting you to visit.
Traffic Rising To The Occasion
It is important to realise that those aren’t just webmaster visits, so compared to many top seo, marketing or blogging sites, those traffic numbers from Alexa are probably a lot higher.
On a one month chart, all you see is a vertical line.
I am not going to link to the video, if you want to watch it, (for statistics and facts about this particular industry) it is very easy to find.
15 Comments
I saw this one on my Good Magazine feed right away. It’s certainly a good way to drive traffic – I took a look to find out what was on the site ‘mentioned’ with magic marker.
While titilating, the video doesn’t actually show anything objectionable (unless you’re a puritan, that is). It’s just enough to have geeky types salivating, clicking, and Digging…
Now, could this technique be used outside of the skin flick industry?
Does it drive traffic (to either site) that converts?
In the video they didn’t have conversion figures for the sites in question, but I assume some of it must convert.
Lots of Social Media Marketing experts suggest it is possible to linkbait for any industry, and this one in particular isn’t notorious for free links – Yahoo for instance only reports around 40 links to her domain currently.
Interesting post. Thanks for the support today!
Porn is about the hardest thing to link bait. Even with all this branding, people are still scared shitless to link directly to her site in the fear of placing themselves in a bad neighborhood. So this is really traffic bait – but if she manages to get some links out of it, good for her.
I already wrote this comment on another blog, but I thought it could be useful even here if someone is wondering how profitable is that market:
http://familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html
http://www.blazinggrace.org/pornstatistics.htm
http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html
That genre of websites makes the highest income and get the most hits. There was a study on that topic recently.
This is not specific to the industry, but more the power of a URL mentioned in a video that went viral.
Something similar would be possible for other industries, possibly not with quite enough success, or potentially more if it would actually generate links.
I did see one internet marketing blog attribute all this traffic to the video appearing on John Chow’s blog.
I think appearing on Techcrunch, and the listings above might have played a larger role.
Pretty clever.. I guess you could call this MMM (magic marker marketing).
Magic Marker Marketing…. I like that. :)
I guess the challenge is finding a hot and willing participant…well, maybe not to much of a challenge.
$$ talks!
great ideas!
I liked the video. I’m sure Good Magazine would have gotten a lot more traffic if their URL was written on the woman’s body instead of being placed as an afternote.
I was one of those who typed in her URL instead of Good Magazine’s for some reason.. damn masculine reflex. ^-^
Yeah this was easy to get on top of digg, which is mostly made up of 825,000 13 – 15 year olds pubescent boys.
Even the top blogs couldn’t help but posting it up, because then there readers would say – Why didn’t you post it up? Like they’re obliged to.
Magic Marker Marketing indeed!
I thought it was a clever marketing ploy. Maybe it’ll turn into a fad and everyone will go nuts with sharpies, writing their website on their forehead?
You gotta write it on somewhere other than the forehead though…and ya gotta be a pretty female for it to work.
Pure slutty genious w/ the skin billboards. Makes me want to drop my perception of morality in the can and make some scrilly-scratch
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