Everyone with a television is surely aware of the numerous web sites that allow you to compare insurance quotes online, but recently if you asked people to name just one you'll probably hear the same answer over and over again...
"Compare the meerkat dot com" (in poor Russian accent)
Most of you will have seen the current TV campaign featuring the memorable meerkat "Aleksandr Orlov". He's annoyed at how many people keep visiting his web site comparethemeerkat.com instead of popular insurance site comparethemarket.com.
On comparethemeerkat.com you'll find "meerkat comparing functionality" has been created and a suitable number of links pointing you back to comparethemarket.com have been sprinkled here and there for good measure.
Social Media Marketing
Not satisfied with capturing a TV audience, Aleksandr has begun to hook Facebook and Twitter users by creating convincing accounts on both social networking sites.
On Facebook Aleksandr has managed to gather over 6,000 fans who've added a current total of 41 fan photos and 194 wall posts.
His Twitter page (below) allows followers to ask questions and posts comments which Aleksandr replies to where possible. He currently has 451 followers (people who want to receive his updates) and is becoming more popular daily.
YouTube currently has seven versions of the TV advert, the 'official' version (below - uploaded by Aleksandr himself) has received over 7,000 views.
Reaction and Results
One way of measuring how popular something is on the web is by using Google Blog Search to see how many times it's been mentioned by bloggers. Currently Google knows of 1,673 bloggers who've mentioned the viral site, a hefty number considering the short amount of time the site has been available.
The image below shows the "reach" of each site as measured by Alexa. Alexa uses data from people who use their toolbar 'add on' for their web browser to determine how popular a web site is.
We can see the viral site (in blue) has become more popular than the main site (in red) in just a matter of weeks. More impressively, the increase in popularity of the "meerkat" site has meant that the main site has also seen a huge jump in popularity, no doubt the desired effect of the campaign.
Why not contact Zen Web Solutions to discuss how social media can be a valuable asset when attempting to gain exposure for your brand?