Be Ready Online for What's Happening Offline (Part 2 of 10)

I think this is really one of the keys to successful online marketing. You can't always affect what's driving traffic to your site but you can control how your site responds.

One of Google Jim's examples on this point showed a Google Trends chart for "lead in toys". The search traffic spiked, literally going from nothing to significant volume in July/August of this year. This coincides with an earlier post on the MediaHatch, where I reviewed Fisher-Price's initial response to their massive toy recall. Basically Fisher Price's website was not ready to address the questions/concerns in the early days after the recall was announced. However, I do have to give FP kudos on their new "safety" section that includes a multi-media response.

Another great example Jim used was highlighting Google's Hot Trends for August 2nd. Hot Trends is where Google shows you the search terms gaining in volume/popularity. On August 2nd keywords in this section included phrases like "Pretty Woman Lyrics" "We Got the Beat Lyrics" or "Just Once Lyrics". Can you guess what summer hit was on the night before? The Singing Bee, and NBC sure was prepared. NBC's Singing Bee section includes video clips of previous episodes, the ability to buy music from NBCUniversalStore.com and a polling feature for visitors to vote on something related to the most recent show.