While each company and their audience are different, Red Bull, a leading maker of energy drinks, has plenty to teach Internet marketers. The company’s website does plenty to promote its product, yet does it not so directly but rather by catering to the company’s audience.
Below are five things Internet marketers can learn from Red Bull’s website.
1. Be Where Your Audience Is
Red Bull knows that its audience is largely made up of teenagers and young adults, which are predominantly male. Red Bull does their best to target their consumers through the various features on their website. They pack their site with material that is in line with that audience’s interests so that the pages will be viewed and the company’s message received.
This is perhaps the most important thing that marketers can learn from Red Bull’s website. If you want to attract people’s attention online, don’t be boring. Do more than just talk about the benefits of your product or service. Use visuals, video, and humor where appropriate, to engage and garner the interest of your customers.
2. Engaging Videos
There is nothing like a cool video to capture people’s attention. The more interesting the video, the more likely it will be shared and others will be referred to the original site. Red Bull posts videos that people are likely to want to watch. Sometimes they feature extreme sports, sometimes outrageous ones, and more often than not, they include something funny. Most of this ties in to marketing to the company’s customers.
3. Targeting Young Males
Many of the videos that appear on the Red Bull Website feature things that interest young males, which most companies–especially ones like Red Bull–will include as their biggest demographic. On Red Bull’s home page, you can find information on skateboarding, racecars, and BMXing. These topics have all to do with Red Bull’s target audience and what they are interested in.
Young men are more willing to splurge on not-so-necessary goods and more likely to buy a product like Red Bull. Tailoring the site to a young, male audience further focuses on Red Bull’s client base. The company is doing a good job of being highly visible in places their customers are.
4. Contests and Interactive Content
Customers love to get back from the companies they frequent. It builds loyalty and gets them talking about the business. By including and sponsoring a variety of contests, whether it be build your own flying machine or inspiring a film director, Red Bull manages to find new and innovative ways of making its customers active participants with the company to keep them coming back for more.
5. Lacks Direct Promotion
Perhaps one of the most unique things about Red Bull’s website is how little in-your-face promotion of the product is actually present on the page. The site seems designed more for its entertainment value than to promote the energy drink, and yet there is never any doubt that the content is Red Bull’s.
By posting videos and other material that are likely to interest customers and still relate to the product, Red Bull has created a site that keeps people coming back without making them feel as though they have been hit over the head by heavy advertising.
This guest article was written by Ascent Internet, a St. George, Utah Internet marketing company.You can learn more about their services at www.ascentinternet.com
Creative Commons photo by Adam