Here’s a wicked 45 minute lecture on small business branding during the 2010 CenPhoCamp conference which was held in downtown Phoenix. Kevin Spidel does a great job covering what’s hot and not, as well how do build your small business in these tough times. Everyone here at Linkbuildr has built this company from the ground up and love to share information. This is the kind of lectures I wish I could get out and do, so for now I’ll stick to the awesome people out there doing it large. Kevin Spidel should be a known name to most of you marketers, but if not check out his bio and see the amazing work he’s been involved in.
Brand Building
Tequila Avion + Entourage = Big Brand Linkbait
September 16 | Brand Building | Ryan Clark
I end up watching a few shows here and there in my downtime and always enjoy Entourage for its blatant but workable product plugs. There has been a lot of talk lately about building brand links, and I thought we could dig a little deeper into that using the show. If you’ve been following the latest season, Turtle has been trying to make his next business venture with Tequila Avion. It’s a new luxury brand on the market, and has been a heavy set feature of the entire season. I took a look at the company after watching the final season and learned that it’s still in its infancy which makes it a great case study waiting to happen. Apparently, the owners are friends with show producer Doug Ellin and didn’t have to pay a dime for any marketing…makes you rethink your social networking tactics eh?
Avion Tequila LLC was formed by a group of entrepreneurs and beverage industry professionals with the sole purpose of creating and developing a tequila that defines a new standard of quality and taste. The announcement was made by Ken Austin, Founder and Chairman of Tequila Avion.
A Brand Going Viral
Breaking into the Tequila market won’t be an easy task, but done right the Avion investors should be sitting pretty. Since they’re a company with a virgin backlink profile, and a viral snowball effect that is currently hurtling towards success, I’d keep my eye on them as a shining example. Companies in the position to utilize these types of marketing channels will win big online without having to steer down a blackhat path.
If you have SEOQuake installed, load it up and take a quick look at the natural links obtained from the whole process. If you take a look at Google Blog search you’ll also see tons of sites spreading the good word. So you know that most backlink tools haven’t even caught up with the viral link effect, and I’m quite excited to check back in a month from now to see how the growth is going…so nerdy and sad, I know. No wonder my friends say I need to get out more.
Of course you’ll find this social media savvy company on Twitter and is doing a good job growing the brand from there. While everyone tends to want followed anchor text friendly links these days, they’re not all the rage anymore. URL shortening and social media networks have proven that there is more than one type of link on the block. Do a search at any given minute and you’ll see fans of the show and brand tweeting about where they got the product, that they’re drinking it now and uploading tons of their own media. You really cannot ask for a more when it comes to marketing these days. We’ll see if I’m right, and we’ll put Google Trends on my side as well..just to make me feel better.
Since blogging, social networks and apps you can bet that Avion will be featured on just about every luxury, drink, food and celebrity blog. So how is this going to really make a dent within say, the Google organic results? Well first of all, their brand name has their target keyword in the name. So this means the domain, and on-page SEO will pretty much take care of itself. There will be no need for a company like this to need targeted anchor text links…but don’t get me wrong, those links wouldn’t hurt either. As it currently stands, Tequila Avion isn’t ranking well at all for the keyword Tequila, but it’s really too early to tell. I imagine with the final season of Entourage the company will enjoy enough of a push to obtain a strong enough link profile to rank.
I’ll do my best to make the time to bring you more unique brands taking advantage of what’s going on right now in marketing. I still see so much cheesy, lame and downright terrible marketing efforts taking place these days..it’s sad really. I’ll also do my best to update this post later on, so if you see my slacking don’t hesitate to get in touch with me or send me a menacing tweet.
Read a follow up to their marketing: http://www.linkbuildr.com/tequila-avion-brand-update/
Tagged brands, entourage, Link Building, linkbait, tequila, tequila avion
Resource Furniture Markets Itself
June 8 | Brand Building | Ryan Clark
I can honestly say I`ve never been huge into furniture, not until recently anyway. I recently saw the video posted below, I was blown away…by furniture! Resource Furniture makes some of the neatest, most customizable furniture for the modern era….that I`m aware of anyway. Here in Vancouver we`re all pretty much in condos, so this style of furniture really caught my eye. After realizing I just spent 30 minutes studying a product because of that video, I thought it might make an interesting post.
The company has been around since 2000, but there web presence has only recently started building traction. When you have a product that produces content like that, then you`ve got a winner. It`s actually rare I get to work with a site where the product is unique enough to do the link building(gee I wonder why :). This company only needs to create some ripples before they turn into waves. I would try and remind yourself to check back in on this company in 6 months time to see just what leveraging social media has done for their link profile.
This video below came out recently and since then they have seen some great growth. If you`ve got a cool product coming out keep this in mind, learn how it`s done properly and get to it. Once you get that ball rolling, you`ll only have to focus on building your business, and not spending time marketing your brains out.
Tagged Brand Building, marketing, resource furniture
