Marketing Opportunity with RSS

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:28:50 GMT

Lately we have seen RSS feeds popping up everywhere. Though it is generally used to distribute syndicated news headlines, blog summaries, and company updates, there is a fast-growing trend for companies to use RSS feed as an effective online marketing tool as well. Let's take a look at some of the RSS marketing strategies that may be worthy to be your own:

1. First off, what is RSS?

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a technical format that allows online publishers to share and distribute their content to other websites or individual Internet users. More importantly, it allows RSS feed readers to subscribe to web content that they find relevant and get the updated new content they are interested in.

2. So how can we maximize online marketing opportunity using RSS?

Customer Relations and branding

Millions of internet users worldwide subscribe to RSS feeds in the categories of their interests. More and more companies are using the tool to reach out to their customers and strengthen their branding and product visibility through informative or entertaining RSS articles. Take Purina for example. The pet food company packs its branded RSS feed with enticing pet care tips, advices and real-life stories. These articles are useful, entertaining, and relevant to the targeted feed readers in the pet care category (in other words, perfect future Purina customers) , at the same time, they also allow the company to seamlessly weave in critical marketing messages of its brand and products...all at a cost of ZERO advertising buck. Readers follow the advice posted by Purina. It works! A relationship between the reader and the brand is built: Purina is trustworthy..and therefore the Purina products are trustworthy..and therefore good enough for my beloved Put Put.

It's simply marketing at its best. Check out the Purina Dog and Cat Updates

Instead of just the standard news section in html, why not publish your news and press releases in RSS? It's just one more valuable venue for you to increase visibility of your company and attract traffic back to your site.

Coupon Feed

Other companies have begun to offer coupons and promotions via RSS. This may be beneficial if your company has a long-term promotion program that offers special discounts, say every month or every season. Readers can subscribe to your promotion feed to receive these scheduled discounts. You drive up customer retention rate and through RSS feed, your promotion program has the potential to reach a lot more new customer base out there in the world wide web than your traditional email-list may afford.

Deal and product Feeds

Product-oriented companies, especially e-commerce shops, can take the advantage of RSS to promote their new products, product updates, and special offers. You can even separate the products by categories, so your readers will only get the specific product feeds they are interested in. Through the click of the Buy botton, customers can purchase the featured product items directly from the RSS feed without ever having to visit your site.

Check out this rss feed example from the e-tailer giant, Amazon.com

A combination of feed strategies

And the best part of it is you don't have to stick to just one feed! You can use a number of different feeds at the same time to achieve a combination or all of these marketing strategies.

3. Let's get started

With RSS feed the sky is the limit. Contact us to find out how you can incorporate these RSS marketing strategies on your site.

Innerchimp Creatives - exploring all angles of traditional and online marketing

Marketing Opportunity with RSS

1. First off, what is RSS?

2. So how can we maximize online marketing opportunity using RSS?

3. Let's get started