A Hitwise senior research analyst shows how the CPG icon drove a large traffic increase using an integrated campaign.
Recent trends show that many advertisers, including packaged goods companies, have been devoting larger portions of their ad budgets to online advertising and marketing. We know that the internet is the perfect forum in which to engage consumers with a brand and communicate a consistent message. But figuring out how to consistently engage consumers and inspire product loyalty is a never-ending challenge among low-consideration household products like laundry detergents and cleaning products.
Tide, the leading laundry detergent brand owned by Procter & Gamble, has over 40 percent share of the laundry detergent market. The company spends millions of marketing dollars per year to maintain that market share, and in the past year has added some innovative online marketing strategies to its toolbox.
The official Tide website ranked as the twelfth most popular site by market share of visits in the Hitwise "Lifestyle -- House and Garden" category in October 2005. A year earlier, in October 2004, it was ranked at number 20. No other laundry detergent brand's website, including Cheer, Wisk and Gain, has a significant web presence in terms of market share of visits. In the past year, Tide.com's market share of internet visits has increased by 64 percent. Why would so many more people be interested in visiting a site about laundry detergent?
Tide's innovation in this space became evident in January 2005 with the launch of a viral marketing campaign for Tide Coldwater, a product that allows users to save money on energy costs by washing clothing in cold water. The viral campaign allowed users to register to receive a sample of the product, calculate how much money they could save by using it, and send an email about it to their friends. They could then watch the progression of their emails proceed around a map of the United States as more addresses were collected. According to Hitwise, visits to Tide.com increased by an astounding 904 percent in just one week and the average session time spent on the website increased from less than four minutes to over nine minutes that same week. We know that the campaign was viral because 56 percent of visits to Tide.com originated at internet email services like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, up from 1.3 percent before the launch. 
In launching Tide Coldwater, Tide.com gained a huge database of registered users who could opt-in to receive future email newsletters from Tide. Email appears to be the primary method that Tide.com uses to drive visitors to its site. The subsequent spikes in market share of visits shown on the chart coincide with increases in visits from internet email services: during the peak weeks, Hitwise Clickstream data showed between 20 and 50 percent of Tide.com's upstream visits originated at internet email sites. Clearly, users are engaged with the content of the emails and were motivated to click through to the site.
Since February, the average weekly increase in market share of visits to Tide.com after an email blast was 278 percent. Tide.com has become the Tide Fabric Care Network, and the site contains product information, an interactive "Stain Detective" feature, articles, a message board, and a list of current promotions and special offers. Hitwise Search Intelligence data for the four weeks ending November 12, 2005 showed that Tide.com showed up in search engine results for queries like "laundry stains" and "yellow under arms." This demonstrates that search-friendly content in the form of articles and message boards allows Tide.com to show up in search engine results for laundry related queries, creating ownership of the fabric care space.
Procter & Gamble knows it needs more than product promotions and relevant site content to keep Tide engaged with its users, and recently introduced an instant stain removal stick called Tide To Go. It was featured on "The Apprentice" with Martha Stewart on November 3, 2005 and Hitwise data showed that search terms related to Tide To Go became the leading terms driving visits to Tide.com in the following weeks.
Studying how other companies not only drive traffic to their site but how they use the web to market new products and connect with their consumers is necessary for marketers in order to develop their own successful campaigns. The use of competitive intelligence tools allows online marketers to glean deeper insights about how other companies are driving site traffic and how well it's working for them. What is most impressive about Tide's online efforts is that Tide.com has become THE site for fabric care issues, and users can find the answers to practically any laundry question.
In summary, here are a few things we can learn from Tide's online efforts through this analysis using competitive intelligence tools:
- Understand how your site ranks in your category and in relation to your competitors, and leverage brand strengths to create ownership of your specific niche
- In order to collect email and mailing addresses, offer something of value to the user, such as free samples
- Turn the registration process into a viral campaign by making it interactive
- Using a calculator feature, demonstrate to consumers how they can save money
- Encourage interaction through online message boards and testimonial contests
- Make sure site content is regularly updated and search-friendly
- Tie search term acquisition to promotions and offline media investments, and measure increases in traffic from search
About Hitwise:
Hitwise is the world's leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories. By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites. Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation. Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.
LeeAnn Prescott is senior research analyst, Hitwise. Read full bio.