Major brands are beginning to jump on the social networking bandwagon, but it seems like some of them may have missed a couple of steps during the leap. While most brands can benefit from social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, there are other elements of online marketing that companies should be taking advantage of as well.
Let’s use Pizza Hut as an example. The company recently hired a full-time tweeter to manage the social media aspects of the brand. Focusing some energy on social media is fine, but after scratching the surface of Pizza Hut’s Internet marketing campaign, it’s easy to see that they should be spending some more energy on SEO.
As sales continue to drop at Pizza Hut restaurants around the U.S., the company is using social media and value menu promotions to try and get sales back up. These strategies may increase sales a bit, but the company is missing a golden opportunity to increase sales through their Web site. The Pizza Hut Web site allows customers to sign up and order food to be delivered without calling the restaurant directly. If they focused more on SEO, they’d be able to drive more potential customers to their site and get them to order.
Pizza Hut has a respectable ranking for “pizza” on Google as the second result, but they are below Domino’s. It’s when you look into some other pizza keywords that you see Pizza Hut begin to seriously struggle. One of the highest search volume keywords for pizza is “pizza coupons”, which Pizza Hut isn’t on the first page for (although Domino’s is). If Pizza Hut is promoting a value menu, it’d make sense for them to focus on “pizza coupons” as a keyword to get traffic to their site from customers who are looking for good deals on pizza.
Another high-volume keyword Googlers type in is “pizza restaurants.” Common sense suggests that at least some people who type in this term are looking for a pizza place to order from. Unfortunately, Pizza Hut is nowhere to be found on the first page. Papa John’s the first result and Domino’s is in the sponsored links, but Pizza Hut doesn’t show up.
The situation is the same for the term “pizza pasta”, which is searched over 100,000 times a month in the U.S., but doesn’t include Pizza Hut on the front page of Google. This keyword seems like it would be particularly important, because Pizza Hut has been promoting their pasta dishes for some time now. It seems like, if you’re promoting pizza and pasta and “pizza pasta” is a term with a high search volume, it’d be important to rank for it (Domino’s seems to think so, they can at least be found in the sponsored links).
Each of the keywords above seems like it would be be a great opportunity to increase sales for Pizza Hut in the U.S., which is exactly what the company is struggling to do lately. Getting your brand out there with social media is great, but don’t forget about the other ways to gain brand exposure and increase sales with the Internet.
SEO is a powerful tool, and if Pizza Hut wants to increase sales they’ll need to learn that soon. It looks like some of their competitors have already figured that out.
Tags: marketing, pizza hut, SEO, Social media, Twitter
