A Marketing Lesson From Cat Facts
February 21, 2012
Author 
In A bit ago a fun texting prank went popular on Reddit called Cat Facts. It was then reposted enthusiastically, as viral images are, across platforms (the social web doesn’t happen in silos). Future Buzz readers already know how this works.
Here’s the image in case you missed it:
If the 100,000+ votes / comments on the original Reddit thread and hundreds of reposts didn’t give it away, people loved this.
Not just for the trolling aspect. If you read the comments on any of the threads many expressed their desire to receive daily cat facts.
With comments such as:
- I actually would like to have “Cat Facts” sent to my phone.
- Please tell me there is a real cat facts SMS service.
- who in their right mind would want to cancel such a thing?!
So much demand for Cat Facts was generated due to this one image that Google Trends reported the first significant increase in search volume for the phrase cat facts…well, ever:
So imagine you’re the site owner of the domain ranking highly in search for the term cat facts. Undoubtedly you benefit from this demand by receiving significantly increased inbound traffic.
This happened — CatFacts.org started to receive a surge in traffic. Except instead of embracing the free marketing generated by the Cat Facts prank and attempting to convert that awareness into an outcome, the owner responded with the following message in red:
This messaging would, unfortunately, put off someone who was seeking information on opting in to Cat Facts. While sure, many may have been looking to prank friends, plenty of cat fans were also now genuinely interested in receiving updates about cats.
Instead of posting a message saying “sorry, we don’t do this” and ignore the wave of attention generated (which would cause the flood of new visitors to bounce) the site owner could try an approach like: hey, while we’re not responsible for the fun Cat Facts SMS prank, you can still get updates on cats — right from us: enter your email (or other CTA) to get updates from CatFacts.org for free.
Try to match the offer with what the world was now suddenly interested in, then work to continue to grow demand. It could be a whole new channel to monetize for the site owner (who currently is monetizing the site via ads).
If they were truly ambitious, they could go a step further and fulfill the interest in subscribing to mobile cat facts, perhaps even turning it into an app.
The point of this thread isn’t about cat facts or this site in particular, of course. The point is the be opportunistic and flexible to take advantages of the serendipitous opportunities the social web sends your way. Know Your Meme was an entire site built around this concept, to the tune of 20 million pageviews per month (not to mention acquisition by a larger site).
Organic spikes in attention are almost always an opportunity. They shouldn’t be shunned, instead, you should capitalize on them to build equity for the future.
Jason Keath replied | Feb 21, 2012 (2 comments)
brilliant analysis. Love this story. Thanks for the smart lesson from this weird story. As Peter Shankman says “you have to prepare for success just like you plan for failure.” Even if the success is some weird, accidental phone prank turn reddit story turn organic DOS attack on your cat website.
A real enterprising webmaster would have had “INCORRECT, you said your favorite animal is the ” tshirts up for sale ASAP.
Adam Singer replied | Feb 21, 2012 (563 comments)
Glad you enjoyed this Jason — and you’re spot on with the t-shirt idea, would have been so easy to mock something up and take pre-orders while you go and have it created. Always seek to turn fortuitous spikes in attention into conversion, or at the very least funnel it into a community to grow over time. You never just want to be a jump on the radar and then go flat when you can build something of sustainable value.
Lewis LaLanne aka Nerd #2 replied | Feb 25, 2012 (10 comments)
Great Lesson To Be Had!
You can tell these people had a stick up their butt about being perceived as “Marketers”. Most experts are the same way and they’re scared of the term because of the rotten apples in the bunch who give marketing a bad name.
But if they would embrace the idea that marketing is not about getting your name out their but people’s name in here (to you) voluntarily, their whole approach to the market would change.
They’d look at providing a service like cat facts to people who wanted it and providing them with any and all other resources they need also which would lead to them making customers happier and making more money.
Matt replied | Mar 1, 2012 (1 comment)
Great article. Yes the website owner should not have shunned the attention and instead, embarced it. But like you said, its not about Cat Facts, but about taking an opportunity when it arises.
– Socialmediafrontiers.com
Simon Paulenoff replied | Mar 7, 2012 (1 comment)
I remember seeing the original thread on reddit and I thought it was hilarious. I agree with the author in that the site should have taken better advantage of this publicity, and sites in the future would be very wise to learn from this example and take advantage of unexpected chances.
Alex replied | Mar 8, 2012 (1 comment)
Its funny that someone has acknowledged this. I have seen this picture passed via pinterest and around my campus. I can tell you alot more people know about cat facts than before. Carpe Diem Cat Facts! Any opportunity for publicity is a good one.
Erin Monda replied | Mar 9, 2012 (1 comment)
Loved this — and I was the ones that up-voted this on Reddit.
Thanks for giving it a good old market analysis.
Sam Drake replied | Mar 11, 2012 (1 comment)
I know some people that would absolutely love to receive “cat facts”.
That being said, catfacts.org might have just squashed a brilliant idea. I bet if they could create an app for the site, it would become very popular.
Overall, good analysis of their situation. Jason Keath had a good idea for t-shirts for the company.
Good stuff.
Terrence J. White replied | Mar 16, 2012 (1 comment)
there is a similar opportunity with the new app “writesomething” all someone needs to do is get the domain and monetize the site and poof there it is… let’s see who does it