Preface
Small companies with big ideas often have word of mouth to thank for their initial success. The impact that viral communities have has become a standard business model that many online startups try to mirror yet can have difficulty in reproducing. So when Fotolia joined the Connors family in late 2005, we found that their young company had the opportunity to position themselves and tackle the specific niche industry of photography and design but have that same community and marketplace presence. The company had a product with a great idea, but no media exposure with a small community of users and a "chicken or the egg" (buyers versus sellers) conundrum to solve. Fotolia needed to reach outlets to capture new members that would join the community and add content but at the same time attract a population that was interested in buying photos and illustrations.
Challenge
At first glance Fotolia might be seen as just another image provider and the community underneath along with its cutting edge tools could be passed over by casual observers. And while classic stock image sites like Getty and Corbis are well known to creative professionals, Fotolia looked to change the minds of those users by giving photographers another option to expand their portfolios and help them to make money while reducing costs for designers.
Therefore, positioning and messaging was an important first step. Fotolia needed to be perceived as a marketplace with designer and photographer interaction. As a community, it helps photographers improve skills while leveraging the hobby or profession to increase their income while lowering costs for designers. Not only professionals were welcome, but amateurs could contribute their images yet the professional community had to be reassured that all for-sale images were of professional quality. Images that do not meet Fotolia's standards of professional quality are not rejected, but offered to be posted in the websites Free Section, which also allows the image to earn money from the site's unique model of advertising revenue-sharing.
Gaining visibility online was also challenged by the fact that the website was split into separate domains to reach its international audience in America, France, Germany, Spain, and England. And despite the growing community adding daily content, it was being stored in database format which in many cases can be invisible to search engines.
Insight
Connors needed to research the industry, identify direct and indirect competitors, and find industry influencers. We identified key media in the traditional and online outlets including bloggers and highlight what makes Fotolia a player in the photography and design industry, but also what sets them apart from their competition and highlighting their aggressive tools, promotions and outlook on stock photography as a business.
In addition to a viral public relations effort, Connors also proposed aggressive search engine optimization to take advantage of Fotolia's worldwide image database and multi-domain web presence. Using Connors' technical expertise and internally developed SEO tools, we helped guide website development and blog topics to bring in more users to the community than through traditional print and online outreach would alone.
Campaign
Although Connors' focus was the US launch, press releases were also translated for its four European target markets in France, Spain, Germany, and the UK.
Fotolia was launched in November 2005 as an online marketplace where professional, semi-professional and amateur photographers can post and sell their images to graphic designers and other media producers, establishing itself as an alternative to the high-priced, dominant stock photo houses. Subsequently, Fotolia made additional press release announcements highlighting new tools that challenge the industry as well as competitors with aggressive promotions where photographers and designers can make money if they participate in the Fotolia community.
Using Connors' multilingual expertise, benchmark keyword lists were drafted, translated, and tweaked based on ongoing intelligence from our custom tracking system and weekly trending reports. Custom messaging and linking strategies were developed for the homepage, content-heavy areas, and the overall site navigation. Connors also provided counsel on how to turn the massive database and multiple domains from what could be search engine liabilities into assets with compounding benefits.
Results
From day one since launch, Connors has helped the company achieve coverage in a wealth of key media. To start the campaign, Fotolia was featured prominently in key industry publications Photo District News (PDN) and Electronic Publishing. Announcements and placements in ToolBox sections were also picked up by PC Magazine, Metro New York, PhotoScala, AdRants, and Stock Asylum thereby sparking interest in influential blogs like TechCrunch, Clicked (by MSNBC), and Stock Photo Talk. The international industry articles spread rapidly on numerous blogs and online publications garnering quality links that boosted its Alexa ranking well into the world's top 5,000 websites in less than three months.
From a starting point of nearly being invisible on several critical keyword phrases, Fotolia quickly achieved several #1 rankings in multiple languages including "photographer commission" (Google), "achat d'images" (MSN), "bilder verkaufen" (MSN), "fotografias libre de derechos" (Yahoo). Search traffic continues to account for a large percentage of Fotolia's website visitors and have helped to build the community and image database in markets that are simply impossible to reach through traditional public relations, let alone an advertising campaign.
Fotolia memberships have now exceeded 60,000 and the image library is growing on an average of 50,000 per month currently with more than 500,000 available for download in less than three months since its official launch. Fotolia has established a market presence and industry buzz that is continuing to gain positive momentum and creating awareness that stock photography can be inexpensive for designers as well as alternative income for professional and hobbyist photographers alike.
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