Malibu Boats has a small marketing and PR department. The majority of their online communications involved posting news releases to their Web site and distributing them directly to a house list of journalists and online news outlets. Offline they focused on traditional print advertising. Their efforts resulted in moderate outcomes.
Having successfully launched a company blog as well as several channels in popular social networking sites, Malibu Boats had grown more sophisticated in their online approach. With the impending launch of their new Corvette Limited Edition product, the team was anxious to extend its reach beyond enthusiasts to a larger general audience while also hitting as many media outlets as possible.
Initially drawn to PRWeb’s reputation as the innovative and economical newswire with the furthest consumer reach, Malibu Boats quickly found out that PRWeb’s benefits were far greater.
Release Video Goes Viral, Spiking Site Traffic
With PRWeb’s multimedia releases, Malibu was able to integrate its other online efforts including a YouTube video of the corvette boat, images detailing the different components of the boat, and links to additional content about the boat on social media sites like Flickr and Del.icio.us. The results were dramatic. News of the new Corvette Boat went viral and within weeks was appearing in media outlets, on blogs and reaching thousands of potential customers who were visiting the Malibu Boats Web site to learn more.
Within three days of the first PRWeb release, Web site traffic increased 30 percent with page views up 25 percent. In less than six months, the company netted 30 articles with more in the works. It didn’t stop there – the release went live in December 2007 and as recently as July 2008 they were still receiving sales leads and media inquiries from the news release.
According to Amy Mauzy, public relations manager at Malibu Boats, “As a result of our campaign, we have been featured on just about every automotive related blog as well as classic and performance car sites. We also generated coverage in some of the biggest industry magazines including Popular Mechanics and Hot Rod and created consumer buzz about the Corvette boat that is still going on.”
PRWeb has become a major component of Malibu Boats’ PR and marketing efforts. They are planning to use it for future product releases and also to publicize different events in the future.
According to Mauzy, “Thanks to PRWeb, we are leaving our mark on both mainstream and industry media … our Malibu Boats brand is getting the attention it deserves … and we are quantifying all of it. The true value of PRWeb is in the sales it has helped us generate.”
In some cases, we see clear spikes in traffic after the news release, followed by a direct correlation in increased sales.
