The Landwind Race

Once and a while affiliates who operate through organic search rather than just paid search are thrown a golden opportunity. They had one today. Brand Republic is reporting that Landwind is looking for an European agency. They've got £50,000,000 to spend.

Never heard of Landwind? They own the MG sports car brand these days. Landwind are one of the large Chinese car manufacturers. They're one of the many big Chinese companies which are eying up Europe. Landwind want to begin by capturing 1% of the car market in Europe (which would mean they need to sell about 15,000 cars).

I quickly checked to see what the European domain name oppertunties for Landwind are. The best ones are gone. I didn't investigate to see who owns what but it does look like www.landwind.co.uk is up for speculation.

A Google search today suggests there are about 1,600,000 results for the phrase [landwind]. There are no paid search ads.

We all know that that's going to change. This is the time where pages optimised for [landwind] can begin to claw that all important "conceptual market share" by being the first to talk about Landwind and cars on the same page. Right now this blog post has more history in Google for being about "Landwind cars" than most other English language pages. If you're a car/automotive affiliate then this is a golden chance for you.

There are other terms to consider; X-Pedition is the name of their SUV and they've an MPV called Fashion. [Fashion] is a bit generic but would couple well with some choice "car keywords". X-Pedition is almost giving itself to you.

Of course, the creative agencies pitching for Landwind's £50,000,000 would do well the address this (but they won't). Unfortunately, all too often Search Marketing is thought about late on. A good creative digital agency would be including "launch speed" in their pitch - just how quickly they can get their first European Landwind sites live. These don't have to be cracking sites. These just have to be sites that can begin to fight for Search Market Share for Landwind.

There's are a few learnings to be had here:

• Always think Search
• It is best to be prepared before your news hits the wires
• It pays to be fast - and if you are an affiliate, that's your advantage over the multi-national companies