By Anna of Lucid New York – Follow her @LucidAnna
Last week I had lunch with a marketing director from a well known cosmetics company. He believes in the power of social media, especially Twitter to promote the brand. He created a company Twitter account as well as his personal account where he announces company news, new blog posts, promotions and sales.
When we chatted, he shared with me how difficult it is for him to convince his boss about the effectiveness of Twitter marketing. He had a quarterly marketing report due where he had to show “the numbers”, i.e. how much time was spent on Twitter, how many tweets and how it converted into sales.
Twitter results depend very much on the type of products you market. In most cases the immediate call to action does not bring the expected results. So should you cross off Twitter from your marketing tools?
I had this thought when I first joined Twitter. I remember a couple of my Tweets promoting a jewelry piece, offering a discount. After posting it, I would immediately go and check the results only to be disappointed and find out how few of my couple of thousands followers actually bought the piece. But then I would show up at a party where someone I was introduced to, has heard about my jewelry collection thanks to Twitter. Before the Holidays I received an email from @masscontrolkern, an online marketing guru who asked me if we could design a 14K gold and diamond necklace for his wife. He said he found me on Twitter.
As I was getting more online orders, more press inquiries and interview requests, I understood how Twitter marketing works. It’s not direct, it’s not always that you can just plug in the formula of the amount of time you spend on Twitter divided by the generated sales. You can’t measure the immediate impact of your brand’s Twitter presence. Trying to plug Twitter into a formula won’t work unless the formula results include brand awareness, exposure and word-of-mouth.
@steven_sanders
Even with the mass popularity of Twitter now, I find it very difficult to convince other business owners how big of an impact it would have on their brand.
Even many non-business owners I run into tell me they don’t understand the point of Twitter, and feel it’s a waste of their time.
Just like with any other new technology, I believe it will take some time before companies readily accept Twitter for what it can do for them.
It’s those of us who are early adopters and more creative thinkers that will be ahead in the race when the others finally realize they should have jumped when they had the chance.
@josephgelb
Good article. There are many good take away points including not looking too close for the twitter effect.
@HarryWatson00
Twitter is not a great sales avenue. You can generate some sales but in my experience and in the experience of even Dell. There are two separate business models for twitter use one is to generate more sales. The other is better served for building brand eecognition and communication with consumers. You can read about them both on my blog at espiremarketing.org
@LucidAnna
@Steven-Sanders I agree and companies are starting to realize it now
@Harrison Watson yes, brand recognition, building relationships and tweeting without expecting the results is key!
@hectorhenry17
Yes you are really right, sometimes yes twitter funtion like a way to promote what you whant or juts get answer to the questions you have. But at the time its dozen mean that you willl receive direct answers how you would like them to be, its need work a that wtitter user heard you so the news could spread no matter if you dont see result right ways. thats twitter and twithing.
Than you for the pots. Its a really good post.
@philanthrophile
Just had a powerful personal experience with the Twittersphere sending a spike in traffic to my blog. Referenced this article and my experience in a post I just published: http://tiny.cc/va3Mn And hat tip to Maddie Grant, who tweeted the link to your post. It resonated with me… Betsy Stone/philanthrophile
@signatureladyjeff
Good observation Darren, these are great tips for those who are marketing a certain product on twitter. I found that tweeting about certain things brought those very individuals to follow me! I didn’t know why at first but as I looked back on previous tweets I observed different things I talked about is what might have given them the assumption that I would be something! I did take the time to visit their site, I wasn’t interested in any thing but I did leave a comment of encouragement. Thanks for the facts!
Signatureladyjeff
@kimvallee
One thing you illustrated on this post is the fact that the current online metrics for success are out of date. How do you measure brand awareness, credibility and building relationships? They are not part of the equation. The same way as page rank and page views are only part of the equation for evaluating the value of a blog.
@twitstore
Twitter is a great sales platform if your primary business is Twitter relevant. What I mean is this. Twitter has yet to evolve into the great sales and commerce platform everyone expects it to be right from the onset. In due time it will. However, we have seen sales rise a 1000 fold since we cater to the core Twitter demographics of developers and business services reliant on the Twitter api.
Twitter is also an investment model as it is a usage tool. We invested in Twitter and our clients are doing the same. The valuation will only rise in time. If you expect Twitter to pay off from the sales perspective, don’t just tweet. Create a Twitter brand. The time is now!
@hendrylee
“Trying to plug Twitter into a formula won’t work unless the formula results include brand awareness, exposure and word-of-mouth.”
I’d say may be. Remember email. It is also about relationship. It is also about branding. It is also about word of mouth, exposure, awareness, you name it.
But over the years, marketers learn to let go of things they could not control much and focus on the metrics that really matter.
Click throughs, open rate, conversion, among others, are now known as “the” metrics that represent the result you get from that marketing channel.
I don’t think Twitter is much different. We’ll see.