Twitter is now widely acknowledged as a highly effective marketing channel that helps businesses accomplish success and increase earnings through higher sales. Twitter is the second largest social networking and micro blogging website open to anyone and everyone to post short, crisp and simple messages Some find it the best social media marketing tool while others prefer it as a social customer relationship management (CRM) tool. The bottom line remains that Twitter helps to increase sales if used right and if its phenomenal potential is encashed by businesses. It helps that Twitter is available free of cost, open ended and has time lines that are significantly less invasive.
Twitter can be used to increase sales for businesses in various ways, since it enables communication between people not directly networked as well. Some of these are discussed below:
- Twitter is a platform for initiating relationships that culminate in sales- This involves signing up and opening a Twitter account. This helps you to track members who can form a target audience for the business. These can be followed to get and give news and updates and to cultivate a relationship, which can lead to their becoming customers. The interim involves posting regular tweets that are informative and crisp. Gradually, by following others and having them follow you for the knowledge and valuable inputs you provide, it becomes possible to have a list of high profile people linked with your account. It is also easy to aim at industries and companies in order to approach them for selling products on offer.
- Twitter is ideal to build brands and getting feedback- Brands are built through marketing initiatives on Twitter as well by highlighting the product qualities and sharing news and updates about them. Following customers on twitter helps to get feedback and what they want. Following your own brand helps to get the outsiders’ perspective.
- Twitter enables Research- Twitter provides highly specific and useful market research in the form of inputs from customers, what they are looking for and what they are unhappy about. What the customer says reaches you sooner and it becomes easier to take immediate action to improvement. This will then augment sales.
- Use latest news about the industry and competitors to keep up – Keeping abreast of the latest developments and innovations in the industry will help to keep pace with competitors and use the right timing to capture the market and clock higher sales. Following competitors holds the key. Additionally, following industry analysts and experts provides clues on the latest.
- Keep tweeting- People tweet multiple times a day. This helps to share information and updates, news and developments to keep up public interest. Social media is social due to the interaction levels. It keeps customer interest alive and targeted sales talk without seeming so, helps to push them towards buying.
- Twitter for setting events- Many businesses set up customer events that are publicized only on Twitter. The common interest can prove to be an excellent marketing platform to reach out personally to impress customers, thus persuading them to buy.
- Sales promotion through discounts- Recently, leading computer manufacturer Dell, revealed how it used Twitter to offer discounts to its followers. A similar exercise helps to reward Twitter groups, and the discount offer pushes them to buy, thus increasing sales.
- Use applications- Twitter accounts can become unwieldy as they grow, But to continue at the same pace, it is best to resort to automated applications and tools like TwitterSpinner, which de-spams followers and also helps to trace members who can be added to the targeted list.
Twitter offers a world of sales opportunity to add to existing numbers and help businesses grow manifold, and businesses not cashing in through Twitter are losing out.
