This week at Marketing Prof’s Digital virtual marketing conference, I presented a case study of Techrigy’s use of Twitter for lead generation. Many question the value of spending time on Twitter, but it has proven to be invaluable for the growth of our startup! Here’s our story. I started with the numbers first.
Here’s some additional commentary to go with the slides:
One year ago I was contracted for a few hours a week. Two months later I went full time. As a community manager, I relied on social media marketing. We had an ambitious team of 5 and no marketing budget. (I learned new words like ‘boot strapping’).
When I started demo’ing SM2 there was a huge learning curve if the attendee didn’t know about wikis, twitter, etc. So, after doing some ‘listening’ I realized that people on Twitter were early adopters and had achieved a certain level. In addition many were asking, ‘What should we be using for social media monitoring?’, How do you do it?, and the pro’s and con’s are debated.
Twitter was ideal because users are:
- early adopters & understand the basics of social media
- actively seeking information and options
- specifically interested in our service
- happy to share information with others which builds word of mouth
- very happy to see a listening tool actively engaged
To use Twitter for lead generation, listen for people expressing a need for your product or service. In our case I monitor for the phrase “social media monitoring”. If you’re a financial institution, then you may want to monitor for “mortgage calculator”. And a photography software company may monitor for “taking photos” and join the conversation.
After the presentation I hung out on Twitter and chatted. I saw my colleague, Jim Reynolds, confirm that we quit cold calling. He joined Techrigy two weeks after I did and is avidly involved in the conversation on Twitter.
And I caught this testimonial by @GavinThomas. Our goal is to provide value and we’ve made a lot of friends there. This underlines the idea that people don’t mind the connection on Twitter.
The whole Marketing Prof’s conference is available for 90 days. Enjoy!
At the end of the presentation I listed a number of business objectives that can be realized using Twitter. What have you found effective?
Like the slideshow on many levels. Particularly nice example of leveraging this new platform in an honest and relevant way. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Dave,
I really appreciated Marketing Prof’s invitation to share our success so that others can duplicate it. (It motivated me to put together the slide deck!)
Great advice for someone who is looking for eliminate cold calling and expand their marketing efforts with social media tools such as twitter. This looks great, I look forward to seeing the entire presentation!
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