Shawn Pitcher of Future Shop in Vernon, B.C. is a Product Expert in televisions, speakers, Blue-Ray players and other neat gadgets. He is now using Twitter to get a competitive edge on the other sales people in the store, increase his sales and gain a new following of customers.
How is he doing it?
Each day that Shawn works, he is given new specials, also known as price drops, that he can offer to customers. Now, he provides those specials to Lava Marketing, usually by phone, with the prices, model numbers and a short description of the product.
Lava Marketing set up a Twitter account for Shawn and began adding followers to it that will follow Shawn back. Shawn does not have his own website for his sales job, so Lava Marketing types a list of the price drops and posts it on a special web page for him in VernonGirl.com, a website about Vernon, B.C. business, events, tourism and news.
Then, Lava Marketing takes the list of specials and puts it into a .txt file (usually using Notepad), with a link in every line item to the product mentioned.
Here is what the list looks like below. Note that the links haven't been shortened yet because Lava Marketing has a url shortener that will do it automatically.
Price drop Samsung 40" LN40B530 $799.99. Add Samsung Blu-Ray Player & Dark Night movie $99 #FutureShop Vernon http://courtenaypitcher.typepad.com/vernongirl/2009/11/vernon-future-shop-specials-for-nov-11.html
Get twitter tips @vernongirl http://courtenaypitcher.typepad.com/vernongirl/2009/11/lava-marketing-launches-pay-per-tweet-service-to-vernon-bc-businesses.html
Price drop Nov. 12 Samsung 40" LN40B530 $799.99. add Home theatre audio system $299.99 #FutureShop #Vernon http://courtenaypitcher.typepad.com/vernongirl/2009/11/vernon-future-shop-specials-for-nov-11.html
She is tweeting for me. Have her tweet for you. @vernongirl http://courtenaypitcher.typepad.com/vernongirl/2009/11/lava-marketing-launches-pay-per-tweet-service-to-vernon-bc-businesses.html
Price drop. Samsung 40" LN40B530 $799.99 add digital high definition PVR $299 #FutureShop #Vernon http://courtenaypitcher.typepad.com/vernongirl/2009/11/vernon-future-shop-specials-for-nov-11.html
How do dark chocolate and Twitter blenz @vernongirl http://courtenaypitcher.typepad.com/vernongirl/2009/11/twitter-case-study-blenz-coffee.html
Lava Marketing threw a few promotional items in there about themselves as well. This is a great cross-marketing strategy.
Once the list is created in the .txt format, Lava Marketing then bulk uploads the list into special software. If there are line items longer than 140 characters, the software notifies them so the line item can be adjusted to meet the Twitter specifications.
Usually the lists are much longer than the one above, so this means that the tweets have to be scheduled to go every twenty minutes throughout the day. They are sent more often (every 5 minutes) or less often (every hour), depending on the length of the list.
Lava Marketing also specifies which hours they are sent in, so that they are not sent after Shawn has left Future Shop. And they make sure they are only sent the day of the week, for example Thursday, that Shawn is working. (He doesn't want anyone else scooping his Twitter clients when he's not there.)
Now, although Shawn phones his list in, other companies, sales people or business owners that partner with Lava Marketing are encouraged to type up the lists themselves and email them in.
Normally, Shawn would need to pay Lava Marketing a fee per tweet based on the number of tweets and the frequency of them. The fee is low because the process is quite automated unless the tweets need to be re-written each day so that no repeat tweets go out. (Twitter doesn't like repeats.) But, for Shawn it's free. Lava Marketing just happens to provide a special service to Shawn since he's married to the owner.
I hope you can use some of the examples in this case study to figure out how to begin creating a list of tweets that Lava Marketing can send out for you from your Twitter account. Maybe this case study will help you understand how Twitter could become more of a sales tool for your business. Feel free to give me a Direct Message on Twitter, or email me at info@lavamarketing.ca if you have questions about Twitter. Hourly telephone coaching is available on an hourly fee basis. And I also welcome comments on this blog post.
Thanks for reading!
Courtenay Pitcher
Owner of Lava Marketing & vernongirl.com and happy life partner to Shawn for 19 years and counting.
http://www.vernongirl.com
http://twitter.com/vernongirl
http://www.lavamarketing.ca
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