Twitter b2b – how to make it work
If you don’t “get” twitter right now then don’t worry about it. We didn’t at first either but we did eventually, and sooner or later you will too. It’s just like when you first heard about “blogging” a few years ago. No one really got the idea behind blogging too (except the early adopters) but blogging is now a multi billion pound (dollar) industry.
Don’t miss this opportunity! Be an early adopter! You “google” for things, you “blog” information. Twittering is fast becoming the next big thing! Soon you’ll be “twittering” for things!
Get on the “twitter highway” now – be an early adopter
Thanks to the techies and geeks, twittering is already the “next big thing”. Just like blogging was a few years back, it was mostly the techies and geeks that adopted it. Then came the marketers and the entrepreneurs who saw the potential for business opportunities – clearly now is the time for businesses to hop onboard the twitter highway and stake a claim.
Twitter B2B real life example – how you can make it work for you.
Because it’s early days there’s a lot of “fluff” on twitter B2B at present and not a lot of real time examples but hopefully what we’ve done for one of our B2B clients will help you draw inspiration.
What follows is an example where the idea of “less is more” brought in more sales from exisiting customers and some new referals from the very same customers.
Example
Our client sells a type of machinery. They offer support, maintenance contracts, spare parts, consumables and new machinery when the old ones need replaced. All their business is B2B.
What we did:
- Created a twitter account for the client.
- Mailshot went out to client’s customers asking them to follow them on twitter
- Got the client to post regular updates, news, snippets etc about their machinery, updates, etc.
- Initiated a converation
Initially the converation was very slow to begin but a few nudges to their customers enabled the “conversation” to begin proper. As the conversation grew, so did customer participation. Where previously they would inform their customers of new offers on consumables by way of mailshot or email they started “twittering” offers on single products. This worked very well and brought in two things;
- New sales from existing customers
- Referals from customers to other businesses – e.g. “hey guys – Acme have a sale on consumables this week”
In addition to new sales, twittering has benefitted our client in terms of noticeable cost savings. These are:
1. They have saved money on printing and mailshots by sending out single product offers. Many of their customers don’t have time to read mailshots which tended to be filed away.
2. They saved themselves time inhouse. They did not need to spend time working out prices on entire product ranges, spend time writing offers, distributing etc. Their time was spent better on what they do best.
3. They can be proactive and reactive in the field. Sales staff and technical staff can twitter by mobile phone to inform their followers of any offers or product news.
We would love to hear of any similar stories you have on B2B twittering. Please post your comments below.
If you would like us to help you with twitter and B2B marketing then please contact us.
