Twitter is a great way for companies to reach out to their customers in as personable a manner as possible. But beyond simply being real-time customer service, it can also be a great way to market your product. Hashtags based around the company slogans are everywhere, inviting fans of the product to Tweet about how much they adore, say, the Big Mac (#I’mLovinIt, in case you actually want to tell the world you like Big Macs.)
The underground sensation that sweeping the nation.
Sometimes, a company will get even more basic, asking customers to simply hashtag the company’s name, spreading the word in as simple a manner as possible. And while these approaches certainly work, other companies market themselves over Twitter via the most creative content imaginable. Long after the campaigns are over, people will still remember…
Adidas: The Return
In September of 2012, Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose was ready to come back from a torn ACL in his left knee, suffered in April of that year. To hype up his return (not to mention his brand-new line of shoes) Adidas set up a twitter campaign called “The Return.”
Rose himself sent out the campaign’s first #thereturn Tweet, which immediately went viral. Three weeks later, there were over 45,000 mentions of the hashtag and its related Tweets. As for the content itself, it was a combination of Rose talking about his road back from injury, a series of videos documenting his rehabilitation and drive to get back in game shape, and a healthy amount of camera time for his new sneakers.
Even though The Return itself was short-lived (he came back in October and injured his OTHER knee just six weeks later,) the attention it garnered both Rose and Adidas lives on.
Paranormal Activity: TweetYourScream
Paranormal Activity is a mega-popular franchise now, but when the first movie premiered in 2007, it was simply a nameless horror flick filmed for $15,000 and lucky to get a showing in any theater at all. In order to spread the good word, the people behind the film launched the Twitter account TweetYourScream, encouraging anyone who saw the movie, loved it, and wasn’t too scared to come out from under the blankets to tweet their thoughts.
“It’s been a month, I should be fi– *slightest sound* NOPE.”
All these tweets were collected and posted on the official Paranormal Activity wall, making the film seem bigger than it actually was. That, combined with a Demand It button that people could use to send a demand that their local theater show the movie, turned $15,000 worth of home movie footage into a $200 million juggernaut.
Zappos: Tweetwall
Another company that did the whole “tweets on a wall” thing was Zappos, with their imaginatively titled “TweetWall.” Anytime a customer tweets about a Zappos product, Tweetwall would catch it and stick said tweet on the wall’s website for all to see. And these weren’t bots — they were regular people (somethings with as few as 1 or 2 followers) who enjoyed a product and wanted everyone to know about it.
TweetWall hasn’t been updated since June of 2013 or so, but since Zappos is still surviving and thriving, so clearly marketing this way worked out well for them.
Domino’s UK: Knock Down the Price of Pizza
Finally, we have the UK branch of Domino’s Pizza, who understood the quickest way to a customer’s heart — charge them as little money as possible. As such, they held a Twitter campaign on March 5, 2012, where for two hours, any tweet using the hashtag “letsdolunch” would send the price of a large pizza down one pence.
800+ tweets later, the price had plummeted from £ 15.99 to £ 7.74 — not at all a bad deal, and a showcase of how even the simplest, quickest bout of creative content marketing can help a company look awesome in the eyes of their customers.
Any of the above approaches can work for your company as well. Get your customers to tweet about your product in exchange for facetime on your own personal TweetWall. Tell a Derrick Rose-style story via hashtags that people can follow and discuss. And don’t be afraid to hold a social media-influenced sale or two, since those always make the customers happy.
“Everybody who re-tweets this message gets $10000 of our CEO’s money!”
Or better yet, think of your own idea. Remember, all of these great content marketing ideas had to start somewhere. Perhaps the next one will start in your imagination.
Jason Iannone likes the idea of cheap pizza and thinks every company should offer it. Even if they don’t make pizza. Learn how, it isn’t that hard.