Business prep for the holiday season; how to launch your next campaign on Twitter

BY CHRISTINA GWIRA

Social Media Week Toronto may not be till next year, but the lessons learned from this year’s event continue to resonate. The holiday season is upon us, which means that businesses will be prepping for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas AND New Years. Let’s talk about how you can potentially launch your next product, collection or course using Twitter as your social media network of choice.

Michelle Slater, Head of Business Marketing at Twitter provided great insight on how to properly launch a campaign using Twitter. As of 2019, more than 15,000 products, services and campaigns have been launched on the Twitter platform. That’s a BIG number! However, the window for success when it comes to announcing your latest product is shortening, with the attention span of the present day internet user down to a mere 8 seconds. It is necessary to pack a punch when it comes to presenting your latest creation to the world. Here are the five (5) strategies that Michelle shared with us during her talk as well as some pointers that you can use.

Learn before you launch: The Wendys spicy chicken nugget campaign

Wendys retweeted a tweet that Chance the Rapper had made about their nuggets, with a catch. If 2 million or more people retweeted it, then they would bring back their limited-edition nuggets. They beat their goal, however, someone else was listening in to this conversation as it was playing out on Twitter; Burger King. Now, BK’s nuggets are nothing to write home about, however, because they noticed that there was a demand for spicy nuggets, they entered into the conversation, and were met by a huge increase in sales of their own spicy nuggets. Listen and learn before you bring your product to market.

Own your voice: The no name campaign

No Frills is no frills. The no name brand is exactly that, you get what you pay for, and nothing more. You don’t get the fancy cheese; you just get… cheese. When it came to the launch of their brand onto social media, they made sure that they kept that same mentality through the words, images and photos that they used. They didn’t start using fancy words or gimmicky commercials to get the point across about their business. They took the same “no frills” attitude to their marketing campaign, and it worked. They successfully grew their following on social media and increased their brand awareness across the web.

Influence is more important than reach: Director X and Samsung

If you know me, you know I love my Pixel and I will probably not switch from it anytime soon. With Samsung, they wanted to focus on phone users who would appreciate and value the craftsmanship, as well as the cool features that their new Note smartphone had. As a bonus, they had Director X use it to create three different types of music videos with three upcoming directors. Why is this important? Well, it’s important to you if you use your phone for vlogging or video editing. This is all that Samsung wanted. They didn’t want to focus on users who wanted a waterproof phone, or a phone that had super-fast internet speed. They focused on a particular group of people who love and respect Director X and his work. Therefore, these people would be more inclined to pay attention to what he’s promoting.

Go BIG on the reveal: The Joker movie

I used Twitter for most of November 2019, and I was bombarded by ads from two main sources: the Joker movie and Samsung. However, during opening weekend of the Joker, I saw an increase in the number of ads for the movie. Michelle recommends spending the majority of your ad budget (or marketing budget) on the day that you’re set to launch, release your product or introduce a service. Will I be going to see the Joker movie? Maybe, but the marketing team did their job because it is stuck in my mind. According to data, the Joker movie team spent 40% of their marketing and ad budget on the opening weekend of the movie, that’s almost HALF of their entire budget! Keep that in mind as you plan your next launch. Omnipresence is key!

Prepare to pivot

Be aware that sometimes, things fall apart. That’s okay, just make sure that you learn from your mistakes and adjust accordingly. Michelle suggests using real time data as you are running your launch campaign to see how you’re doing. Are the sales pouring in? Is the website traffic increasing? Are your ads being watched? Factors like these keep your campaign on track, and they also shed light on what’s working and what isn’t. As you build out your campaign, make sure that you correct it if you see that there are parts that are falling apart. There’s no shame in that!

As your business gears up for a business season ahead, make sure that you check these tips. Use them as a guide to see how well your holiday campaign can do when you launch your next idea on social media.