Google “conquesting” has long been an e-commerce practice where marketers buy ads targeted at consumers searching for other brands’ products. But for holidays 2013, ’tis the season for poaching customers on a particular social platform that just went public.
Ammiel Kamon, evp of marketing and mobile at Kontera said.
“The new conquesting game in town is Twitter. Brands’ mentalities have gone real time.”
Retailers themselves aren’t talking publicly about the nascent area of Twitter hijacking, although Kamon works with a number of clients that are gearing up to nab customers from rival merchants. Per industry sources, last year Walmart was hugely successful in exploiting competitors’ problems like product availability or delivery deadline issues. The retail giant tweeted at consumers who had such issues with adversaries like Best Buy. Walmart’s Twitter Elves, the firm’s dedicated customer team on the social site, seemingly found the consumers by searching “@bestbuy” on the platform before pushing a counteroffer.
In a cutthroat marketplace, this tactic is fair game, said Jeffrey Roster, Gartner retail analyst.
He said.
“I can’t imagine anybody that puts a complaint out on Twitter wouldn’t be thrilled that someone read it and responded. I think it’s a great idea and is a good early example of the next arena that retailers will be battling in [via] social media.”
But the practice isn’t without risk, said Ken Wisnefski, CEO of WebiMax. He said.
“If you tweet that you have a product the competitor doesn’t have on Black Friday, you better have it in stock because people are going to drive across town to your store or spend time visiting your website.”
And they might complain about that experience on Twitter. Real-time conquesting involves a very public, potentially circular nature, unlike the Google version of the practice that targets users in a vacuum.
Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara said.
“On Twitter, everyone can see people talking to a brand or about topics like big-screen TVs. And then you can engage with users who are researching those things.”
Sarah Cave, managing director at Retail-X, added, “This practice isn’t widespread yet, but you are going to see more of it because it makes a lot of sense.”
This is the first holiday season that retailers have in-house targeting software available for paid Twitter promos. The iPad launch last month provided a glimpse into poaching via Twitter ads, as Samsung, Nokia and Microsoft bought Promoted Tweets around Apple’s tablet debut. Per data firm Mashwork, Nokia scored highest for jumping on the iPad news, getting retweets, favorites and replies galore in a matter of hours.
So, expect holiday retailers to use these new tools to zero in on Twitter conversations.
David Deal, president of David J. Deal Consulting said.
“Retailers are using social in a more competitive way. I think it’s smart, and it’s fair.”
COMMENTARY: Many companies like Dell or Moonfruit have discovered Twitter as a separate sales channel. Both use rather similar strategies: They either offer special discounts or work with giveaways to attract followers, drive traffic to their sites and boost sales. In 2008 (when Dell was one of the first companies to use Twitter as a direct sales channel) the social network had made Dell over $ 1 million in revenue already.
So how exactly can brands poach Twitter for customers?
Actually there are many ways to use Twitter to increase sales and enhance your business. One of them is to scan the network for negative feedback surrounding your competitors in order to then contact the dissatisfied individuals with an alternative offer of yours. Here is a step by step guide on how to poach customers using Twitter:
1. Set up a Hootsuite account (Tweetdeck works too) and add a new tab – you can call it “competitors”.
2. Click on the new tab and and choose “add column“.
3. Now pick “search” and use the following syntax to scan Twitter for negative feedback about a competitor:
“Competitor’s name” negative-term OR negative-term OR negative-term OR 
OR ? OR negative-term
Here is an example using “Dell” as my competitor:
“Dell” sucks OR hate OR OR ? OR problem OR issue OR expensive OR broken
(The “:(” will show you all tweets that contain a frown and the “?” will show you tweets where the competitor’s name is mentioned together with a question)
4. Click on “Create Column“. Now the column is going to update automatically with all tweets containing your competitor’s name and one of the above specified negative terms.
5. Repeat for other competitors or possible variations of their names.
6. Scan the tweets that appear in each column and look for messages like this:
“@XXX Yeah they do but a few of my friends have Dell laptops and they have broken after like a year. I want a good one. My PC sucks! :O(“
7. Now you have two possibilities of contacting the two potential customers you just found (the author and the person the tweet was directed to). You can either “join” the conversation by using @reply, informing them about a great new offer of yours for an item that could cover the need or the problem expressed in their message. In this example a discounted offer for a high quality notebook could wake the interest of both individuals. Be careful though! Your competitors will be able to see your @replies and if you do this too often you might be perceived as disruptive and spammy in general. @replies do have the advantage though that they can be retweeted and can generate additional buzz.
8. If you prefer to contact the individuals discreetly using direct messages you first need to make sure that those people follow you. In order to do that your safest bet is to follow them first. Often people will (automatically or manually) follow you back – especially if the person’s number of followers is close to the number of people he/she is following. Then you can write a direct message to the potential customers including your offer. You will have to find a middle way between DMs and @replies – as DMs often aren’t read due to the number of automated spam emails clogging everyones’ inbox.
9. The most important rule here is to be personal. Adapt your offer and your message directly to the people you’re contacting and to the particular conversation you are referring to. Anyone who uses Twitter on a regular basis will have an eye for automated DMs and @replies and will ignore them as quickly as they pop up. The only way this strategy can work for you is if people don’t label you as “spam” and that will only be the case if you take the time to write personal messages.
More Twitter tips and guides can be found here.
Courtesy of an article dated November 10, 2013 appearing in AdWeek and an article dated March 22, 2010 appearing in twitip
Comments