Twitter, Local Business and Results

Monday, May 18th, 2009 by Frank Reed

Twitter, Local Business and Results

32-twitterlocal-051809 It is no real surprise that Twitter has application to the SMB (small and medium business) space. There have been success stories talked about for some time no. What is starting to happen, however, that the success the small business has been having is no longer just a business owner stating “Yup, it worked!” According to AdAge two case studies they looked at are starting to put numbers to that success.

Let’s get a small detail out of the way first though. As you can see from the quote below it is likely that the business profiled may have a bit more going for it than the average Mom and Pop or small business.

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that’s hoping to go national — Mark Cuban is a backer — has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day’s business.

Ok, so Mark Cuban is a backer so there may be a little slant to this but let’s go with it anyway. Co-founder of the restaurant, Jeff Leach, is getting aggressive with his Twitter usage and it seems to be paying off. He is making sure that people are aware of his Twitter tendencies by posting a billboard outside of the shop. His subsequent write up in TechCrunch re: this technique has garnered attention from Twitter itself so he will now be beta testing some small business apps for Twitter. I gotta think there are others out there doing similar things but once again most media outlets and businesses (i.e., TechCrunch and Twitter) tend to perk their ears up when someone as rich well-known as Mark Cuban is somehow connected.

Another business, however, in the article didn’t have the same kind of celebrity gravitas but is using Twitter to full advantage.

Michael Farah, founder and CEO of Berry Chill, a yogurt shop with three Chicago locations, has been using Twitter to send out “Sweet Tweets” — promos that require users to show they’re Twitter followers of the store. In a month, he’s logged 700 followers and, he said, “sweet tweets” haven’t diminished his daily sales.

During one promotion he gave away 1,100 yogurts but his daily sales did not go down. Of course, you have to consider the cost of the product eats into profits but lets not nit pick here.

It’s hard to put a real dollar value on people that actually visited the location for the first time due to the offer. This type of marketing can be invaluable for any retail shop. Sure beats getting a mailer. In fact, the way that Leach of Naked Pizza talks he is anxious to shed the costs of more traditional means of advertising.

Mr. Leach, who spends up to $60,000 a year on direct mail and almost $2,500 a year on e-mail-marketing services, said he’d gladly pay a monthly fee for services like those.

Wonder what those beta testing services look like for Twitter? Any guesses?

The article wraps up with some suggestions for the small business owner when it comes to Twitter which include alerting followers when you are on the go, create a conversation, track every sale and even dumping last minute inventory.

So let’s talk real world here. What’s your experience with Twitter? Can you provide some hard numbers that show Twitter’s bottom line impact?

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10 comments on “Twitter, Local Business and Results”

Twitter, Local Business and Results — Advertise On Twitter Says:

May 18th, 2009 at 12:45 pm

[...] If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.From Twitter, Local Business and Results… It is no real surprise that Twitter has application to the SMB (small and medium business) [...]
Social Marketing Impact Says:

May 18th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

Great stuff, there is a clear benefit for local businesses in using Twitter — when their activities are aligned with business goals and the needs/wants/participation of their market.

Maria Reyes-McDavis
spryka Says:

May 18th, 2009 at 2:45 pm

Twitter is like a breath of fresh air on the Social Media scene. I have been on it for just a few weeks now and I have met several interesting people. It is a platform to network with people you would like to meet in real life.

KZ
http://ePostMailer.com
Twitter, Local Business and Results | 1001need News Says:

May 18th, 2009 at 5:33 pm

[...] Originally posted here: Twitter, Local Business and Results [...]
hypermark Says:

May 18th, 2009 at 4:40 pm

What is particularly powerful about Twitter is that the message format itself is not built for any specific workflow and/or purpose. Absence of a specific message structure, in tandem with open APIs, makes it easy/straightforward for a developer ecosystem to overlay things like trust, context, related, local, now without breaking the core underlying message structure.

As locative functions (such as Google’s Latitude) are layered on top of it, that opens up the door to some compelling local apps. Think:

– Offers: Happy Hour, Coupons, Bundles
– Right Now: Fresh, Hot, Today’s Specials, In your Area, Join Us
– Product or Service Info: Menu, Brochure, White Paper

Here’s a post that I wrote which expands up on these concepts:

“Right Here Now” services: weaving a real-time web around status
http://bit.ly/i40h

Check it out if interested.

Mark
Twitter wants to Make Money, without Ads Says:

May 18th, 2009 at 7:11 pm

[...] with cellphone carriers to make Twitter work on cellular network. I’ve read stories about how local business profited by using Twitter. Twitter’s upcoming revenue model seems reasonable [...]
sheppy Says:

May 19th, 2009 at 7:12 am

check out bakertweet.com. Bakers sending tweets with a custom box when they just come out the oven…
TGIF Social Internet Marketing Weekly Wrap Up : Social Marketing Impact Says:

May 22nd, 2009 at 12:03 pm

[...] Twitter, Local Business, and Results from Marketing Pilgrim: Great look at the results local businesses are getting on Twitter. Always remember it must align with business goals and your market’s needs/participation. [...]
1,000 Awesome Things on Twitter: The Naked Pizza Promotion (#295) « Marketing, Economics, & the Web 2.0 Says:

May 25th, 2009 at 5:42 pm

[...] May 25, 2009 · No Comments If you start a new business, it is likely to fail – and one of the main reasons is that it can be so difficult (and expensive) for small upstarts to get the word out to enough people to make a real go of it. In turn, it’s always great to hear about newish companies that are finding a way to leverage tools like Twitter to reach their customers for free – and it’s even better when you can see some actual numbers behind the experiments. Naked Pizza – a New Orleans healthful Pizza shop that’s backed by Mark Cuban – is one such story, having tested a Twitter-exclusive promotion on April 23rd that led to no less than 15% of that day’s business. You can read all about it here. [...]
TweetWagon Blog · Is Twitter Truly Good for Local Business Marketing? Says:

May 29th, 2009 at 2:01 pm

[...] Twitter, Local Business, and Results; Twitter: The Killer Small Business App ; and Twitter, social networks open new marketing [...]

Marketing Pilgrim