How Can Your Business Benefit By Using Twitter? – Case Study # 1
A few years ago, while driving across America, my friend and I stopped at a small bakery shop that specialized in making fresh cupcakes. If you are a fan of cupcakes, you’re no doubt familiar with the dry grainy aftertaste that results from biting into a week old one.
Yuk!!!!!
This awful experience often repeats itself whenever I buy a cheap supermarket cupcake. Cupcakes like those are a dime a dozen. You can find them anywhere so there’s nothing special about them.
But this particular bakery offered a different experience. This place wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t competing on price. They had a unique selling proposition. Everything on their menu was extremely fresh! Each cupcake was made from scratch and if it wasn’t sold within 2 days time, it was usually thrown out.
I ordered a strawberry cupcake but since the bakery had just opened, the strawberry cupcakes were not ready yet. I settled for a croissant while I waited. Around 30 minutes passed before I was served one of the most delicious cupcakes I’ve ever tasted in my life. During this time 3 local customers came in to inquire about a specific type of cupcake. The owner apologized to 2 of the customers stating that the particular cupcakes they wanted were not ready yet. She was able to make a sale to the 3rd customer.
After everyone left, I asked the owner when the cupcakes were usually ready. She informed me that the times varied because she only had one oven and she only baked the cupcakes as they were needed – usually 16 cupcakes of any one flavor were available at a time. I remember she had around 12 flavors/types. I also asked if she’d ever had instances where people came in and left without ordering anything because the type of cupcake they wanted was not available? She said it happened more than she liked.
This is the point where I asked her if she’d ever heard of social media – more specifically Twitter. She told me she had, but was not really familiar with it. That’s when I started to explain how Twitter works and how it could benefit her business. I basically taught her how to use social media properly. I’m going to share all the ideas I gave her. Yes, I know, it’s awfully nice of me. You can thank me by leaving me a comment.
Anyways, these suggestions were geared specifically toward her bakery business, but if you read in-between the lines, you could see how they could be applied to other businesses as well.
Using Twitter To Increase Sales
1. Gather Followers From Regular and New Customers – I told her to place a visible eye catching sign in her shop letting her customers know to follow her on Twitter. Next, I suggested that she add her Twitter username on her business cards. Lastly as a way to encourage people to follow her, I told her she should have a cupcake contest or offer some sort of incentive.
2. Tweet the Freshness – I advised her that once she had a dozen (bakery pun : ) followers, she should send out a tweet each time a batch of cupcakes were taken out of the oven. Just doing this would bring in a few impulse customers. These could be people that are in the area at the time of her tweet. Maybe they aren’t even thinking of cupcakes, but when they see the “Fresh Cupcakes” tweet, they impulsively decide to come in to buy some.
3. Random Deals – Instead of simply throwing out her cupcakes, I recommended that she send out tweets with some attractive deals. I mean, two day old cupcakes are still pretty good and I’m sure if she sent out a tweet at least a couple of people would come in to buy them. Here there exists a possible risk that some “fresh cupcake” customers will wait for the deals before coming in and buying cupcakes. In order to prevent this from happening I told the owner to make the deals a RANDOM event instead of a regular predictable thing.
4. Idea Generation – I also told her she could also use Twitter as a way of generating ideas for new cupcake flavors. This way she would learn how to better serve her customers. Should she make a peanut butter pineapple flavor or a cherry coconut flavor? Best way to find out would be to ask her customers.
5. Staying Connected – Lastly, I informed her that if she stayed connected with her clients they would not only keep buying her cupcakes, but they would buy them more often. People are busy and it’s easy for them to get distracted. Unless you tune in once in a while, they’ll forget you. A simple tweet can remind them you are there and you’ve got a product that will delight them.
After I gave her these great ideas, I warned her not to go too Twitter crazy and spam her customers with tweets. I told her to limit herself to 3-4 mass tweets a day. After all, no one likes a tweetaholic.
I don’t know if she took my advice and ever signed up for an account, but I sure hope she did. Her bakery business would have benefited quite a bit from using Twitter.