Last December, social media icon and wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk experimented with several advertising channels to boost www.winelibrary.com’s wine sales. The offer included free shipping and was promoted via three different “media outlets”:
1) Direct mail (snail mail)
2) Billboard (traditional outdoor)
3) Twitter messages about the promotion
Which one was the most successful? Any guesses?
Drum roll….
The direct mail campaign, which cost $15,000, brought in 200 new customers. The billboard ad, which cost $7500 netted 300 new customers. And, the Twitter campaign, whose costs were undisclosed (I can only assume that this would relate to Vaynerchuk’s hourly rate or some deconstruction of his speaking fees), brought in 1,800 new customers.
This is pretty impressive. Most companies could easily justify a Twitter approach, especially if their employees managing the campaign work for a reasonable hourly rate. Even at $200 an hour, an employee logging a couple hours a day scheduling targeted tweets on something like www.tweetlater.com would pay off. When it comes to reaching people, the numbers are tilted in favor of Twitter. There are some caveats, however (see below).
Consider this: Twitter itself is a target audience of sorts. Gary Vay*ner*chuk’s audience is very tech savvy and connected via social media platforms, tools and social networking sites. If you’re not familiar with GaryVee, I’d suggest doing some googling to figure out who he is. He’s a major force in the “new marketing” biz.. as well as the wine industry.
So, someone like Vaynerchuk can get a lot more mileage out of something like Twitter. His audience is expecting to see him there.. eagerly anticipating his every tweet. A lot of companies don’t have this luxury.
That said, a campaign to build an audience on Twitter couldn’t be a bad thing, right?
Once your audience has some gravity and size, you can pull off promotional campaigns like Vaynerchuk’s. What’s the ideal size and quality of this audience? I don’t know. I’d like to see some research on this. It’s the one thing that’s often overlooked in social media discussion circles.
What are your thoughts? 10,000 followers? Two-thirds of which are involved with the product, brand, solution or issue? (please comment below and share this link via the ShareThis icon)
