Not only success stories

I want to recommend a text I stumbled upon the other day; a case study of a "failed" Twitter marketing campaign. It's about the American retailer Kmart who paid the web entrepreneur Jeremy Shoemaker (approx. 60,000 followers at the time) to write about the company's deals on his Twitter page.

It was not a high-cost campaign, but it only generated 226 clicks, which resulted in a CPC (for relevant clicks) of $2.12 and a CPM of over $12... yikes!

The article suggests that putting the money in AdWords instead of in a Twitter campaign would have resulted in a much higher number of relevant clicks. With AdWords Kmart would have reached both a larger audience and a lower CPC (and CPM!).


So, Twitter is not a perfect marketing channel - it does not work for everyone. It's important to analyze all the options before jumping on the band wagon of the "new cool thing", it could just end up being costly for your business.

Read the full story here:
Sponsored tweets: a case study in Twitter marketing fail

Celebrity sells!

Not too long ago, the website internships.com ran a marketing campaign on Twitter, appointing Charlie Sheen to advertise for an intern on his Twitter page. Sheen currently has over 3.5 million followers. The campaign supposedly cost at least $100,000 and included only one post by the Two and a Half Men star:

As a result of the campaign, internships.com experienced 1,035,021 unique visitors to their site, generating a low cost-per-click (9 cents). What was probably even more thrilling to the company was that over 80,000 people actually filled in an application! This would result in a CPA (cost-per-action) of $1.21, which is to be considered as extremely low.

This example goes to show that paying a celebrity to tweet about your company can be highly cost-effective. Just make sure the star has got a big number of followers and that the fanbase incorporates the potential customers you want to target.

Apparently it doesn't matter if the celebrity you choose for your ad is sane or not...

Via: Social Media Optimization

New Marketing Tool “Sweeps” Facebook

Enter to win free concert tickets!

Sounds appealing, right? Here’s the catch….one must click the “like” button and enter a few pieces of personal information to be officially entered in the sweepstakes.

Many companies are using this strategy to open their businesses to young, fresh market segments. By using Facebook, companies are able to reach a vast amount of young people relatively quickly. As many would agree, young people are known to be intrigued by anything labeled “free” or “win now”.

Another important concept of Facebook sweepstakes is the idea of low-cost advertising. This works in two main ways:

First, this marketing tool works well because the company’s only expense is the prize up for grabs. After an individual has entered the contest, the company’s Facebook posts will appear directly in the users news feed. This way, the company can continually update the user on products, promotions, and other brand-affiliated news.

Second, a sweepstakes dramatically increases word-of-mouth advertising. When a user spots an awesome giveaway, they are likely to tell others about the prize and the sponsoring company.

Check out an example of a Facebook sweepstakes done by Fisher Communications through the radio station STAR 101.5.

What do you think about sweepstakes on Facebook? Is it worth it to enter a sweepstakes even though your news feed may be bombarded by company news?