At the heart of all Challenger Brand Marketing strategies is an integrated marketing campaign that brings together numerous tactics, all designed to work together in perfect harmony. One tactic can’t work on its own without the coordinated support of the others.
With this said, you still need to have sub-strategies in place for each tactic. One of those tactics that we believe can be a powerful contributor to the overall success of your Challenger Brand marketing campaign is Twitter.
The following are a few less obvious tips that may help you get the most from your Twitter efforts:
Gather Intelligence
In addition to its other outbound marketing uses, Twitter is also a fantastic tool for gathering intelligence. We believe that Challenger Brands need to know what their competitors’ are doing or planning to do in the coming days or months. Because of its real-time nature, use Twitter to keep track of your competitors so you can limit any surprises and adjust your own campaign accordingly.
The area that we find most helpful is to not only track your competitors’ Twitter feed, but to monitor their customers’ comments as well as their responses back.
There is lots of insight to be gained by tracking the conversations between your competitors and their customers.In addition, we find it very enlightening to analyze your competitors’ followers – who are they, what do they do and why do you think they are following your competitor.
Act fast
One of the wonderful things about Twitter is that it empowers the consumer. And as you may already know, people love to use Twitter as a vehicle to complain. So watch and listen for any negative discussions or comments about your company, your products or any other affiliations you may have.
Additionally, watch for complaints against your competitors just as closely. If you can determine a trend of complaints that your competitors are receiving, you might be able to exploit a weakness and attract some of their dissatisfied customers your way.
Optimize for search
Twitter is a great way to increase your search rankings and ultimately increase the traffic to your website. Social media has recently become a very important component to search platforms such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. So be sure to include Twitter, as well as all social media, in your overall search strategies.
Testimonials
We have found that Twitter is a great way to generate credibility through real-time testimonials. If you get a great review from an industry publication, send out a Tweet. If a customer sends you a note about the great service they received, send out a Tweet. Twitter can be a great platform for testimonials in real-time.
Great PR tool
We are finding that more and more journalists are using Twitter to find expert sources, leads for specific stories or general story ideas. Even though your goal should always be to establish yourself as a thought leader, consider building a specific list of media contacts that are relevant to your business and establishing yourself, or your company, with these media contacts as a thought leader/go-to expert in that subject. Be sure to also follow your media list and connect with them when appropriate.
These are just a few of the not-so-obvious ways to make Twitter work harder for you. But like all social media, Twitter works best when incorporated into your overall Challenger Brand marketing strategy.
