Wine Marketing With Twitter

Dell Computer makes exclusive offers to people following them on Twitter, makes $1 million.

Here's how DELL did it (the image above is a sample "tweet").

There's nothing stopping your winery from doing the same (well, maybe not the $1 million part).  Why not try an experiment?

• Get  a Twitter account, if you haven't yet (choose a name like your winery name, e.g. AcmeWinery)
• Create a compelling offer (something you know will be popular with anyone)
• Make sure you set limits (one to a customer, must be a follower) 
• Make sure you set a time limit (one day) 
• Have a promo code that works with your checkout system
• Tweet the offer (with details available on your site or blog)

You want it to be a compelling offer because (a) you want to generate buzz, and (b) you want to increase your followers.  Don't make people order a case to take advantage of this offer (you can experiment with other offers later).  You want to set limits so that you don't get killed (and again, you want them to follow you).  A time limit prompts action, and limits your exposure as well.  The promo code makes it work with your online shopping cart.

See what happens.  Blog about it.  Leave a comment here to tell me what I got wrong. Try it again.

Hint to Inertia Beverages, eWinerySolutions, and Cultivate: make it easy for your clients to do something like this. Gosh, you might even write a blog post or newsletter item on how to do it.

(PS - if you haven't already done so, please take my one-question survey -- it ends Monday!)

Comments

[Brandy Bell]

mike, I did this two weeks ago with a twitter specific code for our shopping card and offered 20% to anyone on twitter who used my code. it worked great!
Everyone should be doing this :)

[Bob Woods]

First off, great post on how to use Twitter for promotional (sales/marketing purposes). You hit all the points I would have hit.

When it comes to Twitter, though, you should be careful about using your tweets (what individual Twitter posts are called) for just marketing and sales messages. Think about it: would you listen to a radio station that played nothing but commercials?

But if you mix your marketing/sales messages with the "character" of your winery, provide opinions, links to wine-related content, etc., you can become a real resource for your followers. By doing this, they'll be much more receptive to your promotional messages.

Excellent blog, BTW!

[Online Shopping]

A time limit prompts action, and limits your exposure as well. The promo code makes it work with your online shopping cart.