#tweetsmart

Chapter 9. Twitter BOGO—Buy One, Get One

Tweet this Project

Here’s a simple project you can do with your audience that will directly spur sales AND free promotion of your products. This project leans a bit toward the conventional marketing side of the social media marketing spectrum, which makes it somewhat riskier for you than the projects focused exclusively on community-building. But, if you make this one funny or fun, I don’t think you’ll run into any pushback from your audience. Plus—remember the golden rule—people love freebies.

Discounting is a great way to grab attention and move product. “Buy one, get one free” sales (or BOGO) are pretty easy in a retail store: the customer buys a pair of shoes, and you hand the customer another pair. On the web, however, it can be difficult to pull off. E-commerce platforms and shopping cart software are expensive to customize, and rarely have advanced selling techniques built-in. Your options for running a sale are usually limited to defining a category, a time period, and a discounted percentage.

In this project, we’re essentially extending your shopping cart software onto Twitter—first, because it’s easy to do, and second, because you will get extra marketing value out of every sale.

To start this project, write up a page on your site explaining how the sale works. On that page, ask your customers to shop your store as they normally would—right from your products through your shopping cart system and all the way ...