A marketing professional recently told me an interesting story — one that I haven’t verified but can easily imagine being true.
A real estate agent had a slump in business and decided to experiment with IFTTT (IF This Then That), Twitter, and her business page on Foursquare. (Brianna Collier has a simple guide to this process on the Showing Suite real estate blog.) She set up an automatic tweet when the temperature was 31° in her target location. It said, “too cold to go outside? Here are the most popular things to do inside in our area.”
When the link in the tweet was followed, you went to her page, which gave lists of great things to do inside. There were not really big sales pitches or ads, either. The only contact she made was an automatic follow-up email/tweet that said, “I hope you found something fun to do in our area!” and had her name with a small version of her business card.
The Advantage of Exposure
This is a great idea because it gives people what they want. If it’s cold outside, a tweet about things people will be searching for is likely to be followed up. When they get to the page, if it is immediately the information they seek, that page is remembered with good thoughts.
But imagine going to a page to find something to do in the area and having to get past a bunch of real estate ads or fill out information in order to proceed. Are you going to do it? Neither is that seeker.
The automatic tweet when the weather triggers it can happen for too-hot-to-go-outside activity, too. But the fact that the list of popular things to do in the area isn’t a pushy sales page means it is useful even when you don’t need to move. The followup email is a nudge, but it isn’t demanding. When the time comes to move, this real estate agent will be remembered favorably — and that is what happened. According to the marketing professional sharing the story, business picked up even though it was a slump season.
When it comes to social media lead generation, don’t limit yourself to the ideas you see in your own industry. Many times there will be great examples in another business niche that can be adapted to your own marketing strategies. How could you adapt this idea to your own business?