How To Use Twitter To Drive Holiday Sales?

Winter is a wonderful time, as it brings around the holiday season! Shoppers from around the world wait for this all year, which makes it a great time for businesses to get active. According to recent stats from Twitter, 54% of the users are motivated to make a purchase after looking at promotions. So for businesses looking to capitalize on the sales potential this holiday season, now would be the time to start developing a campaign to get new customers on board.

Target retailers first

According to Twitter, if you're a business looking for an ideal audience for the holiday season, retail advertisers are your best bet because they start shopping early and in bulk, hence more prone to 'impulse purchases'. Twitter users also tend to spend more over the holiday season versus non-Twitter users.

According to an estimate, here are the top items of users' shopping list this year;

• Clothing or shoes (75%)


• Gift certificates (71%)


• Movies, music or video games (65%) (I admit I am most psyched about these, who needs clothing when you can get 50% off on the new Call of Duty? :D)


• Electronics (63%)

Launch your holiday campaign early, and command attention with selling points like competitive prices and positive reviews, as that’s what most users say influence their likelihood to complete a purchase.

Make your landing pages mobile-friendly, because 70% Twitter users who purchase gifts online use a mobile device at some point during the purchase.

Generating Buzz

Conversations about holiday shopping reach an all time high on peak days such as the Black Friday, which is strongly correlated with sales data. To quote Twitter;

In November-December 2013, the correlation between conversation about buying TVs on Twitter and sales volume was 0.98 (with -1 indicating no relationship, and 1 indicating a perfect relationship). The results for laptop shopping were similar: our analysis showed a 0.84 correlation between the conversation and sales.

Encourage conversation about your brand on peak shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to Twitter’s research, most users plan to take advantage of limited time offers during the holidays, so consider adding some of those to your marketing campaign.

Impact of Twitter

When a Twitter user finds a new product shared on the social network, they often end up buying in. In fact, 52% say they learned about a product they later purchased because of Twitter, and 39% say Twitter serves as their new holiday shopping list.

Twitter is also part of the purchase process for offline sales. 54% check Twitter to learn about products when at a retail store.

Not convinced with the power of Twitter yet? Just give it a try this season and you'll soon find out. Good luck :)