8 Inspiring Twitter Marketing Case Studies

Sharing is caring!

Twitter seems so simple in features and straight forward in usage. You can find any kind of Twitter marketing case study for various situations and marketing goals.

Starting social media marketing with Twitter is simple: just type in up to 280 characters, and there you go. Still, Twitter is the one social network where many businesses, bloggers, and marketers struggle to get results.Twitter can easily be the most effective marketing channel when you are starting out. Here are 5 examples that show you how to find success with your twitter marketing efforts #twitter #twittermarketing #twitterexamples #socialmedia #socialmediamarketing

I hear a lot of comments like these about Twitter:

  • “Twitter does not work for me.“
  • “I never figured out Twitter.“
  • “I gave up on Twitter, results were not what I was hoping for.“

And that is so sad. Because Twitter can easily be the most effective marketing channel when you are starting out. On Twitter, you can grow a targeted audience for almost any niche and promote your content – without spending a dime on advertising.


Before you read on - we have various resources that show you exactly how to use social networks to gain massive traffic and leads. For instance, check out the following:

FREE Step-by-Step Twitter Marketing Guide
FREE Pinterest Marketing Ebook

Many marketing success stories are based on mastering Twitter. And often it is some small tweaks that make all the difference between success and failure with your Twitter marketing strategy.

Here are 8 Twitter marketing case studies to give you an impression of what can be done and how powerful Twitter can be. I tried to choose case studies that are very diverse to show you that Twitter marketing success is not limited to one strategy and that many tactics can lead you to Twitter marketing success.

1. Mastering Twitter for Traffic, Signups, and exponential growth: Our personal Twitter Marketing Case Study Exploreb2b

Some of you may already know that this is a story about me and Jonathan and how we became marketing pros. A couple of years ago we founded a publishing platform called exploreB2B. We badly needed growth in the form of traffic and users for the platform – and we had basically no marketing budget to speak of.

While we did try some advertising on LinkedIn, Facebook and Google, the key to exponential growth was mastering Twitter. And we virtually started with nothing: no followers, no brand, no idea how to get it right.

Here are the steps that took us to success:

  • Understanding the importance of content: We created our own content marketing strategy that included promoting our publishing platform mainly by sharing links to contents we created and published on exploreB2B plus tweeting the best content our users published on exploreB2B
  • Starting and joining conversations, engaging with influencers: We found some great content creators that were willing to publish their content on exploreB2B via Twitter. We simply asked them to with a simple tweet.
  • Forcing growth with the follow-unfollow routine. When you are small on Twitter you have to get yourself on the radar of people: retweeting, liking and following is one way of getting on the radar of the right people
  • Using direct messages to invite people to publish on exploreB2B: the best-converting channel I have ever seen – if you have the right message your conversion rate can skyrocket
  • Scaling Twitter growth by starting several Twitter accounts. Each account focused on one topic or niche. We used the various Twitter channels to promote content from the platform to a targeted audience.

This simple Twitter strategy helped us grow exploreB2B to over 500k pageviews/month, over 80k registered users for exploreB2B and over 50k published articles

Content Marketing can take its sweet time before you see the great results. This is the traffic graph of our former startup exploreB2B - you can see started small and went big in the end.

Content Marketing can take its sweet time before you see the great results. This is the traffic graph of our former startup exploreB2B – you can see started small and went big in the end.

Image source: exploreB2B Analytics

2. Driving social traffic to a blog: Jeff Bullas

The one blogger that made us realize the power of Twitter was already famous when we started out: Jeff Bullas. It was an article on his own blog that made us realize what we were missing with our Twitter activity and how we could make Twitter work for us. In this article, Jeff Bullas explained how he grew his Twitter followers to over 100k. This basically taught us how to use Twitter to get traffic to content.

Twitter is and has been one of the best traffic generation channels for many successful bloggers – Jeff Bullas is only one of many.


Hey, before you read on - we have in various FREE in-depth guides on similar topics that you can download. For this post, check out:

FREE workbook: CREATE AWESOME BLOG POSTS
FREE Beginner's Guide: START A BLOG

For Jeff „Twitter has been my secret sauce to building an online brand.“

The strategy is simple:

  • Share valuable information on your Twitter account by sharing links to your blog posts
  • Grow a following (he did that in a similar way as we used for exploreB2B)
  • Optimize your activity as you go: automate some recurring tasks, create better headlines, use images, use @mentions

And what is the result? Here are the top three social networks that drove traffic to Jeff’s blog at the time he wrote the above post:

Bildschirmfoto 2017-01-16 um 12.18.50

Image Source: Jeff Bullas

Twitter is killing it! And it could work the same magic for your own blog or business!

Twitter is the one social network where many businesses, bloggers, and marketers struggle to get results. Here are some great Twitter marketing examples to show how Twitter can be the key to marketing success. #twitter #twittertips #twittermarketing #socialmedia #socialmediamarketingLooking at the Twitter accounts of some other famous bloggers you may just notice that Jeff Bullas is not the only one using Twitter as a traffic generation machine.

we used the same strategy to grow traffic to this blog when we started it. Once we had created a couple of blog posts, we used SocialOomph scheduling feature to tweet our best blog content on autopilot. This strategy resulted in almost 50k visitors per month to our new blog after just 6 months of blogging.

(if you want to know how you can get traffic from Twitter to your content on autopilot with SocialOomph scheduling, check out this post about Recurring Queues for Twitter)

3. Getting all the marketing power of Super Bowl for free: Oreo

Have you heard or read what one minute of advertising during super bowl would cost you? In 2013, 30 sec. advertising came at upwards of 3.8 Mio $. Imagine how you could reap some of that power without paying a dime!

That is what Oreo accomplished simply by being alert and leveraging an opportunity they could not foresee but their marketing team was prepared to jump on:

The lights went out.

There was a power outage during Super Bowl. For 30 minutes the power went out in New Orleans Superdome. No one could play, everybody waited. And what did people do? Use their free time to check their social media.

And Oreo was there with this awesome image and text: „You can still dunk in the dark.“

They received instant fame for their tweet with over 10k retweets within an hour. This marketing success story of this one tweet was so successful it made the marketing news on hundreds of marketing blogs in the weeks to follow.

Are you looking for a Twitter marketing case study? Here are 5 Twitter marketing case studies for you to learn from and get inspiration.

The branding effect for Oreo was beyond measuring. Even today almost 4 years after the marketing stunt people still talk about that one tweet at the right time!

4. Launching a new product with hashtags and polls: Xbox Launch

This Twitter case study includes some paid promotion. Although we are usually not so much about digital advertising on our blog I included this marketing campaign because I like the combination of using hashtags and Twitter polls.

Microsoft Xbox UK used Promoted Trends to help their television ad to more views via Twitter.

They branded the hashtag #HUNTtheTRUTH as a promoted trend and combined it with a couple of tweets with gifs and images that introduced the major characters of the game.

They then used Twitter polls to increase engagement with their audience and inspire curiosity among the crowd – in return, they got a buzz in the form of a ton of likes and retweets:

Bildschirmfoto 2017-01-16 um 13.14.42

Image source: Twitter

Also, Xbox pushed the campaign with promoted videos.

5. Starting the conversation: Hilton Suggests

While the first two case studies were based on growing a Twitter following fast, Hilton suggests does not base its success on followers at all. Instead, they monitor conversations around a location where they have a hotel – and jump right in with travel tips for that area.

To see what they are about on their Twitter account you have to go to the „Tweets&Replies“ section. Most of their marketing beef goes into answering questions and direct communication with Twitter users on the road – targeting an audience that is at this moment very open to their suggestions.

Bildschirmfoto 2017-01-16 um 13.21.19

 

What they achieve is tremendous brand awareness and lead generation effect plus building a connection to travelers that they can leverage later on. When you are looking for a nice hotel in a new town, would you not turn to the people who helped you out on your last trip?

(As of 2020 the Twitter account @hiltonsuggest is no longer active. Whether this is due to limited traveling in times of the global Corona Pandemic or if Hilton changed their Twitter strategy only time can tell.)

You can do something similar if you use Twitter’s advanced search to monitor relevant tweets from your niche.

(as of 2020 the Twitter account @hiltonsuggest is no longer active. Wehter this is due to limited traveling in times of the Corona Pandemic or if Hilton changed their Twitter strategy only time can tell)

6. Promoted Twitter Hashtag Campaign: LEGO’s #RebuildTheWorld

LEGO – which child around the world does not know the little bricks that allow you to build almost anything. And not only children. Most adults can well remember the times when they built houses, cars, ships, and castles with the little plastic bricks.
But how could an old brand like LEGO use Twitter to inspire more creativity and acquire new fans?

Lego went for a campaign around the hashtag #RebuildTheWorld.

LEGO’s inhouse marketing agency followed a three-step approach: Tease, Reveal, and Reinforce.

For the Tease Phase they used short videos that ended with “Coming Soon.”

The full versions of the videos were released in the Reveal Phase. The videos were all referencing the Lego world with their figurines, bricks, and additional stuff playing their part in the videos.

These videos were promoted and took over the explore tab for 24 hours.

In addition to the hashtag #RebuildTheWorld, Lego also used a branded emoji that was used whenever the hashtag was tweeted.

This made the brand part of the conversation.

For the reinforcement phase, Lego used Twitter’s sponsorship program. They also featured creators and their LEGO creations – to inspire the next generation to #RebuildTheWorld.

More on the LEGO campaign can be found here. 

7. Use your personal fame to push your brand: Elon Musk

You have probably heard of Elon Musk. You may also have heard of Elon Musk’s Twitter activity.

But you may not be totally aware of just how much Elon Musk achieved for his brand Tesla with his activity on Twitter.
Here are just a couple of examples:

  • When a german Tesla driver, risked his car and possibly life to stop a vehicle with an unconscious driver – Elon Musk offered the Tesla owner that Tesla would cover all repairs – and tweeted about it.<

    /li>

  • When complaints reached Elon Musk that Super Chargers were always full with parking cars, Elon Musk personally reacted on Twitter – and Tesla took action, providing a solution within 6 days.

More on how Elon Musk used Twitter to push the Tesla brand and business can be found here.

8. Running a Competition on Twitter: LG Ticket Hunter

The electronics company LG ran a Ticket hunt competition on Twitter in 2012.

The goal was to increase smartphone sales in the age group 16 – 24.

The ideas was a game-like competition on Twitter:

They set up a stall somewhere in the UK – the first people to find and reach that stall would win 2 tickets to a highly sought-after concert.

At the center of the campaign was a map that zoomed-in every time someone tweeted the campaign hashtag #lgtickethunter. In the end, the map showed the location of the stall.

Twitter marketing case study LG Ticket Hunter map

The campaign was a tremendous success:

  • 5000 tweets in the first 24 hours
  • 50000 tweets all in all
  • 38% engagement rate for the sponsored links
  • quadruple smartphone sales in the targeted age group 16 – 24

How to create your own Twitter Marketing Case Study

I love these Twitter marketing case studies for using such diverse marketing techniques. If you are looking for inspiration, I hope at least one of these case studies will inspire you to get more out of your Twitter activities.

Here is how you can create your Twitter marketing case study:

  • Find an example for Twitter marketing that comes close to what you want to achieve with your Twitter marketing strategy
  • Learn how they succeeded with Twitter marketing. See if you can pull off something similar. Consider your budget, manpower and social media audience.
  • Check what has changed since this Twitter marketing case study was performed.
  • Set your goals and develop your own Twitter strategy based on the example strategy
  • Keep your eyes open for what other people do on Twitter and what you can integrate into your Twitter strategy

Do you have other awesome Twitter marketing case studies? I would love to hear about them – please let us know in the comments.

Join our free Email Course to learn how to grow an audience and traffic from Twitter:

All the basics in 4 Days, 4 Emails!

 

Sharing is caring!