Driving eCommerce through Twitter: The role of 280 characters in selling your sale

With the option to generate engagement and post real-time deals, Twitter is a key element in the strategy behind marketing e-commerce sales. We take a look at how Flipkart & Amazon India are leveraging the platform.

Flipkart's Big Billion Days and Amazon India's Great Indian Festival have been around for years now. Over time, both e-commerce platforms have upgraded their capabilities and strategies for marketing these sales on social media, including Twitter. The platform gives them three key features, making it an important element in their overall marketing strategy. These include Twitter For Advertisers, links to other platforms, and real-time communication (to announce new features as well as answer queries). Here's more.

Twitter For Advertisers

To collate all activities under the #BigBillionMuqabla, Flipkart created an event on Twitter using Twitter For Advertisers. Pinning this tweet helped them in directing people to a single landing page for all the polls they can participate in to get discounts. A video was used to attract people to this page — inviting them to get themselves some coupons. These steps assisted in streamlining the process for both, the customers and the brand.

Redirecting To Other Platforms

For this edition of the #AmazonGreatIndianFestival, the e-commerce giant created an Instagram filter. It then redirected its Twitter audiences to Instagram — in a bid for them to try the filter and share pictures on either platform (with Amazon's handle and sale hashtag in the caption) to win a gift card. Here, they were able to leverage the powers of two platforms with the help of links.

It is important to note that sending people from Twitter to Instagram is much easier for the brand than the other way round — because of links.

Time-Bound Communication

Mini-sales and discount opportunities within a grand sale are often time-bound. Here, Twitter and in-app communication are key for the marketing strategies of e-commerce sales. The messaging is usually text-heavy as many T&Cs need to be told to people rather quickly — to inform them about the rules of the game.

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Engagement-For-Discounts

Twitter seems an easier platform for e-commerce giants to drive engagement and offer discounts as the communication on the part of the customer is much more public and directly traceable than other platforms. Any follower of the person competing in the race for the gift card can simply scroll up and see if it's something they are interested in — rather than clicking on a hashtag or handle, like on other platforms. The ease makes the platform an interesting pick for the likes of Amazon India and Flipkart.

Collabs & App

E-commerce giants often collaborate with brands available in their stores to push for sales. Special discounts are offered on such products, deals that are attractive and lucrative for customers. In some cases, a certain amount of advocacy is involved in the mix — this is where publishers step in. They are leveraged for their domain expertise and communities. Amazon India and Flipkart are also creating content for their apps with similar objectives and efforts. There is a very strong push for the use of the app to participate in sales. This communication is being disseminated across platforms, including Twitter (with direct CTAs and links).

Creating IPs & Leveraging Celebs

Two strategies — creating IPs featuring celebrities and leveraging the reach of brand ambassadors — have been very prominent in e-commerce sale strategies for quite some time now. A shift towards making such content long-form and pushing people towards consuming the said content on the app can be seen unfolding prominently. Such content is then promoted using several social media platforms, using Twitter, with clear CTAs and links.

Twitter's presence and strength in the social media strategies of e-commerce sales lie in the simple fact that CTAs in the form of direct links can be shared on the platform. Collation of information and real-time communication is possible in sync with trends. Their advertising solutions are also helping brands indulge in deeper storytelling and communication — elevating the experience several notches.