How To Use Your Database & Twitter To Find New Customers

The increase of data available has become more important to companies. Social channels are becoming a rich source of that data. Prospecting for new customers has always been important… and difficult. With today's technology, you can combine these three things to improve your business now.

First, you take your current customer database and append twitter handles to it. This gives you the ability to find many of your customers twitter accounts. This, of course, gives you another way to connect with your customes in a more one-to-one direct manner. But it also allows you to take the data from their twitter accounts and create a clearer picture of what your best customers look like in this medium.

Once you know what your customer looks like on Twitter, you can then find others within your geographic area who match your best customer profile. These are the people who are most likely to need your product and be receptive to messages from you – because your product fills a need or want they are very likely to have. After going through this process, you have data that is already valuable to you as a research tool.

The data compiled also gives you have a good strong list of potential customers. What you do with that list falls into that grey area between providing something of value and coming across as a creepy "Big Brother" marketer. Sure, you can send them all marketing messages straight to their accounts – but chances are those tweets won't be received well by many of the people you're trying to connect with. You can also match email data with their twitter accounts and send them email. This is better, as it will just be another email they get among others and if you're offering something of value to them – some will respond.

Probably the best way to use this new data is to look at it as a media buy for your social marketing plan. Using Twitter's promoted posts and ad buys, you can target this list and serve them up promoted posts and ads in a way that feels more natural. People are used to being served up messages in this way. It's no different than buying specific demographics in you TV or digital ad buys. However it is very targeted and focused on people who you know are very likely to have an interest in what you're offering.

Like any one-to-one type marketing, the messaging and placement are important. It has to be relevant and helpful to those receiving it without making them feel like it's an invasion of privacy. This is the world of digital and social marketing we're entering. It can be a very good thing for consumers and companies alike when done right. There will always be those who abuse whatever tools there are for marketing. So savvy consumers will always be wary. But, when you use the tools to connect with those who need what you have to offer, everybody wins.

Mike McClure, believer in using today's tools the right way