Twitter Touts Its Ability To Drive Holiday Sales

Happy Halloween, now go shopping. The countdown to Black Friday is at t-minus 27 days and there are only 54 days until Christmas, so if you are marketing to holiday shoppers there’s no time to waste.

And Twitter this week released a study touting its ability to bring customers into retail establishments and influence purchase decisions. The study, conducted for Twitter by DB5 Research, is obviously self-serving, but it’s still interesting data, pulled from 2,100 U.S. holiday shoppers aged 13 and above who were interviewed in August.

More than half of those surveyed said they used Twitter regularly and the survey found that “the Twitter users start holiday shopping earlier, spend more and are more prone to impulse purchases. More than a third (34%) have already begun thinking about holiday shopping. And they’re enjoying it: 81% say they love holiday shopping, compared to 56% of non-users.”

Twitter users also plan to spend more on holiday gifts; 24% plan to spend more than $1,000 during the season, compared to 10% of non-Twitter users surveyed.

Twitter notes that 54% of users surveyed said that seeing a product advertised on Twitter made them more likely to buy it. It also found that 52% of users said they learned about something on Twitter that they later bought and that 54% of users check Twitter while shopping at retail stores. Given the receptive shopping audience, Twitter suggests launching campaigns immediately:

When creating your ads, keep in mind that (1) great prices and (2) positive reviews are what users say most influences their likelihood to purchase. Don’t forget to make your landing page mobile-friendly: seven out of ten Twitter users who purchase gifts online have used a mobile device to do so.

Twitter also suggests targeting days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday when shopping conversation peaks on Twitter. The company cited research by Crimson Hexagon and the NDP Group that found the amount of conversation on Twitter correlates with sales volume.

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.