Latest marketing tools try to take advantage of web Retailers use Twitter, Facebook to punch up sales this year

It's the age of online marketing, and now the 12 tweets of Christmas are upon us.

Thrifty consumers trying to do their holiday shopping on a budget are being targeted this year, more than ever before, by viral marketing through social-media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, as businesses try to find new ways to connect with customers.

Sports retailer Golf Town, for example, has launched what the company calls its "most aggressive social media initiative to date" for the holiday season: the "12 Tweets of Christmas" campaign, featuring a dozen exclusive deals for its online followers on the micro-blogging website Twitter in the lead-up to Dec. 25.

It's just one example of how holiday marketing is melding with new media.

A recent survey by retail research organization NPD Group found consumers plan to spend no more in 2009 than they did one year ago, in the midst of a global recession. And retailers are looking for new ways to get those dollars.

"Marketing budgets are smaller than they were a year ago, and social-media marketing work generally takes more time than money," says Darren Barefoot, co-author of the book Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook.

"It's generally cheap in terms of actual effort . . . except for your employees' time. And that's incredibly inexpensive compared to trying to push that promotion out into stores or through (traditional) advertising mediums."

Barefoot says budgets for online marketing been increasing ever since 1999, and small businesses are getting into the game.

"It's important for businesses to be online for one very compelling reason -- their competitors are online," he said. "You definitely want to own your namespace. . . . If you have no presence online, you are at the mercy of online reviews and bloggers."

On Black Friday Twitter was ablaze with mall rats sharing news on the best deals of the day.

A number of Twitter accounts dedicated exclusively to the retail recess popped up on Nov. 26, including blackfriday, ListBlackFriday, BFAds and blackfridayinfo. While the minute-by-minute tweets have slowed, many of the posts have continued into December.

Retailers gave exclusive offers and discounts to followers of their own Twitter and Facebook pages.

Chain stores like Walmart and HomeDepot have accounts, as do high-end fashion designers, such as Stella McCartney and Karl Lagerfeld.

And in its official blog, Facebook recently announced that shoe-designer Tory Burch -- known from her signature gold-buckled ballet flats -- had taken "a bold step" with her annual private sale.

"Typically, this sale is reserved for those close to the fashion house, but in October, Tory Burch offered the private sale to all 18,000 fans of her Facebook page."

A good web strategy is one that plays well off-line, too, said Maureen Atkinson, a senior partner with retail consulting firm J.C. Williams Group.

"The strongest retailers are ones that are going to be online and off-line," she said. "The consumer really wants information and that's the thing that the web does really well. . . . The best retailers are going to be using that really smartly to get people into their stores."

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