Xero ditches Google Ad Words for Twitter

Keynoting to a packed crowd at the Web 09 conference now on in Auckland, Xero chief executive Rod Drury said he was through with buying Google Ad Words.

The kind of high-demand keywords Xero had to bid on cost $30 or $40 a click, said the Xero boss. If one in 10 got converted, that translated to $300 per customer.

Now, Xero’s marketing crew prefers to run searchers on Twitter, looking for comments left by disgruntled customers at rivals like Sage and MYOB (who, in turn use the same trick back against Xero).

Mr Drury says this tactic can easily yield 10 or 14 leads per day. The cost: nothing.

Twitter has made noises about charging the growing number of brands that make commercial tweets. But Mr Drury is unfazed. “I’d pay,” he says.

One possible Google response to this social marketing threat: buy Twitter, as hinted at in this morning's results conference call..

Incidentally there was a fantastic buzz at Web09 when I swung by this morning. The organisation is slightly rag-tag, with no audience mics or PowerPoint (yay!) but in a way that only adds to the feeling that its an event born out of the web community itself, rather than conceived by a professional organiser. (Though with 200 delegates paying up to $745 a head, it could also teach the pros a couple of commercial lessons.) If there was ever any doubt that Auckland could run an event to match Wellington's Webstock, it's gone.