Alan Miller, social media account manager at The Crocodile, offers five steps to get you started with Twitter advertising
Twitter is perhaps best known for its restrictive 140-character count – a challenging format for complex B2B marketing propositions. What is perhaps less known is that Twitter has evolved into an extremely powerful paid-for advertising platform that allows you and your brand to box clever on social media.
With 288 million active monthly users globally and over 18 million in the UK, you can start to get an idea of why it’s favoured by some of the world’s largest brands.
Twitter first introduced promoted tweets in April 2010, but didn’t open up its self-serve advertising platform to the UK until 2013. Since then, Twitter advertising has evolved to include a range of options that enable marketers to reach audiences when they are at their most engaged on the platform.
Here are five steps to help get you started with Twitter advertising:
1. Set objectives
Having clearly defined objectives will be crucial to identifying your audience and judging the success of your campaign. A bit of upfront homework will save you time in the long run and also give you better results from a more clearly defined and focused campaign.
Undertake an audit of trends and hashtags, and conduct some influencer research to develop a clear understanding of the topics being discussed and the volume, scale and sentiment of conversations taking place.
Define your audience demographics including a list of competitors. Knowing where your existing and potential customers are as well as the keywords/hashtags they are using will be of huge benefit when you come to setting up your campaign. Using a tool like Topsy will help you understand the popularity of your chosen keywords.
2. Promote tweets
Promoted tweets are regular tweets served to a highly targeted audience that you define using Twitter’s ad platform, helping to ensure your content reaches the audience it was created for.
You can either create new tweets or select existing ones to promote. Here’s where your homework and competitor list come in handy: you can target users based on their location, gender, language, device and interests, as well as Twitter accounts they follow.
Once you’re logged in, select ‘Twitter ads’ in the drop down menu. Create a new campaign and select ‘Twitter engagements’.
The clever addition to the usual demographic targeting is the ability to target users based on keywords. You have the option to ‘phrase match’ or ‘broach match’ to be as specific or widespread as you see fit. Using a combination of the two will ensure your tweets receive the greatest reach and engagement. Using the same selected keywords in your tweet copy will also increase relevancy and response.
Adding in negative keywords will help you avoid targeting users that fall outside your demographic.
3. Promoted accounts
Twitter’s promoted account tool is a great way to grow your Twitter followers. The key is making sure your account is served to the right users, which again comes down to a thorough pre-campaign listening exercise.
The targeting works in the same way as promoted tweets, but the key here is writing a clear call to action that explains why people should follow you.
Once your promoted account is optimised and launched it will begin to appear in users’ home timelines, on the ‘Who to follow’ widget, ‘Home and Notifications’ tabs and on the right side of the ‘People’ search results.
As 80 per cent of Twitter users are using a mobile, ensure you deliver a rich customer experience by having a mobile-optimised website.
Keep an eye on your user demographics in Google Analytics to gain a greater understanding of the platforms and devices that your website visitors are using to further improve your Twitter targeting.
4. Twitter cards
Twitter cards increase engagement. The other attractive attribute of a Twitter card is they’re free. Nothing in this world is free, right? But these are. So when you’ve finished reading this article, hop onto Twitter and experiment with copy and creative. Your followers will love it.
Again, use Twitter’s ads platform and select Cards from the ‘Creatives’ tab. You’ll then have the opportunity to create Twitter cards for lead generation, website clicks or app downloads.
A word to the wise: if you’re going to experiment with data collection using a lead generation card, make sure you have a privacy policy on your website that you can link to. No privacy policy, no lead generation card.
5. Campaign management
Don’t leave it until the end of the campaign to analyse results. You can and should monitor your advertising spend and performance as you go, tweaking the interests and targeting to ensure that your ads are being delivered to the right people.
Remove any keywords that aren’t performing well and build out your negative keyword list to further increase reach and engagement with the right audience.
Conversion tracking plugs the gap between Twitter and your website, and once that happens you’ll have access to a wide range of Google Analytics data that will enable you to measure your return on investment by tracking actions people take after they interact with your ads.
So, that’s Twitter advertising in a nutshell. Hopefully it’s enough to convince you to have a go. Social media advertising represents a fantastic, cost-effective way for your brand to reach target audiences at times when they are most receptive to hearing from you. If you decide you want to take it to the next level there are some good agencies that can help.
