According to Twitter’s Q1 2017 results, Monthly Active Usage (MAU) of Twitter has hit 328 million. Twitter Ads is a very powerful tool which can help businesses expand their customer base dramatically. It is increasing in popularity too, with 139% more engagements in Q1 2017 than Q1 2016.
We have recently launched a Twitter Ads campaign for the first time in our agency so we thought we would write a quick guide on how best to use Twitter Ads for your business. While this blog post takes you through the steps of launching a Followers Campaign, aimed at increasing the number of followers on your page, the principles and ideas remain true for all different types of Campaigns available. So, read our 6 simple steps to growing your business with Twitter Ads and become an expert today!
Step 1: Prepare Your Page
Before running ads you need to make sure you are ready to capitalize on more traffic heading to your page. Make sure you are posting regular, exciting content that is going to make the Twitter community take notice of your page once they find you. Ensure your header photo, profile photo and bio all reflect your brand perfectly. Review your hashtags and themes to see what is working and think about what type of content gets the most engagement from your followers as these tweets could form the basis of your ads campaign. Now you are ready to start running some ads!
Step 2: Choose Your Campaign
First of all you need to choose what type of Ad campaign you want to create. Twitter Ads is constantly evolving and adding more objective-based campaign templates for you to choose from. Currently there are 6 campaign types (Website clicks/conversions, Followers, Awareness, Tweet engagements, Promoted video views, App installs or re-engagements). Each campaign type is based around a specific objective, so make sure you have a clear idea in your mind of what you want to achieve from your ad campaign. For this post we are going to talk about a Followers Campaign specifically, so the screenshots and filtering choices are specific to this campaign type.
Step 3: Target Your Audience
Targeting the right audience for your ads is vital. Digital Marketers who have ran ads before will be familiar with many of the targeting features on Twitter Ads, you can target your audience by gender, age, location, device, and interests. The potential audience size adapts throughout the targeting process to become more and more targeted as you add extra criteria.
Twitter Ads has some other unique features that are well worth exploring:
- Follower Targeting: Target users based on the specific pages they already follow. For the best results try adding the usernames of your competitors and industry influencers to reach people who are most likely to be interested in your brand.
- Event Targeting: Target users who are interested in upcoming global and regional events. Twitter happens in real time, so aligning your ad campaign with a big industry event is a great way to access your audience when they are all in the same place!
- Behaviour Targeting: Target users based on their actual online and offline behaviour/characteristics. E.g. targeting small business owners/people that are regular runners/people who are likely to dine at a particular restaurant. This feature is only available in the UK and US at the time of writing.
Audience targeting is where Twitter Ads really excels. Behaviour marketing in particular allows you to target a very specific demographic of users which could really boost the performance of your ads. Currently, some of these tools are limited in scope (Interest targeting) or not available in all countries yet (Behaviour targeting) which inhibits them slightly. As the platform continues to grow worldwide and more features come on board, the audience targeting capabilities look set to become extremely powerful.
Step 4: Set Your Budget
As with all advertising strategies, ROI is key. You want to ensure you are spending enough to achieve your objectives without over-spending. To help you set a budget, Twitter Ads provides a reach summary which shows the estimated impact of your campaign in terms of daily reach, daily impressions and daily follows (for a Followers Campaign).
Once deciding on your daily budget (required) and total budget (optional), you can chose how your money is spent. Automatic bidding lets Twitter optimize your bidding to achieve the best results given your budget. Target cost bidding allows you to choose a specific cost for each new follower you obtain. You are charged according to the objectives of your specific campaign (in this case per follower gained), so make sure you are aware of what to expect from your spend.
Step 5: Craft the Right Creative
Finally, you need to select your creative(s) for your ad. You can choose to create a specific tweet for your campaign or choose one of your published organic. Under the “Creatives” tab in Twitter Ads you can create Tweets, Cards and Media which have extra functionality compared to normal tweets. Twitter’s success stories provide some interesting tips on how utilize these new creative tools to meet your objectives. Be sure to explore this fully before you decide on a creative for your ad.
Here are some tips for best practices when it comes to creating engaging creatives for your Twitter Ads campaign:
- Include a clear call to action. If you want users to follow or retweet you then ask them do it!
- Keep the ad simple. Tell people why they should engage with your page. Don’t include too many hashtags as this will distract people from your message.
- Choose multiple tweets for your campaign. Twitter states that having 4-6 tweets in your campaign is proven to deliver better results.
- Tailor content to your audience. As with any digital advertising campaign, ensure your content is relevant and interesting to the demographic you are targeting.
- Use different creatives for your campaigns. A one-size-fits-all ad is not the way to target your diverse, global audience with your complete product offering.
- Experiment. Test out different creatives to find which one works best for your campaigns.
Step 6: Analyse and Adapt
Once you’re campaign finishes don’t just sit back and admire your new giant number of followers! Use the analysis provided by Twitter to look at how your campaign performed and what you can do to improve your results next time. The platform itself is rapidly evolving so there is always a new feature for you to try out.
We hope you found this guide to Twitter Ads useful. We will keep you updated with any new and exciting ways we use Twitter Ads in the future, watch this space!
