Twitter Advertising
Twitter: the social networking site where you have 140 characters or less to say your peace. No, I am not being a hater. But you might be thinking how on earth am I going to make money on Twitter ads with no room to actually advertise! Well, maybe it’s not how much you say that matters as what you’re trying to say that you should be focusing on. Ah, now I’ve got your attention. In a world where advertising is usually about how much information you can shove down your audiences throat, Twitter poses an interesting approach to advertising with its character confines. Let’s take a look at how Twitter and advertising get along…
Why Use Twitter Ads?
Twitter was founded back in 2006, and since then it has grown to 271 million users. Though this is a smaller user base than Facebook, Twitter is a niche social network that attracts a very strong and dedicated fan base. Those who are on the site use it, a lot. While it did not launch ad capabilities until 2010, mobile add revenue made up 84% of Twitter’s overall revenue in 2014. Twitter advertising is therefore, not a force to be reckoned with. Let's examine what goes into making a Twitter ad.
Ad Types
Twitter provides 3 basic ad types: Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends.
Promoted Tweets were unveiled back in 2010 as the first of Twitter’s advertising options. Promoted tweets are messages that appear directly in a user’s Twitter feed just like regular tweets from accounts a user follows. These tweets function like normal tweets, making use of hashtags and links. The only difference is that the ad is labeled as “Promoted by…,” with the '...' being whichever company purchased the ad.
Promoted Accounts are ads that invite targeted users to follow a brand. They appear in the left-hand sidebar of a tweeter’s Twitter feed. The only difference between organically suggested accounts to follow and promoted accounts is a small “Promoted” label in the bottom right corner of the ad. Promoted accounts are valuable to companies wanting to grow their follower base because they attract the right followers in a short amount of time.
Promoted Trends allow brands to put their stories at the top of the most talked about subjects on Twitter (the trend list) for 24 hours. Similar to promoted accounts, promoted trends also appear in the left-hand sidebar of a Twitter feed. Having top placement on the Twitter trend list creates a great opportunity to dominate conversations on the Twittersphere, since most of the trend list conversations are controlled by hashtags.
Pricing
Twitter’s pricing of ads, like Facebook’s, depends on the type of ad and how wide or narrow the audience is. Promoted tweets can range from $0.50 - $10 based on targeted audience specifications. Promoted account ads roughly cost between $2.50 - $4 per follower. Though these margins are definitely more expensive than Facebook, the down and out cost comes from promoted trends. To run a promoted trend ad for 24 hours has been reported to cost upwards of $200,000! That’s a whole lot of money to get people talking about your brand.
One of the interesting things about Twitter’s pricing is that though it may be on the expensive side, you are only charged when a user completes an action in the campaign. You might be thinking, well isn’t that the whole point of buying the ads? Not quite. Lets say you ran a promoted account campaign for Jos. A Bank for father’s day. A user sees that ad in their sidebar, but may not necessarily want to follow you. Though they don't complete the action (thus making you pay), you will still be in the back of their minds as a go-to brand for a good gift for dad. So you may not have gotten the action, but in the long run that saves you money, and you got the attention and possibly the sale, which is all that really matters.
Audience & Targeting
Twitter offers the standard ways of targeting demographics that Facebook does, with the added inclusion of targeting ads by keywords, devices, networks and even TV shows (as an integration with live broadcasts). Ads can also be targeted by uploading specific lists of people to target such as emails, cookie ID’s and Twitter user ID’s. A targeting feature exclusive to Twitter, however, is their ability to target by competition. Yes, Twitter features a targeting option to target audiences of local rival businesses in order to attempt to make them jump ship to support your business.
Once again, let’s refer back to our knowledge about the groundswell. The opportunity to target your rival’s digital customer base is huge. This is where listening and talking to the groundswell comes in (see Chapters 5 & 6). What if your rival’s customers aren’t satisfied? If you listen to them by monitoring their activity in coordination with your rival brand, you may discover that your competitor is not reaching out and talking to them. Maybe they're not posting relevant content, maybe they're not posting enough content, or maybe they're falt-out ignoring their customers' tweets. This is where you step in and talk to them via tweet ads based on what they want from your competitor that they aren’t getting. In a week or two you might realize that they jumped ship to your company instead (by following your page or tweeting at you). You could even use promoted tweets to direct them to relevant content on your page. If you use promoted account ads, make sure you have relevant content posted once they come check out your account! Have you ever followed a brand, and maybe tweeted them a question and never heard back? Did you hear back from a competitor? This happened to me once with Chipotle and Moe's, and my loyalties switched because of it.
Closing Thoughts
So you see, Twitter offers some very interesting approaches to social media advertising. For starters, you have the ability to basically sweep your competition’s fan base right out from under them (that’s a pretty nice feature). The cost per ad definitely comes at a higher price though, making Twitter advertising a more viable option for companies with deeper pockets. However, because Twitter users are such a dedicated flock (I’m funny, I know), it may be worth it to buy up a few promoted tweets in order to drive those dedicated Tweeters to your feed. Just make sure you have solid content, and they may even start to retweet and quote your past, organic Tweets, thus setting the free and beautiful concept of World of Mouth into motion.
For more social media advertising details, check out my next post in the series: LinkedIn Advertising. To get started creating your own Twitter ads, click here. And if you still don't believe me about how valuable Twitter advertising can be for your company, check out the video to the right to see how DigitalMarketer used Twitter ads to get a 198% ROI!
Facts provided by wordstream.com, adweek.com, hootsuite.com, socialmediatoday.com, the book Groundswell, and the book Socialnomics.
Video from DigitalMarketer's YouTube channel.