Twitter advertising allows you to promote specific tweets or campaigns designed to meet your goals. You will be able to set audience targeting criteria for each of your campaigns – meaning you can carefully target tweets to match your customer profile.
The main thing that sets Twitter ads apart from organic posting on Twitter – is the ability to put your tweets in front of audiences that don’t follow you but are likely to be interested.
Twitter ads are often a success even on a fairly small budget – so, it can be a good place to start for smaller or new businesses. If you do want to find out how to maximise your ROI (return on the investment) on the platform – then read on for a short handy Twitter marketing guide.
Select your objectives
Did you know that Twitter is identified as the number 1 platform for discovery? With this in mind, driving brand awareness is seen as their greatest strength and a huge benefit for digital marketers hoping to reach a wider audience. Although often used for awareness, Twitter actually offers eight objectives for users to choose from. These will follow into one of the three core categories:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
You can then choose from these sub-categories:
- Brand Awareness
- Reach: Show your tweets to a carefully targeted audience.
- Consideration:
- Video Views
- Pre-roll views
- Followers: Encourage users to follow your Twitter handle.
- App Download
- Clicks: Direct users from Twitter to your site
- Tweet engagements: Encourage users to reply and comment
- Conversion: Encourage an action such as a purchase or call-back.
- App Engagement: Encourage people to interact with your app.
Select your Ad Groups
Once you have selected your objectives – you can move on to your ad groups. Ad groups are individual ads that have their own budgets, audiences, and start and finish times. Ad groups will all be a part of your main campaign. For example, you may have a three week Twitter Ads campaign running. You can create one or more ad groups that will run for a short amount of time during the campaign. They will have their own objectives, such as promoting a web page or targeting a different type of Twitter user.
The number of ad groups you have, mainly comes down to your business’s digital marketing budget. When creating an ad group, there should be at least one pre-existing on the left-hand side of your Twitter ads page. However, if you do want to add your own, you can.
In the “Details” tab on your Twitter, write an ad group name, a start and end time, a budget for the ad group, and a bid type. Your bid type enables you to “bid” on your ad placement. Where you place your paid ad depend on your target audience and your digital marketing goals. Different ad placements will cost different amounts. Here are the bid types you can choose from:
- Automatic bid: This type of bid enables Twitter to charge the most cost-effective amount every time your audience engages with your ad content. The price your pay is based on your ad group’s budget and your target audience.
- Maximum bid: This type of bid is a better option if you want to have full control over your digital marketing budget. You decide how much you’re willing to pay every time your audience engages with your ad content.
- Target bid: This type of bid allows you to choose how much money from your ad group’s budget you would like to pay when users engage with your ad content. The price you pay will reflect the daily average cost of each ad placement within your target audience.
Choose your target audience for each ad group
Now, once you’ve selected your bid types and created your ad groups – you can move on to your targeting. Underneath the “Details” tab of your ad group, click “Targeting” to set the parameters of your audience. As with any digital marketing campaign – it is essential that you have customised your audience to be a perfect fit for your brand. You will avoid wasting any of your budget if you’re only targeting users who are likely to have an interest in your ad, and more importantly convert. Paid marketing is all about generating qualified leads.
How to target within ad groups
To select a target audience for each ad group you create, you’ll customise the following things:
- Gender: If your product or service caters to either males or females, you should take advantage of Twitter’s gender targeting option.
- Age: Setting a targeted age range is useful for ads that are sharing a product that has either an age restriction or scope of interest. This is also useful if you are advertising an event that is only aimed at a certain age bracket.
- Location: We recommend targeting by location if you are running a local business. You might only sell your product to a specific region – or offer your service local to your office etc. As a digital agency based in London – we may just target London for example.
- Device: This is a helpful targeting option if your product or service can provide solutions to people who are ‘on the go’. On the other hand, you might use this option if your site visitors are most likely to convert on your offer when they’re in the office.
- Audience features: You can target specific keywords, conversation topics, events, and interests.
Some final tips
- Aim to have 3 – 10 tweets per ad group – the ore the better with Twitter!
- Mix up your ad formats and experiment with them
- Always A/B test your ad copy
- Experiment with video and static ads
- Refresh your ads every 4 or so weeks to maintain ad relevancy
Get in touch!
The key thing to remember with Twitter advertising is have a solid plan before beginning your campaign. A carefully planned campaign is more likely to give you a better ROI and build stronger relationships with your audience.
Twitter is a great platform for PPC – so it’s worth taking the time to build a strategy that will get the most out of your marketing efforts. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact our London based team here.