When it comes to advertising on social media, figuring out where best to spend your money isn’t always easy. You can throw a lot of money at the wall and not get much return on investment (ROI) for your efforts. Should you advertise on Twitter? Twitter is one of the social media giants on the internet today, with approximately 330 million monthly active users from all over the world.
Making sure your business has a presence on Twitter allows you to reach those users. In fact, 93 percent of those who follow a small business state they plan to purchase from or have already purchased from that company because of something they saw advertised on Twitter.
Advertising on Twitter offers a good ROI, but you need to do it very strategically. Here are some key things to consider as you prepare to advertise on Twitter:
1. Understand Your Target Audience
As with most types of marketing, you first need to understand your target audience. Social media allows you to narrow the scope of your advertising so your ads reach only those you want them to reach. This saves money over just throwing ads out with a wide net, which may reach those who aren’t even interested in your product or service. Decide who you want to reach and why.
2. Narrow Your Focus
Your next step is narrowing your focus. You don’t want to throw out ads that cover every aspect of your business. Instead, focus on one thing at a time to draw users to your company. You can choose to focus on a specific product, a celebration or news about your company, for example.
Jack Daniels frequently utilizes Twitter ads to show a moment of celebration or share company news, such as celebrating its 150th anniversary. The post above encourages followers to celebrate Mother’s Day with Jack Daniels and shares a video clip to inspire customers to give Mom a break from all the hard work.
3. Track Cost Per Engagement
One of the best ways to figure out what to advertise, when to advertise it and who to advertise it to is to track the cost per engagement on your ads. Twitter gives business owners analytical tools that help them see which ads are performing and with which audiences. Take the time to track the cost of engagement and make sure the ads are delivering as well as you’d like them to. Studying trends and history allows you to better target ads in the future and come up with campaigns that reach your ideal customer effectively.
4. Get in on a Trend
Twitter moves at lightning pace. People tend to jump on a trend, use hashtags and tweet at a rapid-fire pace. The average tweets per day per person is 4.422. If your business tweets several times a day, you may run out of things to tweet about or feel your tweets are falling on deaf ears. One way around this is to jump in on a trend or trending news.
Wendy’s is studied often for its Twitter tweets. The tweets tend to have a snarky edge that people love and find hilarious. They are retweeted often and quoted in news reports, which gives the tweets a wider reach. Recently, it responded to IHOP’s attempt to market a new name (International House of Burgers — IHOB) to promote a new burger line. Wendy’s response was the snarky comment above about pancakes.
5. Create Your Own Tag
With millions of tweets every day, users may have a hard time finding your latest tweet. Enter the hashtag. Businesses create a hashtag around an event or their business in general so users can simply search for that hashtag to locate their latest posts. However, you can also utilize hashtags around events and special occasions in order to reach users hunting for that information. Just make sure it is relevant to your business.
6. Run a Contest
One way to reach people on Twitter is to host a contest. This creates a lot of buzz around your brand. While you will reach people who only want to enter to win something, you’ll also reach people who might be interested in your product. Your reach is also expanded because people tend to share these types of posts, so you connect with their friends and followers as well.
RoohAfza shows one way you can enter a contest to win gift vouchers for its product. Because the prize is for its product, only those interested in that particular type of product will be likely to enter. This contest is simply to name its latest mocktail. The easier and more product related you can make your contest, the more likely your target audience will respond.
7. Run Video Ads
Video ads work well to attract people on social media sites. About 25 percent of marketers in the United States run video ads on Twitter, and about as many plan to increase their video ad spending on social media platform in the coming year. Videos tend to grab the attention of consumers without being as intrusive as an inbox message.
8. Use Lead-Generation Cards
You can have millions of followers on social media, but the social media platform controls those followers. Facebook has proven this in recent years by pushing business page posts down until they are nearly invisible, forcing business owners to boost those posts for even their own followers to see it.
A better use of your funds is to use social media to find leads and then add them to your own list, where you can continue to market to them over time. Twitter offers lead-generation cards with this purpose in mind. You can reach out to your target audience and turn browsers into leads.
9. Promote Your Account
If you want to boost your follower account to help the validity of your online social media presence, you can also take out an ad with that purpose in mind. Instead of an actual ad, this is a quick promotional tool that puts your brand in front of the audience you want to reach in their “who to follow” suggestions. It will show that it is a promoted post in small gray letters, but other than that the entry is identical to people who simply post up in the recommendation list.
Advertising on Twitter
Twitter ads are an inexpensive and effective way to reach new customers in your local area or around the world. The ability to track and measure results allows you to advertise on Twitter in ways that work for your company and your needs as a small-business owner. Over time, your campaigns will become more optimized and profitable.
About The Author
Eleanor Hecks is the Editor-in-Chief of Designerly Magazine, an online publication dedicated to providing in-depth content from the design and marketing industries. When she's not designing or writing code, you can find her exploring the outdoors with her husband and dog in their RV, burning calories at a local Zumba class, or curled up with a good book with her cats Gem and Cali.
You can find more of Eleanor's work at www.eleanorhecks.com.
