When it comes to advertising on Twitter, with only 140 characters to get your message across, it can be a challenge. You need to convince Twitter users to click, buy or download via your Twitter ad using only minimum text.
This is only one of the challenges of Twitter advertising, although it is worth it, as the click-through rate of Twitter is generally higher than Facebook. A successful Twitter ad starts with understanding how to target your audience with a product or service that they need or want, here are some targeting strategies that we found work.
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Keyword Targeting
Always the beginning of any digital advertising campaign, even if you use Google Adwords, take the time to review your keywords and see if you’re missing any opportunities. Twitter keyword targeting allows you to connect with users who have recently tweeted or searched for those on Twitter, so you can reach an audience when your business is most relevant to them.
Customer Profile
If you want to make use of Twitter’s many other targeting options, begin by understanding who your customer is. This will help later when you create your Twitter content and give you a clear picture of whom you are trying to reach. Twitter’s Audience Insights tool within Twitter Analytics gives you a range of demographics on age, location, gender etc. along with Lifestyle Interests, all available to you so you can build a clear profile of your type of customer.
When to Tweet
Within your Twitter Ad campaign and when creating your content strategy, keep in mind the timing of your posts. Generally between 12pm and 3pm is the best time to post, with weekdays better for B2B businesses. In a similar vain, weekends are a good time to post for B2C companies, but depends on your products or services.
Testing on different days and times is a good idea and gives you a better understanding of the best times to achieve the highest click-throughs for your business.
Target Devices
Twitter targeting allows you to choose which devices and platforms to target, and with 83% of active Twitter users on mobile you should be aiming to reach these people (unless your landing page isn’t mobile optimised yet!)
It’s essential to think about the complete experience a person will have, from first seeing the ad to the end result or your goal.
‘Scroll Stopping’ Images
The image on your ad is usually the first thing people notice, so when users are scrolling through their Twitter feeds you need to capture their attention and make them pause to read your content and perform your call to action.
Conversational Ads
Twitter announced Conversational ads earlier this year, and whilst still in beta, they are likely to rolled out this year. These are interactive ads that allows users to answer a question by clicking on a hashtag call-to-action, which is then tweeted on their account, thereby making it easier to start a conversation.
Twitter Remarketing
Twitter’s remarketing option, Tailored Audiences, lets you target users who have previously visited your website. By simply placing the Twitter website tag in your site and building an audience, you can target potential customers on Twitter to try again to get your message across.
You can even personalise the message with an offer for a specific product in your remarketing ad on Twitter and target those who visited a particular area within your website.
Twitter has a range of ad formats, similar to Facebook, and you can utilise these different ads depending on your goal and desired outcome. Twitter marketing can drive significant increases in revenue, with its 310 million users and the advanced targeting options available. Although it is vital to have clear goals, choose the right ad format, create engaging content and then measure the results. Have you had success with Twitter Ads?
