Are you using Twitter to grow your business?
If not, you could be missing out on one of the simplest, most cost-effective forms of custom social media advertising available.
What started as a microblogging platform over a decade ago has now evolved into one of the most essential branding tools for companies and individuals alike. With 320 million active monthly users, Twitter continues to shape its features and relevancy for businesses, including its effectiveness and simplicity as a marketing platform.
Twitter advertising has been around for a while, but it’s never too late to join. Best of all, your first Twitter campaign can be up and working within minutes.
Here’s how you can get started:
Twitter Advertising: A Step-By-Step Guide
Step 1: Sign In To Tour Twitter Ads Account
Use your business Twitter handle and password to sign in to Twitter Ads. You can access the ad manager from your main profile by clicking the egg on the top navigation bar and choosing Twitter Ads from the drop down menu, or you can click here to go to the ad manager directly. If you do not yet have a Twitter account, you can create one there.
If this is your first time logging into Twitter ads, you will need to confirm your time zone, country, and currency. This cannot be changed, so make sure you choose correctly the first time.
Step 2: Choose Your Campaign Trail
When it comes to business advertising, Twitter offers three paid options:
- Promoted Accounts – suggested accounts for users to follow. These appear under a Who to Follow heading to the right of the main feed.
- Promoted Tweets – individual Tweets of your choosing that are accentuated to stand out from non-promoted Tweets.
- Promoted Trends – These appear under a Trending Topics header on the main feed, with Promoted Trends at the top of the list. You can promote your own topic or hashtag, and any Tweet that uses your topic or hashtag will appear on the timeline for that topic.
The type of campaign you choose will determine which of these three options you will use. Twitter offers several types of campaigns to accomplish a variety of objectives.
But first, you will need to establish what you are hoping to gain from your campaign. Use the following information as a guide in choosing the right type of campaign for your Twitter advertising strategy:
Website Visits
If you want to drive traffic to your site, a Website Visits campaign will promote your Tweets to a targeted audience. You pay only when someone clicks on the link in your Tweet.
Followers
This type of campaign is ideal if you are relatively new to Twitter or simply want to boost your reach. Twitter will promote your account to help build your following, and only charge for the followers you acquire. When crafting this type of campaign, make sure you offer people a reason to start following you. Some suggestions include coupons or freebies, special promotions exclusive to Twitter followers, or other valuable nuggets that provide enough incentive for someone to click the Follow button.
Awareness
Launching a new product? Attending or hosting an exclusive event? An Awareness campaign via Promoted Tweets can help draw attention to what’s happening with your brand. In this case, you will pay for a number of impressions. This type of campaign can prove helpful when you need a high level of visibility.
Tweet Engagements
Buzzworthy posts tend to elicit engagement from the Twitterverse. This campaign helps you create Promoted Tweets for product launches, events, contests, or anything that can get your viewers excited and talking. Here, you will pay only for the initial engagement (organic retweets and impressions excluded).
Video Views
Just like regular Tweets, you can promote your videos to a targeted audience. Videos auto-play in a user’s feed to catch attention and encourage engagement, and you only pay for the number of views.
Website Conversions
If website click-throughs aren’t enough, try out Twitter’s new Website Conversion campaign. Just like the Website Visits campaign, you can push links to your website or landing page via a Promoted Tweet, and pay for each link clicked. But the content in this type of Tweet should center around a specific Call to Action, such as a download or signup.
App Installs or Engagement?
Got a mobile app? This campaign will let people know about it via a Promoted Tweet. You can even segment your ad to target people with iOS or Android. Twitter only charges you based on the number of people who click on or install your app, so you can get the best possible ROI.
Step 3: Set Up Your Campaign
Once you set your goals and decide which campaign will most likely help you reach them, Twitter provides step-by-step instructions to get your campaign live. Here’s a preview of what you can expect:
Overview
Here, you will need to provide the following information:
- Campaign Name
- Dates (specific start and end dates or an immediate, continuous run)
- Main website associated with campaign
- Category (choose from a list)
You can also choose to have your ad excluded from particular apps.
Select Your Audience
Twitter provides a multitude of ways to segment and target your audience:
- Location (city, state, country, or postal code)
- Gender
- Language
- Device, Platform or Service Provider
- Specific followers, keywords, interests, behaviors, and other features
One caveat to mention here: If you choose multiple features, you are targeting users that match at least one of those features, rather than users who meet all criteria. Keep your choices to a minimum if you want a stronger segmentation.
Set Your Budget
Decide the total amount you plan to pay for your campaign, then divide that number by the days you plan to run your campaign. This will be your Daily Maximum. You can also include a total budget in this step.
Twitter calculates the price for each link click based on bidding for visibility. You can either set a Maximum Bid not to exceed a particular amount, provide an average, or Target Cost, or let Twitter optimize it for you with an Automatic Bid.
Choose Your Creatives
You can promote any of your previously crafted Tweets, or you can create new ones. Select the ones you want to include in your campaign – A/B test multiple Tweets to see which ones give you the best results – and save and launch your campaign.
One Final Step
Once your campaign goes live, use Twitter analytics to track and measure your results. If you don’t get the outcome you expected by the end of your first campaign, don’t give up.
It can take time to find your sweet spot. But once you do, it will certainly be worth tweeting about.
Benjamin Shepardson is a web development guru and founder of Lakeview Studios. As the company’s leader, Ben brings to the table an innate ability to help small businesses compete with larger competitors through content strategies and SEO.