Twitter Ads: A Step by Step guide for marketers

If you were under-estimating the potential of Twitter marketing until now, it is the time to think again! With hundreds and thousands of tweets made every day, the potential of making your brand’s voice reach to your audience is limitless. But, the normal tweets that you make may get lost somewhere in the huge tweet stream. And, that’s where Twitter ads come to the rescue. 

With 330 million monthly active users, Twitter is a platform that provides effective and most precise targeting options to make your post visible to the right people at the right time.

Advertising on Twitter

When you run ads on Twitter, it works as a supplement to your organic growth efforts. You can promote individual tweets or an entire campaign dedicated to specific objectives. There are 8 objectives from which you can choose the one that suits your goals. 

Using Twitter advertising, you will be able to keep your tweets in front of the people who don’t yet follow you, and increase the chances of getting genuine leads and conversions. All this can be done without spending a fortune – you can start with a minimum budget! 

Types of Twitter Advertisements

1. Tweet Promotion

This is when you promote a single tweet. Promoted tweets look just like normal tweets, with a label saying “Promoted” at the lower left-hand corner. They can also consist of videos and are auto-played whenever it appears on the feed of viewers. In case the video is less than 60 seconds, it plays on a loop.

2. Account Promotion

Here, you can promote your entire account instead of just a single tweet. Your account is placed in the timeline of people who can be your potential customers and also shown in the “Who to follow” section. Along with the label of “promoted”, a follow button is also shown in the promotion.

3. Trend promotion

Twitter is known for the “Trending topics” that make us familiar with the discussions that the world around us is making. It is a great collection of hashtags and topics being used in real-time. When you promote a trend, it shows up on the first positions in “Trends for you” section, and thus can reach an immensely wide audience.

4. Moments Promotion

Twitter Moments can be created using a desktop and is basically a collection of tweets that dictate a story. When you choose to promote moments, you are no longer limited by the 280 characters! You can also choose to sponsor other’s brand moments if you have a large number of followers.

5. App cards

Through this promotion, you will be able to present your app to the audience inside a tweet in a super engaging manner. An install button will be incorporated in it, and the viewers can directly download your app by clicking on it.

Which Ad type is best for your business?

• When you are running any contest on Twitter through a tweet and want maximum people to take part in it, or when you are sharing important information – Tweet promotion will be the best option.

• When gaining followers and making people aware of your account is your main motive, you should opt for account promotion, as a follow button is inserted in the tweet. 

• If you want to promote a topic and wish for people to interact with it, trend promotion is there for you, as the promoted topic will directly appear in the trending topics of your target audience.

• When you have an app and would like to increase the installs, you can use the app cards feature. 

Get started with your first Twitter Ad

1. Set up your Twitter Ad account

Log in to your Twitter account and go to “Ads.twitter.com”. Fill in your country and time zone and move ahead. 

2. Choosing the right objective

As discussed earlier, Twitter blesses you with 8 different campaign objectives. Choosing the right one is extremely important to make the ad worthwhile. These objectives are:

• Reach: Choose this when you want to reach the maximum number of people and improve your brand visibility. You will be charged per 1000 impressions.
  
• Pre-roll views: When you select this, you can run a short video at the start of videos from Twitter’s premium content partners, much similar to the ads on YouTube.
  
• Video views: When you promote a video and just want people to watch it, select this. You will be charged for every view.
  
• App installs: You will be charged for whenever a person installs your app from the ad.
  
• Website clicks: Whenever a person goes to your website by clicking on the link in the ad, you will be billed.
  
• Engagements: Choose this when you wish to gain the maximum Twitter engagement on your promoted tweet.
  
• Followers: This works best when you want to increase followers on your Twitter account. You will be charged for every new follower.
  
• App re-engagements: When people already have your application on their phones, and you want them to open and use it, select this objective.

3. Campaign details

Once you decide the perfect objective, it is time to set the campaign name and your budget.

• Set a proper name from which you can identify the twitter promotion.
• Enter a funding source (credit/debit card) from which payments will be made.
• Choose a daily budget and the total budget that you will spend on the campaign.
• Select the start and end date. If you do not choose the end date, the campaign will stop when the amount is used completely.

4. Select the ad group and bidding

You can split your campaign into different ad groups if you want to target different audiences, use different creatives, or carry out A/B testing. When you are just starting out, go for a single ad group.

• Enter a name for your ad group.
• Select the start and end timings. (It is optional, just leave it empty when you are adding only one ad group)
• Total ad group budget will also be the same as the campaign budget. You can set it in case of different ad groups.
• It is recommended to set the bid type to automatic. Twitter will optimize your bid to get the best results.

5. Choose your target audience

Now is the time to fulfill the main purpose of your ad – make it reach to the right people. 

• Gender – If your product is gender-specific, select the gender you are targeting. 
• Age – Select the age group of people who can possibly be interested in your products or services. 
• Location – You can go as specific as your city or postal code, and as broad as the entire country or continent. 
• Platforms – Here, you can select the device type on which you want your ads to be displayed. 
• Audience features – Enter the interests, keywords, events, movies, TV shows, and follower look-alikes, on the basis of which you would like to target people. 
• You can also retarget people who saw or engaged with your past tweets.

6. Creatives

Content is the king! Make sure you include eye-catching creatives and relevant emojis while writing tweets. Use images that are vibrant so that they can stand out in the crowd. If you are uploading a video, it will perform the best if it is between 10-15 seconds.  

7. Choose Ad Placement

Now, select where you want your ad to be displayed. Users’ timelines, profiles and tweet detail pages will be selected by default. Additionally, you can select the option of Search results too.

Now review all the selections that you have made and click on “Launch Campaign” to start your ad! 

Twitter Auto promote mode

In case you do not have the time to go deep into the targeting stuff, you can try the Twitter quick promote mode. It is basically a promotion engine that is always on and does all the things automatically. 

You can set a monthly fee and your accounts, as well as tweets, will get promoted automatically. To know how your ads are performing, you can check twitter analytics from time to time.

Pre-requisites

Before you start running ads on Twitter, make sure that your account is well updated. 

• Keep your profile picture and cover photo as something that resonates with your brand.
• Edit your bio, put links to your website, and add your location. 
• There should be a considerable amount of followers too, so that the people who see your ad can consider following you. 
• Tweet regularly, and engage with your followers on a continuous basis to build an identity. 
• If you don’t have enough time to get into this, you can use a Twitter automation tool that can help you in gaining engagement. There are many tools available out there, like TweetFull, TweetStats, Tweriod, and others, that can provide you amazing results in building your profile and obtain free twitter followers.
• In order to make your brand reach a huge chunk of audience in just a small period of time, you can also approach Twitter influencers to promote your brand.

Takeaway

With the right combination of targeting, creatives, and profile optimization, your brand will be able to generate profitable leads using Twitter! Also, do not ignore what’s working well in organic tweets. Learn what kind of tweets are gaining more attention, and try to incorporate the insights while advertising on Twitter for business. So, take the plunge and launch your first Twitter ads campaign!

To know the tips on how to build twitter engagement organically, click here!