What was the best part about using Twitter Ads?
While just recently Twitter began offering Conversational Ads which select companies have been using for a few months in beta. They are unique in that they allow you to mix a polling feature together with hashtags which are customized and multimedia with the idea of users sharing the responses to their own Twitter followers. The ads allow brands to ask questions with an either/or answer format each with a hashtag which will show up in your advertisement as well as in your call to actions so that's pretty cool actually. Trending topics are easily the most viral and popular on Twitter which is why this ad placement offers the most value for your business. You can adjust your objective in your ads so for example to focus on Tweet engagement or conversions, or app installs, website clicks or video views. As well as follower growth while each of these has it's value and cost though it's useful to have a variety of metrics from which to help optimize your ad campaigns.
I like that you are only charged when you receive engagement or a triggered action in your ad account so that you are only paying for impressions, views, clicks, followers and so on in a way that can be measured. And you can really only improve what you can measure so that's important and useful to know about Twitter ads. Like any other sort of advertising, it is good to test ads. Two or more in fact, until you find what wins with your audience and then scale up this campaign, or campaigns. It is not viable nor most optimal to pay for merely impressions or views to increase brand awareness. Inbound marketing may serve best for increase word of mouth and organic brand awareness. Pay per click is for targeted advertising. The idea is to measure your campaigns until you know what the average and best cost per action are for your campaign; and this action is defined by your best metric which measures your most productive output whether that's revenue growth, follower growth, membership sign ups or whatever aspect of your business you are looking to experience growth.
What would you change about your experience with Twitter Ads?
The first couple of regular types of Twitter advertising is the most affordable option usually you can have good engagement success with fifty cents to five dollars. But having your brand promoted on the trending section for an entire will set you back a cool two hundred thousand bucks, or so I have read. The targeting options are somewhat limited. If you have a highly specialized brand or niche it may be difficult to target a large enough group to make it a justifiable endeavor. Though if you have a wide enough reach can work well.
Overall Feedback
Twitter Ads have been around since 2010 with three major types available in their promoted trends, accounts, and tweets. As a B2C start up with a unique product which we can run sweepstakes and target a very wide audience in Twitter which is great. It is certainly going to suit a lot of companies who are not B2C in particular, or are highly specialized or niche businesses. Twitter just doesn't work that way for the most part. You can find groups and communities. But the communication is somewhat limited in terms of being a full blown forum for discussing specific issues at length.
Actual forums and Facebook pages or groups, and LinkedIn groups as to what I mean being more appropriate for in depth discussions regarding specialized topics or niches. Though for us Twitter is a terrific tool for promos because our product is somewhat seasonal yet popular on birthdays and anniversaries all year long, and is perhaps more for females within a given age range but even that is quite targeted. Women tend to love our product at any age. And in that Twitter is actually a great platform if you are in a similar position.