Introduction to Twitter Advertising: What You Need to Know for Your Social Media Shopping Campaigns

Twitter, used by about 12% of Quebec Internet users according to  CEFRIO , has a powerful advertising tool that can reach many people. The tool is available here:  http://ads.twitter.com

Note: the tool is not open to everyone. On the other hand, if you plan to advertise often, you can contact Twitter. It's here: https://business.twitter.com/ . 

There are 3 tools available mainly for Twitter advertising:

• Promoted tweets: increase the reach of a tweet
• Promoted account: increase the number of followers of an account
• Promoted Trend (premium, only available from a representative): Be the Promoted Trend of the day.

This article will focus on the first two types of advertisements since the third is custom ordered.

HOW DOES TWITTER ALLOW US TO TARGET?

Twitter lets you choose a primary targeting method from the following:

• Tags (using user-tweeted tags)
• Interests and followers (using general interests from tweets posted and accounts followed)

• Television (using TV show tweeted by users)
• Custom audiences (using a list of emails you already have)

The first two are the most convenient, as it can be difficult to have a large email list of users in Quebec and the top TV shows in Twitter's list are American shows.

TARGETING BY KEYWORDS

Target people who have tweeted the desired terms . It may sound similar to Google AdWords, but it's not. Your tweets will appear if the person mentioned the chosen keyword in their tweets, interacted with a tweet that had the chosen keyword, or searched for it.

TARGETING BY INTERESTS AND FOLLOWERS

This targeting is the easiest way to target as many people as possible, because it is possible to select very popular accounts that can reach a large target audience. You can start by targeting only accounts related to your industry, but you will quickly need to add to the top 10 users in Quebec to target more people.  

In addition, it is possible to target according to the region. However, unlike Facebook, on Twitter you can only target by province in Canada. You can also target by gender and by devices and platforms used.

WHEN TO USE ADVERTISING?

FOLLOWERS CAMPAIGN

In the case of account promotion, this type of advertising can be considered long-term. We have noticed that it is difficult to spend a lot of money at once given the number of users in Quebec. We are therefore talking about a campaign which, over the weeks, slowly increases the number of subscribers to the account.

PROMOTED TWEETS CAMPAIGN

This type of advertising should be seen much like Facebook's sponsored promotions. This allows you to get a lot more interactions on a post. It can come in handy as part of a contest or promotion.

HOW AD COSTS WORK

A special feature of Twitter Ads is the cost method.

For subscribers , it's simple, you pay for each new subscriber. We can talk about $2 to $3 per subscriber if you want to target precise. Prices vary according to the type of customer chosen.

For Promoted Tweets , you pay for each user who interacts with your tweet. This may mean that if you have an image for example, you pay when a user clicks on the image. You pay as soon as a user clicks on your tweet, whether on a link or otherwise. One of the positives of this method is that you only pay for the first interaction; if the user clicks on the link and interacts with the tweet afterwards, it only counts as one user. 
 

HOW TO ANALYZE YOUR RESULTS

Twitter gives you an in-ads analytics tool that lets you see how your ads performed, as well as interesting details like the interests of the people who interacted or what mobile device they were on.

This can give you leads for the next campaigns you will do on the network.

THE LESS GLORIOUS SIDES OF TWITTER ADS

• The number of users in Quebec is still very small
• Your targeting will have to be very broad to reach a significant number of users
• Difficult to know if we really had clicks to our website
• Much more expensive than other types of web advertising

FOR FURTHER

If you're interested, you can look at the Twitter Lead Generation Cards , which collect emails. 

You can also watch Sponsored Trends, which reach hundreds of thousands of users across Canada.

Thomas.