Twitter is a social media platform unlike any other, and it remains one of the most widely-used social platforms today despite being one of the first platforms to gain widespread adoption. Twitter marketing remains a priority for many brands, with objectives ranging from boosting Twitter impressions to growing the brand’s following.
Like most of the major social networks, Twitter advertising is playing an increasingly prominent role in building an effective brand presence on the platform. (Tactics like capitalizing on Twitter trending hashtags or finding out how to see old tweets to share will only get you so far, after all.)
If you’re getting ready to launch your first-ever Twitter advertising campaign – or you’re simply looking for expert tips and guidance from the pros – you’ve come to the right place. To help you create a masterful Twitter ad campaign, we reached out to a panel of social media pros and Twitter advertising experts and asked them to answer this question:
“What’s the single most important thing for marketers to understand about creating a Twitter advertising campaign?”
Meet Our Panel of Social Media Pros:
Keep reading to find out what our pros had to say about the most important things you need to understand about creating a Twitter advertising campaign.
Christian Lowery
Christian Lowery is a freelance digital marketer based in NYC with expertise in social media management, advertising, and consulting.
“The most important thing for marketers to understand about creating a Twitter advertising campaign is to use the followers of similar/competitor accounts when setting up your target audience. For example, if Samsung wanted to run an ad campaign about why Samsung phones are the best on the market, they could target their campaign to the followers of Apple and other similar accounts. Targeting the followers of similar accounts can help you advertise to those who likely need your product/service the most. It also removes some of the guesswork and prevents you from targeting too many parameters, which will often lead to a lower CTR.”
Kyle Flaherty
Kyle Flaherty is the CMO at Zaius.
“Segmentation is the number one thing people should consider when creating a Twitter ad campaign. If you don’t properly segment your audience based on behavior and intent, it won’t matter how creative your ad or how much money you spend. In fact, segmentation allows you to tailor the ad for the audience you want to reach, spend dollars more effectively, and drive much higher ROI.”
Aman Thakral
Aman Thakral is the Co-Founder of FundRocket. He has over 8 years of experience working on data-driven software products, with a strong focus on both machine learning and engineering. He has worked on software from end-to-end, and brings with him a passion for data, an insatiable curiosity, and drive to build compassionate technology.
“Want to engage your customers in a meaningful way though Twitter advertising, but are unsure of where to start? You’re not alone: a new study by FundRocket found that 1-in-4 business owners cite advertising and marketing as one of their biggest challenges. Take advantage of Twitter’s platform and talk with potential customers directly – include messaging in your ads that directly asks the reader questions that they can respond to. This is the single best way to show a genuine interest in the people that support you without seeming spammy, while also learning more about their interests and needs.”
Jameson Sharp
Jameson “Doc” Sharp runs a growing advertising agency in Kansas City, Mo. Jameson’s advertising, marketing, and video production agency was nominated for Small Business of The Year by Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. For inquiries visit Blackbeard’s Media.
“I believe the best way of creating a Twitter advertising campaign is to generally look at the content and conversations surrounding the topic of interest. Then create a piece of content and message that joins the conversation, creating interest and engagement among all the people who see your client’s advertisement or messaged content. Become a part of the conversation on Twitter; don’t be the conversation. It’s a winning strategy I have used over and over again.”
Mathew Porter
Mathew Porter is the Director of Kumo.
“The most important thing that any marketer should understand when creating a Twitter advertising campaign is to understand the key objectives of the campaign. By understanding what needs to be achieved from a campaign, marketers can make informed decisions when researching, building, running, optimizing, and reporting on a campaign. If the key objectives are not being reached when studying your analytical data, you are able to refine or adjust the campaign to try to meet those objectives.”
Jason Thibault
Jason Thibault runs the content promotion agency, Massive Kontent, which specializes in content amplification via Twitter ads.
“The single most important thing to take into consideration before launching a Twitter advertising campaign is determining your desired outcome. Brand awareness and website clicks are not 100% compatible goals – although there will be some overlap. Making your outcome goals a priority will help you to build out the best campaign possible from the get-go.
“If a company is looking to maximize their conversions or website clicks, then they’d want to pre-build highly relevant, tailored audiences for upload into Twitter ads manager from either existing email lists or username extractions from tools such as Followerwonk or Ahrefs. I’d test both promoted tweets and ‘dark tweets’ using Twitter cards in order to take advantage of full-sized clickable images.
“If their goal is awareness or engagement on the Twitter platform, I would recommend that they run a video (30 seconds or less) with one punchy line of text to stand out in the feed. Audience-wise, I’d opt for a larger user base by clicking on ‘Expand your reach by targeting similar users’ under targeting and test different keywords and follower look-alike groupings.”
Jeff Goering
Jeff has served as a Digital Media Campaign Specialist in both agency and corporate media settings. Before serving in his role at The Karma Group, Jeff managed digital campaigns for Aurora BayCare Medical Center.
“Though Twitter allows marketers to pull many of the same targeting levers as other advertising platforms, it stands alone as the social media channel with the most churn. Information and trending news are shared in real-time. Content and sponsorships must not only be relevant, but timely. This requires a greater burden of agility on the marketing team to change out or update creative early and as-needed to keep messaging fresh.”
Max Robinson
Max Robinson works at CBDiablo.
“Expect some backlash: Twitter is a bit like Reddit, in that the most active users on the platform are typically more outspoken and opinionated. It’s extremely difficult to market to this type of person as they’ll often be quite cynical and will question everything they see and read online (quite rightly too). So be aware that if you’re marketing on Twitter, you will experience at least some backlash. Even if the information within your marketing materials is completely accurate, the mere fact that you are marketing on the platform will likely ruffle some feathers. You can help to reduce this backlash by ensuring that your marketing is not too intrusive and that you’re being honest in your claims.”
Nate Masterson
Nate Masterson is the CEO of Maple Holistics.
“Branding is one of the most vital steps in reaching your target audience on Twitter. You need to establish a well-rounded brand ‘voice’ to set the tone for your account. This can be accomplished with your written content, but you’re more likely to succeed if you can master visual content. The goal is for your tweets to stand out and look appealing while also blending in seamlessly without appearing like an ad.“
Hassan Alnassir
Hassan Alnassir is the founder and owner of the kids toy business Premium Joy.
“When creating a Twitter advertising campaign, marketers should always keep in mind that tweets are typically restricted to 280 characters. If the tweet exceeds the character upper limit, it will probably be truncated, resulting in an incomplete ad copy showing up to potential leads. Advertisers should take advantage of all the space available for Twitter ads content, but must make sure to stay below the character limit. To maximize the use of the allowed tweet length, it’s crucial to always shrink the links that will be included, through utilizing a URL shortener like Bitly.”
Manvi Agarwal
Manvi is a Marketing & Communication Strategist at SocialPilot. Social Media is Manvi’s niche area in which she employs an interactive user-oriented strategy and loves exploring this industry’s tips & tricks.
“The important thing for marketers to understand about creating a Twitter advertising campaign is to first decide their goal. What are they trying to achieve from this advertisement – whether it’s engagement on the post, maybe want to make a hashtag viral? Driving the Twitter audience to their website – by adding a CTA? Just want to increase their followers? Want to build leads and further nurture them for your end goal?
“These are the first and most important things for marketers to look into in order to start Twitter advertising campaigns. Twitter has a vast number of users and is always looking out for fast updates. One needs to be tricky to do a Twitter ad campaign due to the nature of Twitter. ”
Charlie Worrall
Charlie Worrall is the Digital Marketing Executive of Imaginaire Digital.
“Less is more. It’s a simple adage that works. Overcomplicating everything just doesn’t work in today’s market. Marketing now means short and snappy pieces of content are more likely to grab people’s attention and then let them move on. With our ‘instant society’ in which everything is constantly at our fingertips, from news to TV shows, we can access an immediate flurry of information and data and with this, we pay less attention. This means we have to adapt our content to match. Shorter articles and videos usually convert better with the addition of the odd definitive guide or option piece offering a lengthier approach. So make it easy to understand your message or go through with your CTA.”
Morgan Lathaen
Morgan Lathaen recently graduated from The Florida State University and is now employed at thumbprint as their Marketing and Brand Coordinator. They source, distribute, and store all your promotional item needs.
“Introduce yourself. Don’t assume that the people who see your Twitter ads already know what your business is about. Use an image or some sort of copy to highlight you! This way, people who see the tweet will know why they should bother to click, follow, or engage.”
Ryan Born
Ryan Born is the CEO of Cloud Campaign, a digital platform that helps marketing agencies scale social media management.
“You must provide a compelling and time-sensitive carrot. The ad must have a scroll-stopping offer, or carrot, as we like to call it. An offer so good, that the user doesn’t want to risk scrolling past it and never seeing it again, so they click on the ad to claim the offer.
“In a similar vein, the offer should be time sensitive so they feel compelled to follow through with the purchase or lead gen form or whatever it is that you’re trying to get them to do.
“As an example, for our social media marketing platform for agencies, Cloud Campaign, we offer free white-labeling to any marketing agency that signs up for a demo. It’s a very compelling offer because we normally charge $400 for white-labeling. It’s also time-sensitive because we only offer the promo for a certain period of time.”
Dylan Max
Dylan Max is the Head of Growth Marketing at Sendoso, the sending platform for direct mail marketing. He specializes in Conversion Rate Optimization, which requires one to be an expert on understanding the intersection between people and platforms (e.g., Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).
“Twitter is a unique platform because it caters to thought leaders more so than any of the other main social platforms out there. Be it fashion, technology, business, politics, or entertainment, you can bank that people who have a voice are exercising it on Twitter.
“That’s why the most important thing for marketers to understand is that they are reaching out to people who like to stand on their soapbox. Impressing these influencers may yield higher referral traffic than the average ad clicker from Google ads. So make sure to cater your message accordingly. Instead of marketing your standard product on Twitter, consider running an ad asking thought leaders to join a podcast. If you can capture the attention of these influencers, you will likely benefit from their following. Just make sure the people following those influencers are people who are a good fit to buy your product.”
Adeel Shabir
Adeel Shabir is a Content Marketing Executive at GigWorker, a media outlet focused on the gig economy, sharing insights on content marketing and related topics.
“With the following three tips, you can create amazing ads on Twitter:
“1. Call-to-action: Keep your call-to-action to minimal characters which will create a normal attention span with the viewers so that they might end up clicking your ad.
“2. Clear images: Images are a great way to start a conversation and are an easy way to maintain a connection between your business and customer. Follow the Twitter guidelines. You can speak much more with an image rather than having a descriptive text.
“3. Offer something of value: It’s human nature to love everything which is free. Provide something free for the customer to grab their attention and break down whatever barriers are stopping people from taking the next step.”
Kelley Galloway
Kelley Galloway is the Director of Marketing and Branding at Association of Independent Mortgage Experts. She comes from the start-up world where she learned to truly appreciate a fast-paced work environment. Her expertise lies in social media strategy creation, building online communities, and creating engaging content for optimized distribution.
“The most important thing for marketers to understand about creating a Twitter ad campaign is to know who their audience is and what exactly they’re looking for. Having a solid understanding of your audience, demographics, psychographics, and pain points is crucial for any successful ad campaign. Understand who your audience is, then figure out what they want; solve their problems.”
Ameet Khabra
Ameet Khabra is the owner of Ameet Khabra Marketing, a PPC-focused agency based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
“Always create a bespoke ad; don’t just promote a post. Use this opportunity to speak directly to your customers and tailor your message to your campaign! Keep it short and concise and add some urgency (if your product or service calls for it). Bonus tip: use a URL shortener to properly track clicks.”
Stacy Caprio
Stacy Caprio is the Founder of Her.CEO.
“The most important thing marketers should keep in mind when creating a Twitter ad campaign is to make the copy directly relevant and beneficial to their audience. If it sounds spammy or too much like an ad with no benefit to their audience, it will be ignored and not have as much success.”
Stan Tan
Stan Tan is the digital marketing manager at Selby’s.
“Get straight to the point. In Twitter, the attention span is one of the lowest among the social networks. People scroll past tweets very quickly. When advertising on Twitter, your message need to be crisp, clear, and concise. If you want to elaborate more or tell a story about your brand or your product, do that on the landing page. Your goal of the Twitter ad is to get them to click.”
Jitesh Keswani
Jitesh Keswani is the CEO of e-intelligence.
“Creating a Twitter Ad is somewhat similar to how you would create any other social media platform ad. You will make an ad campaign depending on your business, select your target audience, make a budget plan along with creating design ideas, and finally launch it.
“Sounds like every other campaign you’ve done on Instagram and Facebook, right?
“There’s just one additional thing you want to do is learn about the two features available on Twitter:
“Twitter Ads – They reach out to a considerable number of people, but the ones that aren’t selectively targeted. So in spite of reaching out to millions, you might not get the results you were hoping for. On the other hand, who knows, you could get lucky with most people who viewed your ad.
“Promote Mode – When you’ve opted for the promote mode, Twitter displays your ads to a specific set of users. This gives you an advantage over the regular ads since the audience is more likely to engage with the data. Your username and contact information will be displayed by Twitter which will be beneficial for your company.
“Depending on whether you just want to reach out to more people or actually turn profits from them, you can pick the mode that works best for your business.”
Jared Weitz
Jared Weitz is the CEO/Founder of United Capital Source Inc.
“View a Twitter advertising campaign as an opportunity to entertain an audience, as opposed to sell, and you will create success. People will be more likely to advocate for the ad if it is engaging and fun as opposed to a dry salesy message. Invite fans to share and participate in the campaign itself. Do this by building a campaign centered around ads that are fun, colorful, and engaging. Select and utilize GIFs or visuals that are share-worthy and high quality resolution, make it something fans want to share with others. Don’t neglect the power of a visual cue; use highly contrasting colors for CTA (call-to-actions) that encourage sharing. When you create a CTA or ad image with largely diverse colors, studies have shown a 75% higher click through rate.”
Emma Knightly
Emma Knightly is a marketing executive at the Digital Marketing Institute. They run worldwide digital marketing courses, as well as corporate social selling courses. Her roles span across all aspects of the marketing department, with particular focus on social media and content.
“Twitter is more of a conversational platform that a sales-focused one. It’s great for UGC, promoted updates, and general awareness driving as you can get a large amount of reach, engagement, and traffic for quite a low cost.
“However, in terms of ecommerce sales or business leads, the jury is still out on Twitter and its effectiveness for conversion. We’ve seen pretty modest results for any lower funnel campaigns on Twitter in the past. They are trying to catch up, but it’s nowhere near the standard of Facebook or Instagram for conversion-based advertising.
“So, the most important thing that marketers should bear in mind is that Twitter is crucial for top of the funnel brand awareness, engagement, and interacting with you customers, and should play a role in both your organic and paid social media strategies – but when budgeting campaign spend and projecting results, it’s important to keep in mind that Twitter advertising shouldn’t be relied upon for lead generation or sales.”
Stuart Walters
Stuart Walters is the Head of Digital Marketing at Alexander Advertising and has specialized in social media advertising since 2009.
“It is difficult to choose the single most important thing to understand about creating a Twitter advertising campaign because honestly, it depends on the campaign and it depends on the industry. However, it is crucial to understand how your target audience uses Twitter, especially if you wish to target using keywords. By analyzing the way your audience interacts and communicates on Twitter before you begin your targeting choices, you can ensure that you are optimizing your campaigns as much as possible. Targeting on Twitter can be extremely detailed and accurate, if you understand which words to target. This involves looking at the regional vocabulary and sociolects (the dialects of different social groups) of your target audience to ensure that you are covering all bases. The language used on Twitter and social media can vary greatly from other social situations, so it is extremely important to understand how to target the right people at the right time.”
Jordan Kremer
Jordan Kremer is a Paid Media Specialist at THAT Agency in West Palm Beach, FL. With more than 5 years of experience in planning, producing, and analyzing digital advertising campaigns for local businesses and national brands alike, Jordan relies on data-backed decisions for campaign optimization.
“The single most important thing for marketers to understand about creating a Twitter advertising campaign is the user experience. On Twitter (outside of remarketing), users targeted for ads are likely in your ‘funnel’ but may not be actively searching for – or aware of – your brand. In addition, Twitter makes advertisements look native almost better than any other platform, so your ad will likely have at least a second for an impression instead of getting passed over. Taking these two UX aspects (low brand awareness and native-looking posts) into consideration, marketers should avoid pushing messaging that is disruptive to browsing. For example, we’ve seen success with advertisements on Twitter prefaced by a question or engaging headline like ‘How to Double Your ROI from Twitter Advertising’ instead of ‘THAT Agency Offers Twitter Advertisement Packages.'”
Jerry Haffey Jr.
Jerry Haffey, Jr. joined Ambrosia Treatment Center in 2007 and serves as the President of Business Development. In this capacity, Jerry and his team bridge the gap between the family struggling with addiction and the lifesaving treatment that they need. His responsibilities include the marketing, outreach, wellness, and admissions departments of Ambrosia.
“The most important thing is to have a clear goal in mind and design your campaign around that goal. If you want to get more followers, gain more awareness for your brand, or attract more engagement from your current followers, keep that specific objective in mind when your brainstorming, designing, and implementing your ads.
“If you want to increase your engagement, for example, tweet something that naturally gets a conversation started, like a controversial subject or a current event. Ask the audience for their opinion. That will push your followers to respond and retweet and spark a conversation around your brand, increasing awareness and driving more people to your page.”
Ollie Smith
Ollie Smith is the Chief Executive Officer of ExpertSure.
“In my opinion, the implementation of a flexible editorial calendar is central to the success of any social media driven advertising campaign. Launching a promotional drive without first setting out clear content creation principles and consistency that an editorial calendar affords you is counter-productive and may ultimately cripple your campaign. Utilizing an editorial calendar enables you to remain current – planning content months ahead to take into consideration product developments or general news. Secondly, it allows you to create the assets you need for the campaign, be it images, videos, or article text. Finally, the calendar empowers its users through assisting with project management and helping with lead generation. If you have trouble keeping up project updates, an editorial calendar will keep you focused and on track. Furthermore, all this planning and management will let you sharpen your content to better meet the needs of your target audience, increasing your chances of generating leads from your campaign.
“You ultimately want to create relevant and valuable content and the calendar enables you to stay current – planning.”
Andrei Vasilescu
Andrei Vasilescu is a renowned Digital Marketing expert and CEO of a Money Saving platform in the name of DontPayFull. He has been providing cutting-edge digital marketing services to various international companies and different online coupons of various brands for years.
“Relevance is the most important thing. You know how to create very attractive Twitter campaigns with eye-catching visuals and engaging text content. But what if viewers do nothing after being highly entertained by your Twitter campaigns? So, attracting relevant viewers is much more important than just entertaining everyone with your Twitter campaign. The ultimate goal of any social media campaign is to ensure conversion as much as possible, precisely driving online traffic to business websites. Twitter users hit the CTAs you provide in your Twitter campaign only if they found your campaign relevant to them. Your Twitter campaign must reach your predefined target audience who will most likely want to visit your website for more information and eventually respond to your campaign as you planned. Hence, relevance is essential for your Twitter campaigns to succeed.”
Lizzie Dunn
Lizzie is an SEO Associate at Fundera, a marketplace for small business financial solutions, where she specializes in content optimization and marketing.
“The single most important thing that marketers need to understand about creating a Twitter advertising campaign is that you have the ability to run A/B tests within your campaign. This allows you to test two different tweets that reflect the strategy you’re looking to execute. More importantly, the most informative results of A/B testing will come from testing the smallest of changes between two tweets. This is the most effective way to gain insight into tweet performance and gives marketers additional layers of insight that they can apply to across their entire social media marketing plan.”
Don’t just rely on your Twitter advertising campaign to get more exposure for your tweets and your content. Install the Twitter share button to make it easy for your readers to share your blog or website content in a single click. It’s so easy to install that you can be up and running in just minutes!
