August 21, 2017
Thinking about advertising on Twitter for yourself or for a client? In this article, I will briefly cover a strategic overview for getting started with Twitter Ads. The topics I will touch on are the very first questions that I came to mind for me when I knew I was going to be managing ads on Twitter for the first time. They are also the first questions your client will most likely be asking you as well.
My initial thoughts on Twitter’s platform experience are not immensely positive, as far as getting things set up. I did not find the platform to be intuitive and it definitely felt clunky at first go. I recommend checking out a few videos on YouTube if you’re struggling, it’s much easier with a little guidance.
Campaigns & Targeting Strategy
Since Twitter is more of an awareness play we have to make sure we are managing expectations of performance with our clients. That being said, the best way to dive into Twitter is to start with remarketing. This ensures you are advertising to a more qualified audience and increases your chances for clicks, conversions, or whichever engagement metric you are using. You can target different segments of website visitors or an email list you upload through tailored audiences.
After you have your remarketing campaigns running, then you can move into prospecting. There are many different targeting options available for prospecting. An easy place to start is by choosing the interest most closely related to your business. You could also target followers of a particular person or company, including your own. You just need to get in there and not be afraid to test different targeting to figure out what works the best for your company or client. Check out this Twitter Targeting Tactics article for more information.
Budgeting
This will vary greatly depending on how much dough you have to spend and your risk tolerance. Typically, I recommend 10% of your PPC budget go towards testing, so divide that up depending on what other initiatives you are currently testing.
Initially, I start with a 50/50 split between remarketing and prospecting. For example, if my monthly budget was $4,000 I would put $2,000 towards remarketing and $2,000 towards prospecting. This is just a starting point and when you start to get the feel for how your specific account is performing you’ll know how to adjust those budgets. When you’re inputting your budget keep in mind that Twitter runs on daily budgets so divide your monthly budget up appropriately.
For bidding, start with automatic bidding until you have some data to go off of and then you can implement your own maximum bids if you choose.
Creatives
There is no right or wrong ad type to run, it’s all about testing what works for your business. Best advice is to pick 2-3 ad types and test them out to see which performs the best. I would do this for a few rounds with different creatives to get a full picture of performance by ad type. I have not found the ideal way to implement ad tests on Twitter. Some people prefer to run the ads at the same time and some prefer to run one ad for seven days and then the other ad the following seven days. Again, try both and see which works for you.
A few ad types you could start with are a single image tweet, website card, or plain text tweet. You can also do multi-image, video, and app specific tweets. Make sure to check out the different creative specifications.
Conversion Tracking
Twitter uses a universal tracking code that only needs to be placed once. After that code is placed, you can create different remarketing audiences and conversion actions in the Twitter interface based on website URLs.
Conclusion
Put aside some budget for new initiatives and don’t be afraid of testing new platforms. In order to grow, you must be willing to take risks and experiment.