More than four years after introducing advertising on its platform, Twitter has changed the way businesses create ads. And as with any game in which the rules have shifted, players adapt by developing new strategies.
Since August, advertisers have started by choosing an objective, which can be followers, clicks, retweets, replies or being designated a “favorite” tweet. Or the goal can be measured by conversions — that is, taking an advertiser’s desired action, like producing a sale or a website visit, installing an app or generating a lead.
The pricing changed, too. Now Twitter charges advertisers only when their ads produce the objectives they have set, enabling small businesses to design their ads more purposefully. But some say this can make Twitter more expensive than other digital platforms, like Facebook, in cost per conversion or per click-through.
Ads on Twitter look like regular tweets, except for a yellow arrow and the words “promoted by” under the tweet. They can be shown to users according to their interests, whom they follow, who follows them, location, gender, language, the device they use (down to the operating system) and television shows and films they watch. Advertisers can use a Twitter “card,” a tool that lets them attach photos, videos or a short-form Vine video to their ads and includes a clickable call to action like “read more” or “shop now.”
Suitey, an online real estate brokerage based in Manhattan, aims its Twitter ads at people “in their early 30s that are working in New York City and have the disposable income to rent or buy here,” said its marketing manager, Austin Bradley.
Debra Aho Williamson, principal social media analyst at the digital market research firm eMarketer, said Twitter dominated real-time marketing tied to news events, television shows and movies. “Twitter is where consumers generally go for breaking news or to talk about what’s happening around them,” she said.
According to eMarketer, 61 percent of American companies now use Twitter for marketing. The platform has been popular among advertisers because the objective-based model means they pay only when there is engagement, Ms. Williamson said. “That means there is little to no wasted spending.” Twitter had 284 million average monthly users on its site as of Sept. 30, according to the company’s third-quarter results, and eMarketer estimated Twitter’s 2014 ad revenue at more than $1 billion.
Twitter’s own research shows that the most effective ads use images or videos, or are relatively short — fewer than 100 characters. Small-business owners using Twitter ads have some other suggestions for what works and what doesn’t.
GETTING LEADS
Reuben Pressman, the company’s founder and chief executive, said every dollar he spent on Twitter converted to $10 in sales. “It works because our market is on Twitter,” he said, and because he chooses his targets very narrowly. Check I’m Here finds that its ads produce an 11 percent rate of engagement — actions like clicks, retweets or replies.
Social Fresh, a New York-based company that offers education in social media, uses Twitter ads to get email addresses of potential customers. The company’s ads contain a call to action, for example: “Get our weekly Social Fresh Tip, social marketing tactics that save you time and make you money. Sign up below.”
“Twitter is great for that because it can pre-populate email addresses on the sign-up page,” said Jason Keath, the company’s chief executive. Each email lead is worth about $20 to the company; the acquisition cost on Twitter is less than $5, he said.
INCREASING SALES
Alex Bowman, until recently head of marketing and operations for the Cincinnati company, identifies accounts whose tweets are largely about being a parent, like bloggers, book authors and magazines, and aims to reach their followers. “Twitter also recommends handles similar to the ones we listed as our target and they are surprisingly spot-on,” Mr. Bowman said.
In choosing targets, he avoids followers of accounts with an enormous audience, like Oprah Winfrey. “You lose the tight targeting that Twitter can provide,” Mr. Bowman said. “Following those with a smaller audience gives a better return.”
ChoreMonster, which offers a free app and derives advertising revenue from it, spends $5,000 a month on Twitter ads. It says it quadrupled its user base in the last year. (Mr. Bowman left ChoreMonster to start his own company.)
Suitey, an online real estate brokerage firm based in Manhattan, uses Twitter to advertise properties and attract traffic to the company’s website. Its marketing manager, Austin Bradley, aims the ads at people “in their early 30s that are working in New York City and have the disposable income to rent or buy here.” He finds them by guessing what and whom they are following, whether Bloomberg, Forbes or Bill Gates.
Suitey spends $30 to $50 a day on Twitter. The average click-through rate is 2 to 4 percent, with each click costing about 80 cents, much higher than the 32 cents the company pays, on average, for a click on a Facebook ad. Even so, Mr. Bradley said, the company feels the ads are worth it.
“There are users on Twitter that aren’t on Facebook,” he said. “It might take a little more money to acquire them, but the acquisition is still valuable.”
ACQUIRING FOLLOWERS
“It was an American flag and a beautiful guy and girl wearing our sunglasses,” he said. The ad wasn’t selling anything specifically, Mr. Kleinman said, but was aimed at getting people interested in following the Mason brand. “It worked,” he added. “We got 193 new followers.”
Mr. Pressman of Check I’m Here, however, said he didn’t use promoted accounts. He has found that followers acquired that way are not as engaged as followers who come to the company in other ways.
WHAT TO TWEET
Preet Anand, founder and chief executive of BlueLight, a Silicon Valley-based phone app especially for those on college campuses that routes 911 calls placed through the app to the nearest responder, uses Twitter ads to promote safety awareness, which leads to installation of its app.
A recent tweet aimed at the San Jose State University community read: “Did you know half of the blue Emergency Call boxes at San Jose State are broken?” It also included a link to install the app. BlueLight spent $115 on the campaign and received a 30 percent bump in website traffic for about two days. The median cost per app installation was $1.80.
Perhaps as important for an emerging brand, it got people talking. “We had a lot of people tweeting back to us, saying this is such useful info and what a great promoted tweet,” Mr. Anand said. “That was awesome, because right now, our biggest form of advertising is word of mouth.”