The adorable little bluebird Twitter logo has become an icon of pop culture. With tweets being posted constantly, Twitter has become the center of the social media world.

Everyone from politicians to athletes is on the platform. Sharing news and opinions, facts, and thoughts. Celebrities have taken to Twitter to create a name for themselves and to further boost their fame.

Twitter is definitely one of the primary means of online communication today. Since its launch, it’s grown into a tech world monster, creating a place to exchange ideas and network with others. 

It’s become a place to share trends, current events, and communicate in real-time about what’s happening with others all over the world. 

It was originally brainstormed as a group SMS platform, what we would call a group text today. Simply looking for an easier way to chat, the minds behind Twitter came up with a revolutionary new way to communicate.

The Twitter inventors called this practice microblogging, sharing small blurbs of information with each other and as a group. It was implemented as an internal communication tool for their workplace. 

That was back in 2006. Fast forward to the present, and Twitter has become widespread all over the world. Now, Twitter has over 330 million monthly active users. 

Countless campaigns and viral accounts have aided the growth of this platform. What was once used as a simple tool for collaboration is now a meeting place for millions worldwide. 

Twitter has become the must-have social tool, a way to share ideas with others, and a forum for debate. Whatever it may be that draws users to the site, they tend to stick around and check back several times a day.

So how can this benefit your brand? How do you harness the power of this incredible platform and use it to reach your marketing goals?

This guide will help you understand the different types of Twitter ads and campaigns and how to choose the best ones for your objectives. You’ll also learn about the budgeting tools and the targeting strategy for your Twitter advertising campaign. 

Part of the battle is creating great ads. So we’ll talk about how to do just that while getting the most out of your marketing dollars and adjusting your strategy as necessary.

How Twitter Took Off

After its four founders created the communication tool, it didn’t take long to take off. The very first tweet was published by one of the founders, Jack Dorsey, in March of 2006.

The next year, at the South by Southwest interactive conference, Twitter made a huge splash. The number of published tweets tripled just during the time of the event. The tool became the go-to communication tool for the tech gathering, and a ton of buzz surrounded it. 

After that, Twitter became well known, and the number of tweets continued escalating. By 2010, Twitter users were churning out 50 million tweets per day. However, the platform was nowhere near its peak.

It soon morphed into a platform to discuss events with others all over the world. From the NBA finals to the World Cup, tweets were flying over the internet, analyzing plays and athletes. This ability to chat in real-time gave users a sense of virtual community.

Then in 2012, Twitter announced that it had hit the 140 million user mark just half a decade since its debut to the world. This prompted the company to continue its rapid growth, acquiring multiple additional tools and platforms.

Over these years, Twitter was undergoing constant refreshes and facelifts to keep the home page user friendly and current. These transformations allowed the platform to stay popular and relevant despite the many other social media apps popping onto the scene.

Last year in 2019, Twitter’s revenue exceeded a billion dollars. It also boasts an impressive advertising income, showing its popularity with marketers. These increasing numbers serve to show that the success of Twitter just keeps growing and is a smart place for many brands to put their ad dollars. 

Now, there are 500 million tweets sent per day. That’s half a million messages on what was once an internal office communication tool. Clearly, Twitter is the place to be. Using the platform to get the word out about your brand can be a genius decision. 

Know Who’s On Twitter To Increase Ad Effectiveness

One of the most important things to think about when you consider where you’re going to advertise is who you plan to advertise to. Fortunately, there are 152 million daily active users to choose from. 

The platform has a pretty diverse demographic when it comes to social media. The usage is pretty evenly spread between age groups under fifty, which is great if you are looking for a broader audience. 

This massive audience is perfect for targeting a large range of users. Not only does much of the United States use Twitter, but millions of international users also use it. This is a perfect factor if you are an online brand looking for global awareness.

What’s also great is that Twitter users are largely openminded and ok with exploring brand involvement. In fact, 93 percent of users are totally fine with brands getting involved on the site as long as they do so with purpose and for good reason.

These thoughts are wise to keep in mind as you craft your campaign and target your audience. They can give you some awesome insight not only as to whom you can speak to but also with what voice.

Types of Twitter Ads

It’s important that you have a basic understanding of the types of advertising formats that Twitter offers. This will allow you to craft your campaign and choose the best ad type for your strategy. It will also allow you to thoughtfully and confidently create great content.

Promoted Tweets

You can think of these as the primary voice of your brand. Promoted tweets are perfect for sharing messages about your product to the world. You can even run a survey and comment to engage with potential customers. 

These ads are great for encouraging brand awareness. They can also be retweeted, a great way to get organic views. The trick here is making them worth retweeting. Your content has to be worth it and interesting enough for users to want to share it with the world.

Videos Twitter Ads

Videos are an awesome way to get a lot of info out about your product. A video gives you the chance to share your brand’s benefits. It allows you to use motion and sound to create a mood or demonstrate your product’s usage.

It’s also a great opportunity to be creative, dynamic, and grab the attention of scrollers. The trick is to produce a video that’s stunning yet informative. Make sure your message is shared early on to capitalize on those first few seconds.

Advertising With Twitter Cards

Twitter cards are a fun and unique way to drive traffic to your website. These cards are like virtual business cards that you can attach to your brand’s tweets. 

These are definitely fun to play with and create. They are also an awesome way to drive web traffic or mobile app downloads. 

Crafting Your Twitter Ad Campaign

Now that you are familiar with the Twitter ad formats, it’s time to craft the perfect campaign. To do so requires some thought, planning, and adjusting. 

You want to be both strategic and creative. A successful campaign requires a good balance of logical decision making and outside the box thinking. 

With your goals and objectives in mind, you can develop the framework for your campaign. You can measure its effectiveness and make the smartest decisions for your desired outcomes.

By exploring your brand’s personality, you can craft a truly dynamic campaign. You’ll be able to create a voice for your brand and make your Twitter presence more successful.

Here are some super helpful guidelines to think about before, during, and after crafting your Twitter ad campaign. Use these to make your Twitter advertising successful and cost-efficient. 

Consider Your Marketing Goals When Advertising on Twitter

First things first, you need to think about the goals of your campaign. What is the desired outcome? This will guide you in choosing the types of ad formats that you use.

Building Brand Awareness With Twitter Ads

Maybe you’re just trying to increase brand awareness. You may be wanting to cast the biggest net for the largest reach. Luckily, Twitter has a big-enough audience to do just that. 

Promoted tweets are great for this. They can be shared far and wide to the widest audience possible. You can also narrow the field a little and target large but specific groups.

What’s great is that you only pay for the exposure you get! You’ll be billed for every 1,000 user impressions you receive. 

Be sure to constantly check the analytics to be sure you are getting the impressions you desire. If not, your campaign may need a little tweaking. 

Consider switching up your target audience or the design of your ads. Fortunately, real-time data makes running your campaign based on trial and error a breeze!

Build Consideration Using Twitter Advertising

You might also be trying to build up consideration for your brand. Videos and engagement-driven campaigns are a great way to boost this goal!

When users interact with your tweets, it can be a big win. It can also help you make a huge and lasting impression. With an engagement goal, you can encourage these activities. Plus, you’ll only pay when that actually happens.

The trick here is to start a conversation about your brand. You need to be posting content that others want to share. It will pay off with organic exposure to others on their feed - which is free to you by the way!

Videos are another great way to increase the consideration of your brand. Not only are they an awesome way to tell a story, but they also give you a chance to get more information into the eyes and ears of the user.

You might be worried about the risk of users failing to watch your video, wasting your precious ad dollars. But fear not as Twitter has a super fair system for billing you for video ads. 

The pricing model is based not only on how many views you receive but for how many seconds those viewers actually watch. 

Increase Twitter Ad Conversions

Twitter uses a pretty cool tool to allow you to advertise your app on the platform. App cards give users all the information about your app, all in one easy to read format. 

This app card makes it easy for users to click through and immediately download your app. The card consists of your selected imagery, your app’s reviews, and an install button, all in one place, making it easy for users to make a decision about downloading.

The trick here is to draw users into your app card and get them to click the install button. Great graphics and positive reviews are an awesome selling point. And just as the other types of campaigns, you only pay when you get the desired result of opening your app. 

Make Targeting Decisions When Advertising on Twitter

There are a vast number of users on Twitter, making it a great opportunity for you as a marketer. However, it also means that narrowing your scope may make your campaign much more effective.

First, you can choose to target certain demographics. Maybe your brand is geared more towards a certain age group or gender. You can also target physical locations, especially helpful if you are trying to drive traffic to brick and mortar spots.

However, Twitter’s data allows you to dive deeper and target based on some pretty interesting factors. 

Twitter, by nature, knows what people are tweeting about. This allows you to target an audience of people that have engaged in dialogue related to your brand. Pretty cool right?

You can also use the event targeting tool to promote to an audience interested in large happenings. Selling beer? Target those chatting it up about the Super Bowl. Looking to sell music gear? Build your audience around those hyped about the Grammy’s.

You can use Twitter’s insights to your advantage. Target users based on their hobbies and interests that might be related to your brand. You can also select an audience that’s interested in different types of media like tv shows and movies. 

However you target your audience, keep your eyes on the metrics. You may need to adjust your scope to appeal to a wider audience or narrow your settings to get the most out of your campaign.

Find Your Twitter Brand’s Voice

One of the most important things about your Twitter presence is finding your brand’s voice. This is important for both your Twitter page and when developing ads. 

Create a beautiful page and content that people want to interact with. Make sure it has common themes and tweets that reflect a similar tone and feel. Then, craft advertisements that have the same general voice. 

Check out the Twitter page for the video-sharing platform TikTok. It features a clear color scheme and bold graphics. The verbiage is short, to the point, and direct. 

Now check out one of their promoted tweet advertisements. 

Notice their use of a cohesive tone and verbiage. They carry over the theme that “it all starts on Tik Tok” along with similar calls to action to be proud of your boldness and individuality. This is also a great example of a Twitter Card, making it simple for users to head on over to download the app.

Check Out What’s Trending on Twitter and Use It

Another smart move is to check out what’s trending. Things change at a rapid pace on social media. Grabbing ahold of what’s current can help your brand stay relevant.

For example, here we can see that on Mondays, Monday is a trending subject.

Using a hashtag to relate your brand to what people are talking about further personifies it. It can also get you more exposure as users sift through the popular topics of the day.

Keep Your Content Fresh When Advertising on Twitter

It’s super important to mix up your content and keep it fresh. After a user sees the same ad a few times, it simply becomes white noise. Keep your ads current by refreshing them often.

This doesn’t require more than switching out a photo on your Twitter Card or posting a new promoted tweet. Having new and interesting information will make users want to know more about your brand.

Look at what other users are doing to create dynamic content. Are they reinventing their entire campaign or just making small shifts to keep the audience on their toes? 

Use Clear Messaging In Your Twitter Ad

In a world where character counts are limited, users just aren’t there to read a ton of text. If you want to tell them something, you simply have to get to the point. Make it your goal to get your message across in as few words as possible.

Check out this video ad for The New York Times:

Simple. Concise. To the point. In just a dozen words they show you that their app can be there for you no matter where you are. Combined with simple, identifiable imagery and they have created a need for their app.

Engage with Commenters When Advertising on Twitter

One of the most amazing things about social media is the ability to engage with users. Not only can this will you knew customers, but it also further authenticates your brand’s personality.

Wendy’s Twitter account is infamous for the amazing and entertaining dialogue on their tweets. 

Check out two very different exchanges on one of their promoted tweets. 

In one positive response, they playfully reply to great feedback. However, when approached with a complaint, they are also quick to respond and even promise a resolution.

This type of engagement deepens relationships with customers. It also shows that you’re willing to listen and publicly fix any issues that arise.

Remain Flexible

The Twitter analytics dashboard is an amazingly powerful tool. It gathers all the data that you need to craft an awesome campaign and create a lasting Twitter presence right at your fingertips.

Here, you can analyze the results and effectiveness of each and every tweet. This allows you to evaluate trends like the best times to publish and what types of posts are resonating with users. It can also give you great clues for creating content and tells you what appeals to your audience.

Make sure you’re utilizing your promoted videos to their fullest potential. Export information and easily interpret how many people are viewing your videos and for how long. Look for trends such as when you post videos and how engaging they are compared to others to adjust your strategy.

This realtime data allows you to shift your strategy accordingly. Staying on top of these trends can pay off big time. It allows you to be flexible in your campaign and enhance your long-term effectiveness.

Analyze Your Twitter Ad Results

In the end, the effectiveness of your campaign relies on measurable results. Make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck and that you are reaching your goals.

Twitter provides you with clear reports regarding your campaign results and the related costs. Everything from website traffic to post views can easily be tracked. Using Twitter Brand Surveys, you can determine the impact that your campaign has on your brand’s image and reputation.

Tweeting to Success

Once you determine your goals and develop a strategy for your campaign, you’ll be able to use Twitter’s huge audience and tools to benefit your brand. Taking their data and using it to your advantage will help you target the right customers and hone a well-oiled campaign.

Twitter is a great tool for your branding and marketing strategy. It can help you build awareness and increase sales, growing your company for the long term. Hashtag, success!