Twitter is a unique commodity as it allows its users to react and respond to adverts in a number of different forms. Users are able to reply via @reply to the advertisement and can also tweet the advertisement themselves to display the content to their followers. Advertisers benefit from having the ability to immediately add advertisements to their favourite list on the website thus allowing the user to revisit past material that would often catch attention immediately but be forgotten over time. All of these potentialities illustrate Twitter’s divergence from conventional social advertising and display its variety of features that advertising brands can gain from.
So why advertise on Twitter? Because there is an undeniable number of opportunities and benefits available for companies and brands considering advertising on it. The company’s revenues are no illusion; Twitter has made the millions it has because it provides a service that caters for all universal marketing objectives. These can be categorised into three main functions: Promotions, Brand Awareness and Followers.
By utilising Twitter, companies can promote their businesses and stock in a more unique and revolutionary way than ever before. Furthermore, it allows these companies to gain exposure to a variety of audiences and thus expands their market range and universal appeal. Twitter also offers a pay-per-follow service that allows budding companies to create a solid, paying following which is able to access new developments as time goes on.
Twitter has three main advertisement products that have all been vastly successful recently. These are: The promoted account, promoted tweets and promoted trends. The success of these can mainly be underpinned by Twitter’s capacity to focus on the satisfaction and capabilities of its user base rather than solely focus on the money aspect that often plagues the modern industry.
Twitters Promoted Account Advertising Model
The first main advertisement product of Twitter is the Promoted Account feature. Promoted Accounts are a featured segment in the Who to Follow section that suggests new accounts for users to add as they fit criteria that illustrate they may be interesting to the user. Promoted Account ads are priced on a cost-per-follower basis and advertisers are only required to pay for new customers gained. The suggested bid to start with for this is $.50 but can reach a maximum of $2.50.
These suggestions are formed by analysing the user’s followings and followers to formulate which accounts are similar to the users and what trend they seem to follow in regards to who they follow. Similarly, when advertisers choose to promote an account, Twitter utilises an algorithm to calculate a specific and targeted audience from the account’s following trend and followers. If after examination Twitter finds that certain users follow some of these identified accounts but not the advertisers account itself then it automatically recommends the advertising account to that user. Thus someone who follows a number of football accounts but does not follow a specific page on football equipment would be recommended it through Twitter. The services capability to make advertising more user-specific is essential in outlining Twitter’s superior advertising ability and its use to companies searching for a more effective way of advertising.
Twitters Promoted Tweet Advertising Model
The second key advertisement products of Twitter are the Promoted Tweets which are present on the twitter timeline in the non-paid tweets section. They still display aspects of normal Tweets and so can be re-tweeted and responded to. These tweets are paid for by advertisers in order for Twitter to examine their accounts and market their ideas more effectively. Promoted tweets utilise cost-per-click pricing and Twitter suggests $.50 to at least a max of $1.50.Twitter examines the advertiser’s tweets and utilises the five most attractive to form an advert that gets distributed to users automatically. It then uses its system in order to determine which accounts timelines are appropriate for the promoted tweets to appear in. These tweets are clearly marked as promotional and are only posted to users that are deemed relevant and appropriate to the advertisement. Thus promotional tweeting is attractive to advertisers who are seeking to reach a larger number of users or to engage with their existing followers. Its capacitance to allow advertisers to market their stock in a more specific and attractive way and to a less apathetic audience, highlights the monumental benefits of selecting Twitter as your preferred advertising medium. In specific cases where the user is unhappy with the presence of a promotional tweet, it is possible for them to simply press discard and remove it from their profile thus preserving user satisfaction and preventing any longstanding animosity towards lingering advertisements. It is also worth noting that once a promotional tweet has appeared once on a user profile, it does not surface again. The effectiveness of promotional Tweeting can be viewed through the success of Papa John's last February where they tweeted a picture of a Valentine Day Pizza and a link that allowed people to order and managed to obtain a whopping 34% engagement rate. Similarly Google managed to obtain a 38% engagement rate when promotionally tweeting their new product Google Instant. Whilst the common engagement rate is typically about 5% the success of these companies illustrate that with appropriate use and the right timing, Promotional Tweets can have a monumental impact in the success of launching products.
Twitters Promoted Trend Advertising Model
The third advertisement product offered by Twitter is the Promoted Trend these are found alongside the user timeline amidst the Twitter trends. These originated as an extension of the Promoted Tweets idea but have expanded into a product in its own right. Users are able to view promotions and advertisements by contextual and event based trends and can access all related tweets by clicking on the promotional trend in the Trending topic list. This is a hugely beneficial feature to all advertisers as the positioning of the Promoted Trends on Twitter allow them to gain huge exposure and so it is an ideal feature for marketers looking to intensify a conversation on Twitter or give their product a larger following. The effectiveness of Twitter Trends in advertising can be witnessed directly by the success of the Coca Cola campaign on Twitter in the 2010 World Cup. During this period, Coca Cola advertised #WC2010 as their Promoted Trend and obtained 86 million impressions within that one day. While the total expenditure for Coca Cola was close to $100000, the campaign should be regarded as an undeniable success as spending a few tens of thousands to obtain 86 million impressions is an impressive feat indeed. In recent times the price of Twitter Trends for advertisers has risen from around $100,000 to $120,000, however the high levels of exposure that can be incurred from the entire Twitter database means that the price is worthy of its price tag.
What Does it Mean For Me
Ultimately, Twitter is an exciting medium for advertisers and has potential to one of the most effective universally with some shrewd planning and calculated improvements. Through the Promoted Account, incremental, loyal followers can be obtained cheaply and while the cost of this may be greater than that of Facebook, the specificity remedies this setback. Moreover it is this specificity that allows Twitter to stand above its social networking contemporaries; through its Promotional Tweet and Promotional Trend service advertisers are given a chance to increase the effectiveness and impact of their ads by tailoring them to individuals who are most likely to respond to them. This is reflected in the success of multiple market campaigns such as Google, Spice, Ford and many more. Furthermore, Twitter’s ability to offer an advertisement service that benefits both advertiser and consumer is a unique one; while Facebook adverts often appear as an inconvenience, Twitter adverts have been incorporated into the entire “discovery” process for Twitter User’s.
Ask one of the team at Assisted Reputation, to help formulate an effective Twitter strategy as part of your on-going social media management campaign and start benefiting from the many new social advertising opportunities on offer.