With 69 million monthly active Twitter users in the U.S alone, and 54% of users reporting that they have taken action after seeing a brand mentioned in Tweets, it’s kind of a no-brainer to use Twitter ads to get your firm in front of the right people (Source: Brandwatch).
So, to help you get started with Twitter advertising we’ve put together a step-by-step guide that you can use as a checklist when setting up your first ads.
If you like this, check out our other checklists: LinkedIn Sponsored Content and Blog Marketing
How to set up effective Twitter Ads:
1. Access Twitter’s ad platform
Log into your Twitter account.
In the top right-hand corner of your browser, between the search bar and the Tweet button, click on your profile logo. In the drop-down menu, click ‘Twitter ads’ to access the Twitter ads manager.
2. Check your account
You’ll be brought to the Twitter ads Campaign Manager page of the ad platform, where you will see all of your current (live and paused) and expired campaigns, if you have any.
Choose the correct ad account—the one you want to send ads out from.
3. Create a campaign
Click on the ‘create campaign’ button.
Note: For Twitter ads, targeting is set at campaign level, so for each new audience you want to target, you need a new campaign. You can use the same adverts for multiple campaigns, by selecting them when you reach the ‘choose creatives’ part of the campaign set up.
The image below visualizes how the campaign, ad set and adverts are arranged:
4. Choose an objective
When you start creating the campaign, Twitter will first ask you to pick an objective. Twitter outlines which objective you should choose depending on what you want your campaign to achieve.
For example, if lead generation is your objective then you would choose ‘website clicks or conversions’.
5. Outline details
Once you’ve picked your objective, you need to fill in your ‘campaign details’. These include:
- Campaign name: This is an internal label but it’s important to make it as self-explanatory as possible (trust me, you’ll thank yourself later). E.g. Newsletter signup campaign 2018.
- Daily budget: You should base your daily budget on your experience of previous campaigns. If this is your first campaign you should base calculations on conservative predictions.
Note: Later on in the process you can set a total ad group budget, which gives you control over how much you spend on a specific ad group. But more on that in a bit.
6. Choose your creatives
Once you’ve set a daily budget, you need to choose the campaign creatives (this is the part you think of when you imagine a ‘Twitter ad’).
You can either promote the posts you already have on your Twitter profile (the ones you post organically) or you can create new posts. I recommend creating new ads for your campaigns.
Tip: As of 7 November 2017, Twitter’s maximum character count is 280 characters however the most effective Twitter ads have relatively short ad copy. Try and keep the number of characters between 150 and 200.
7. Choose your targeting options
Once you’ve got the creatives, you need to select who you want your ads to be served to. Choose the most appropriate targeting criteria based on who your target audience is.
Tip: I recommend only targeting by one criteria e.g. by keywords or by followers.
The only required targeting criteria is location. Currently, the optional targeting criteria include things like:
• Keywords: You can target through broad or phrase match keyword targeting. For example, you can target people who tweet about something relevant to your industry.
• Followers: This is our most used method of targeting. You can target people that follow specific Twitter handles.
• Event targeting: Event targeting reaches people interested in global or regional events.
This stage of the campaign set up is one of the most important, so try and think past the superficial. When making a decision about which targeting criteria to use, try and think about what the people in your audience have in common with each other.
8. Choose a bid and budget
At this point, you have already chosen a daily budget. Now you can choose to set a total ad group budget.
The benefit of this option is that if you set a maximum budget on your ad group, you don’t need to check in on how much is being spent (so you avoid overspending).
Tip: Although this seems like a great, easy option I recommend monitoring your ads so that you know what’s working and what’s not before the campaign ends.
9. Launch The campaign
Review your campaign details and you’re ready to launch the campaign.
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Twitter ads are one of the most effective ways to advertise your firm, however it does take skill and experience to get it right. Plus, all of the monitoring and tweaking can be pretty time consuming.
If you don’t feel that you have the skills to ensure you get the most from your budget or aren’t seeing the results you want, get in touch.
Our team of expert social media strategists will devise a road map that breaks through the noise and gets your firm noticed.
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