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Have you been planning to run Twitter ads, but haven’t been able to make up your mind yet? Or, you’ve given them a shot, but aren’t sure if you can get more from your Twitter ad campaigns.
Either way, we’ve got your back as we dive into how effective Twitter ads are and how to optimize them.
Read on to learn the following below:
Twitter Ads are ads that you run on Twitter, showing up in users’ feeds with a ‘Promoted Tweet’ tag on the bottom of the tweet, which distinguishes it from an organic tweet.
To run a Twitter ad or ad campaign, you’ll need to sign up for a Twitter Ads account that’ll give you a Twitter Ads account. Note that this account is different than your organic Twitter profile/account.
Editor note: No ad campaign is a success unless you know how well it’s doing by tracking all the essential metrics. Get a summary of the campaigns using this Twitter Ads: Campaign Summary Dashboard that gives your campaigns impressions, clicks, spend, and more.
Both the prevailing stats on running Twitter ads and our experts think so. Let’s take it one at a time.
First, about 43.3% of our respondents say that their conversion rates from Twitter ads have gotten better. At the same time, 50% of the respondents say their conversion rates have stayed the same.
No wonder, the majority – 40% and 33.3% – of our respondents launch new Twitter ads on a monthly and weekly basis, respectively.
In other words, there’s good ground for sweet fruit from Twitter ads if your target audience is on the platform.
As for stats proving the effectiveness of Twitter ads, here you go:
Editor’s note: Get a complete picture of how well your Twitter ads are doing with this Twitter Ads: Account Overview Dashboard. It gives you all your impressions, tweet engagements, and ad spend.
Right, so you know that Twitter ads work. But to make the most of them, learn from pros who are running ads on the network with their best tips shared below.
Here’s a list of the tips, followed by the details:
To monitor and improve the performance of your Twitter Ads campaigns, you can spend hours running a variety of reports and compiling selected metrics manually into one dashboard. Or, you can pull all of your data automatically into one dashboard with Databox. You can instantly review all of your campaigns and drill down on important metrics, such as:
Now you can benefit from the experience of our Twitter marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing all the key insights you need to optimize your Twitter ads for conversions. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Twitter account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
As with any other goal that you want to hit, start with putting things into a plan.
In this regard, Bannersnack’s Bernadett Dioszegi suggests, “When your goal is to optimize Twitter ads for lead generation, my advice is to create a serious strategic plan. Think about the goal of your campaign, what type of Twitter card you will use, and don’t forget about your landing page.
For example, if you are a business coaching company and want to gather new email addresses you can create a landing page offering a free PDF about ‘how to start a business online?’ containing valuable information for your future prospects. When people will want to download this PDF will give you their email address, so you can add these new leads to an email nurture campaign and retarget them via advertising platforms you are using, including Twitter ads.”
On top of that, Dioszegi advises, “The Twitter card you use for lead generation should be relevant for your audience so you can attract their attention. You can try to target look-alikes of your custom audiences (e.g. customers, users who asked for a trial, etc.) or follower look-alikes of your competitors.”
On a similar note, work out a content strategy for your ads as Muhammad Ali Sangi from PureVPN recommends.
“Design a content strategy for your tweets. Avoid sounding an excessive amount of for sales or pushful in your tweets. the majority don’t enjoy flagrant marketing on social media.
You’ll get more by being various in your tweets: some will be amusing, gesture fun at your industry/your competitors/your own brand; some will be news-based or relevant, sharing links or commenting concerning problems with interest to your target market; and some should include a transient and clear CTA (call to action), linking to your official website. (That last class is what counts as your lead generation tweets! However, they won’t be effective if you don’t tweet the rest. Twitter users won’t obtain your product if they’re bored by your page.)”
What’s more, Sangi goes on: “Maximize hashtags. take part in conversations wherever you’ll contribute one thing important, to extend your visibility/credibility. You’ll conjointly strive to launch your own brand-specific hashtag.”
Jason Thibault of Massive Kontent shares their experience as well: “Before I spend a single dollar on a new Twitter ad campaign, I pre-build 3-5 new custom-tailored audiences. Using software such as Followerwonk you can source and build custom audiences based on whom certain Twitter users follow and keywords contained in their Twitter bios.
By feeding the ads dashboard a list of highly targeted users you help prime the Twitter conversion pixel. Tools like Ahrefs, Sparktoro, Buzzsumo, and Audiense have made Twitter advertising 5-10x more effective.
I’ll typically build three different audience types. The first will be the top followers of influential Twitter accounts in that vertical. The second audience will be comprised of Twitter users who have engaged (liked/RT’d) with similar content over the past 12 months. A third category might include all the accounts who’ve tweeted specific over the previous month.”
Beekeeper’s Alexandra Zamolo adds to this: “When optimizing Twitter ads for lead generation, it’s ideal to really research your target demographic and ensure that the ad is geared toward their interests. If most of your prospective or current clients seem to be in a certain region, you can even optimize your ad to take that into effect, as well.”
So, what you can do is: “Look at metrics like gender, geographic location, keywords and general interests. With some research, you can determine the correct targeting strategy to not only generate leads – but to generate qualified leads,” outlines Amir Yazdan, M.D. of GroMD.
This is also an essential tip for when you run Twitter ads. It comes from SSPR’s Julianne Weinman who opines, “The first and most important step to increasing lead generation is taking the time to consider where the audience you’re targeting currently stands in the marketing funnel.
If the users who will see your post don’t already know your brand, the chances of converting to a lead on the first touch base is very low. Make sure to usher potential customers through the funnel by first using ad campaigns to introduce your brand to the audience and highlight your differentiators.
Once your target audience has a better understanding of who you are, make sure you’re offering value to the users in your lead generation campaigns. If you’re asking a potential customer to hand over their contact information or complete a purchase, you need to make it worth it with impactful advice, a discount, or a helpful resource.”
That said, Weinman adds, “My last piece of advice: don’t be afraid to pivot! If your audience targeting isn’t hitting the mark, make adjustments based on any demographic data you already have, and A/B test your messaging or imagery to ensure your campaign is running as efficiently and effectively as possible.”
Related: 24 Twitter Marketing Tips for Driving Engagement, Leads, & Sales
This one’s a tip from Brand24. Their team’s Mike Sadowski goes on to share, “Because the ads on Twitter are so beautifully integrated with the feed and they don’t even look like ads, you’ll need to think of something that really catches the eye.
Think of some incentive that you could provide for your potential customer. Perhaps you could picture a story in your advertisement, as stories seem to perform the best. Make sure to use video, too.”
Since we’re already talking about running eye-catching Twitter ads, this one’s a helpful tip. To begin with, AdLock’s Carol Tompkins says, “based on my experience as a marketing and business development consultant, the best way to optimize Twitter ads for lead generation is by including engaging and compelling images and videos in your tweets.
In addition, marketers should strive to have several, highly engaging tweets within a single campaign. This gives the Twitter algorithm more options to choose from.”
And, Caleb Schmitz from Anchor Group says, “Creating eye-popping content for the first 2 seconds of any video ad helps your target audience be engaged long enough to see what value proposition you are offering.”
“We will run multiple campaigns to optimize better with different Lead Generation Cards,” Eric Jones shares their learnings over at Couture Candy.
“Use one type of targeting option with each campaign. We can target our campaign by user interest, behavior, followers, keyword, and location. Each targeting option helps us to identify relevant matrices that work for your online business.
Twitter provides an ‘Automatic Bid’ option which automatically optimizes our bid while keeping your budgets intact. Automatic bidding is cost-efficient as we only pay for links clicked by users.”
Jones continues, “In the overview section, we can quickly analyze which Twitter campaign is reaching the people effectively. Always aim for more than 1% engagement rates while defining benchmarks for your Twitter adverts. If we are achieving lower than 1%, revise your copy and ad creative.
Identify the ads with greater CTR and ROI, those which achieve the best results with the smallest investment. After setting aside the less profitable ones, the campaign focuses on the ads that get results.
Based on the results of the campaign we will know how to identify the most successful variables to implement them in future cases, making each campaign better than the last.”
Related: 3 Must-Monitor Metrics on Your Twitter Dashboard
Maibird’s Andrea Loubier echoes the same: “Twitter ads should be focused on already qualifying leads whenever possible. That’s why it’s important to set up more than one campaign. You can still work from the same budget, but actually create several different campaigns that will be targeted to different groups. You’ll quickly find that your leads will become just as targeted.”
Use these paid ads dashboard to measure the performance of your ads in real-time.
Andre Oentoro from Milkwhale adds another great tip to this list: “To achieve lead generation, we believe that you should increase your reach. So, the best way to optimize Twitter ads for lead generation is to focus on your target audience and increase your reach as much as you can.”
Just as it’s crucial to tweet at an optimal schedule, you should run Twitter ads based on a tried and true posting schedule too.
Alejandro Rioja of Authority Daily comments, “It goes without saying that you need to tweet when your audience is online and can take action because twitter makes sure your users see your content. There are tons of resources online that can guide you about the best posting schedule in your industry. Try to test a few schedules, see what works best for you.”
Matt Rostosky from Cashofferky.com is of the same view: “Your clients are most probably following tweets of hundreds, if not thousands, of people on the platform and it’s in your best interest to know what time the majority of your audiences are hooked on Twitter. This will give you an edge in terms of visibility and potential for organic engagement.”
“The best way to optimize Twitter ads for lead gen is through the use of Twitter Lead Generation Cards, especially with the recently announced addition of Lead Generation Cards to all Twitter Card types,” notes Chris Frantz of Biteable.
“Lead Generation Cards are designed to help you acquire new leads. They are especially effective at driving leads when you’re looking to capture a wide variety of responses, rather than focusing solely on phone numbers or website conversions.
They make it easy for both businesses and users to accomplish this objective. These cards make it easy for companies to collect leads in Twitter by adding simple customizable fields—including a form, company email, and phone number—to tweets.
Lead Generation Cards can be used to amplify your creative or seed your landing pages with highly qualified leads. They are also great for leading customers down the conversion funnel by prompting them to sign up for a free trial, request a consultation, learn more about your products or services, or submit their contact information for follow-up.”
John Ross from Test Prep Insight thinks the opposite of what Frantz suggested. “My best tip to optimize Twitter ads for lead gen is to avoid both Twitter Lead Generation Cards and Website Cards. Instead, use a simple, but effective custom ad card,” writes Ross.
The reason? “We have had greater success in terms of CTR and conversions using custom cards with a simple creative image or graphic, a quick CTA message (no more than one sentence) and a link to a landing page.
That’s it. Our metrics have been much better with such simple campaigns and they are also more cost-effective. The one exception here is if you are only trying to collect names and email addresses. If you’re only looking to gather these two data points, then the Twitter Lead Generation Card is likely the preferred route.”
It also helps to be consistent with what’s trendy when you run Twitter ads. This is why Rodney Yo from Best Online Traffic School insists, “the best way to optimize Twitter ads for lead generation is to make it timely.
Twitter is all about what’s happening at the moment. Take account of this by creating ads that are also a part of the moment. Use event targeting to match your ads to important events or holidays. In addition, observe what’s going on with the world and with your audience to identify opportunities to tie what’s going on right now into your brand.”
“Once you know who you want to reach, you can use targeting handles to reach your desired audience,” advises Melanie Musson of CompareCarInsurance.com. “If a handle has an average demographic that is who you want to target, you can set the ad for that specific handle and it will show to people that follow that handle.”
“When utilizing Twitter ads for lead generation, you’ll need to optimize your Twitter campaign so that it directs customers to your website,” suggests Thomas Bolt of Big EVAL.
“When utilizing Twitter ads for lead generation, you’ll need to optimize your Twitter campaign so that it directs customers to your website. Building post engagement can be a beneficial tactic, but when leads are what you’re after, then the best way to qualify them is to have them visit your site, possibly read gated content or sign up for a newsletter.”
It’s also a good idea to “design a dedicated Twitter landing page for visitors,” says Brack Nelson of Incrementors.
“An inclusive option is to design a particular landing page for those who visit you through social media. This is a chance to provide an overview of who you are, what you do, and who you serve. Plus, you can add links to your email opt-in, commodities or services, or anything else that you think people might be involved in.”
Code Web’s Stephen Gagnon has another good tip for when you run Twitter ads and want to optimize them: “Create a conversion event in your Twitter Ads dashboard that tracks new lead submissions on your website.”
Gagnon explains, “When you create your ad campaign, use the key conversion metric dropdown under ad group details to select your lead-tracking conversion event. This will allow you to compare your ad campaigns and focus your budget on the campaign that generates most leads.”
“Twitter allows you to show your ads to only very specific subsets of its users,” notes James Chong from Top Generator. “You can target users based on their gender, location, language, behavior, and many other metrics.
After running each ad for a little while, study exactly which groups of users who interact with the ad make you the most money on average, and then restrict the ad so that it is only shown to those user groups. This will save you a ton of money, which you can spend on creating even more ads!”
Lastly, keyword targeting to optimize your ads is a tip that DontPayFull’s Andrei Vasilescu shares.
Vasilescu elaborates, “Keyword targeting is the best way to optimize Twitter ads for lead generation. [It] allows you to find the online users who are really relevant to your business. This helps you to narrow your target audience and deliver your content precisely to only those who are interested in your content. This precision greatly helps to get very high engagement which in turn increases conversion of your Twitter ads.”
Felipe Moredo of GBSN Research makes another point, “You need to explore your target’s pain points on your Call To Action, being clear in the message and getting straight to the point. To do so, you must track the keywords related to your business, analyze the sentiment of those mentions, and interpret the needs of your target audience.”
Twitter ads are pretty effective, particularly, for those who have nailed down their target audience persona and are sure their buyers hang out on the platform. Just be sure to target using keywords, make your ads visually appealing, and make a proper plan before you run Twitter ads and optimize them as.
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Masooma is a freelance writer for SaaS and a lover to-do lists. When she's not writing, she usually has her head buried in a business book or fantasy novel.
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