For many businesses, Twitter advertising is still something of an uncertain proposition. While Facebook is the obvious choice, in terms of overall reach and breadth of ad options, Twitter's ad products, by comparison, seem somewhat limited and potentially intrusive to the overall user experience. This lack of enthusiasm for Twitter's ad products was reflected in Twitter's Q1 earnings, where revenue growth was more than $20 million behind where it was expected to be.
One of the biggest issues for Twitter has been their direct response ads - ad units that drive users towards a specific goal, like an app download or a website visit. These ads haven't performed as well as the company had hoped, so much so that Twitter was forced to change how they actually charged for these ads - those changes effectively mean Twitter is making a lot less revenue from every direct response ad, now only charging advertisers when the target action is undertaken, as opposed to other actions made as a result of the ad (i.e. favourites, re-tweets or replies). In an effort to combat this and boost their ad products, Twitter has released a new edition of their advertising advice guide #TweetSmarter to help advertisers make the most of their Twitter ads and highlight the potential of Twitter as an advertising medium.
How to Tweet Smarter
For the new guide, Twitter's called upon their global direct response experts, Product Sales Specialist Manager Amanda Felson and Mobile Advertising Specialist Sylvia Lam. Utilising their shared experience, the guide aims to assist advertisers by providing best practice advice and tips, in the hopes those insights will help more people see the potential of Twitter ads. From Twitter's official announcement:
"[Felson and Lam] have looked at thousands of direct response campaigns and understand the creative nuances that make them successful."
With their combined knowledge, Felson and Lam take users through every stage of the ad creation process, specifically looking at Website and App Install Cards. The guide, available for free via Twitter, includes a range of insights and tips aimed at helping advertisers build better ads.
Guiding Principles
The guide includes some interesting stats, particularly in regards to hashtag use:
- Website Cards paired with Tweets that don't include an @ or a # drive 23% more clicks
- App Install Cards paired with Tweets that don't include an @ or a # drive 11% more clicks
This somewhat contradicts common understanding of hashtag use, and definitely appears to go against most common practice in current Twitter ads - most brands would try to include a hashtag to maximise the reach of their posts. The explanation for this?
"Focus the user on the desired action by avoiding @handles and #hashtags. You want the most clickable elements to be the CTA button and the image"
So, giving users more options to click on reduces the chances that they'll click on the option you want them to take - reducing click options better focuses attention to the desired result.
The guide also includes a range of best practices aimed at helping brands maximise ad performance:
These are all helpful notes, and are based on the team's research of "thousands of direct response campaigns", highlighting proven best practices to help drive better ad outcomes. The guide is well-worth a look and provides some great insight into Twitter's direct response ad units.
Testing Times
As another addition to help advertisers maximise their ad options, Twitter has also launched a guide to A/B testing, created in partnership with Hubspot. Called '#TestSmarter", the guide outlines best practices and guidelines on A/B testing of your ads - 'Why is A/B Testing Important?', 'What to Test in Marketing', 'Analysing your A/B Test'.
The guide is a more text-heavy than the #TweetSmarter one, but includes some great explanations of the value and importance of split-testing and how to go about it.
Overall, the additional Twitter advertising guides provide some great insights, and those insights carry more weight knowing that they've come from actual direct response campaign results. The Twitter ads team has approached the guide with a basic user in mind, making the details easy to follow and explaining each point clearly and effectively. Will this mean more businesses utilise Twitter ads? Maybe not, but it will mean those that do will have improved resources at their disposal to help guide them through the process - and certainly, the information provided will make many re-think not only how they maximise and test their Twitter ads, but the principles outlined would largely apply to other networks as well.
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