Last year, Twitter rolled out Promoted Tweets, an advertising platform that allows brands to generate more exposure for their offers through sponsored listings. Its introduction created a lot of buzz mainly because it was viewed as the social network's first viable business model, one that would enable it to generate revenue and remain competitive. Twitter recently expanded the functionality of its ad platform to make it even more attractive with the recent introduction of Promoted Tweets to Followers. Let's go over this enhancement in more detail and discuss
how a marketer can possibly take advantage.
Your Ads, Right to Your Followers
Promoted Tweets to Followers, Twitter's updated version of Promoted Tweets, could benefit marketers in a huge way. How does it work? Well, from what we have learned, the new and improved ad platform provides advertisers with a direct line to their audience. In a nutshell, it lets you insert your sponsored tweets directly in the timelines viewed by the people following you on the network. A number of major brands are already in line to give the new offering a test run, including Best Western, Dell, HBO, Red Bull, and television network TNT among others. Twitter is also testing it with a variety of not for profit organizations. Names from this list include The American Red Cross, Room to Read, and Make-A-Wish Foundation.
For marketers, the main selling point here is being able to get their ad in front of more people. Since being launched, Promoted Tweets always offered an advantage over conventional tweets by placing your sponsored ad at the top of the timeline, but the direct approach is potentially even more attractive because the people following you or your brand on Twitter are far more likely to see it. If there was a downside to Promoted Tweets to Followers, it would have to be that your ads are limited to the people in your network, which means that it cannot be viewed by other people on Twitter, people who could possibly be interested in what you have to offer.
Is it Worth It?
At this point, questioning Twitter's potential as a marketing tool may be downright silly. However, questioning whether or not investing in its advertising products is worth the price is warranted. It is now a well known fact that advertising on Twitter can be expensive. Various online sources revealed that Promoted Trends, the company's other advertising product, is priced at $120,000 per day. While Twitter has not released an official price on Promoted Tweets,
a source from The Wall Street Journal reported that it is almost equally expensive at $100,000 per ad.
Despite the luxury price tag, Promoted Tweets just might be a valuable investment for the right marketer. According to recent reports, about 600 marketers have invested in Twitter advertising to launch some 6,000 advertising campaigns on the site, with 80% of them coming back to purchase more spots. If this means anything, it could be that advertising with the microblogging service is actually effective.
Author Bio
John is a consultant, best practices activist and advocate for leading web and permission based email marketing software.