With the whole world connected via social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, advertising on these mediums would seem a no-brainer to promote your business.
Twitter found that 76.3% of users access their service through mobile devices. If your business has a solid mobile marketing strategy in place, Twitter would be your ideal place for advertising, right?
Not so fast my friends. WordStream made the conclusion after an in-depth analysis that neither Twitter or Facebook is a great advertising option for direct response (lead generation) marketing.
The benefits
On the face of it, Twitter looks like the ideal platform for promotions with its numerous advertising options and analytics allowing easy tracking of your campaign. Twitter ads do well to grab the attention of the user by being placed in amongst other non-advertising material in the Twitter stream. Advertisements are also highly targeted as they are directed to specific users based on their interests, search patterns or who they follow.
Experiments have shown that Twitter has a more successful Click through rate (CTR) than its competitors. According to WordStream, The CTR for Twitter campaigns was 3.6% which compared very favorably against Facebooks ads which only achieved a 0.4% CTR.
If you are looking to get clicks to your site and increase awareness, Twitter would be a great place to get started. Keep in mind, the clicks are not going to come cheap and it can be tougher to convert on mobile devices compared to desktop.
What about the negatives?
Well the first major drawback is the comparatively pricey advertising costs compared to Facebook. Twitter allows you to set you advertising budget per Tweet and per Follow. Their recommended starting point is $1.50 for tweets and $2.50 for follows. At these rates, small businesses or blog owners trying to increase traffic to their site may struggle to gain sufficient numbers without a heavily funded advertising campaign. Your cash can be chewed through pretty quickly and with no guarantee of lasting results such as new followers, more blog subscribers or a sale. However, if you have a blog and really want/need to gain traffic on a specific post, a $50 campaign could net you 40-50 more views. If you have strong sales copy on your post or are currently running a very attractive special offer, Twitter ads could offer a satisfactory return on investment.
One thing to note is that if your niche is on a trendy subject, such as celebrity gossip, you'll have to raise your price per tweet significantly to get any sort of traction. This is only going to be viable for the bigger players and getting your small business or blog off the ground with Twitter ads is going to be a tough task.
How to obtain quality traffic at a low price point
If you set-up a custom audience through Twitter, you can target users that have dropped off of your website. This is a great way to generate a lower cost per click and a lower cost per acquisition.
While this isn't going to increase the amount of visitors to your site, it will help convert the ones that dropped off. Also, if you are confident that your advertisements will have a viral component associated to it, this can help your advertisement perform really well.
Are they worth it?
To find success with advertising on Twitter, you need a substantial budget or better hope users share your content like crazy. It's either go all in, or don't bother at all. However, for those with a large bankroll and an innovative strategy, there is the potential for explosive growth through a well-targeted Twitter campaign.