Let’s talk Twitter ads, because we talk a lot about Facebook ads. We talk a lot about Pinterest ads, but the reality is there are a lot of ways to invest in your marketing. There’s a lot of ways to invest just in your social media marketing. Twitter ads is definitely one of them. As we go into the end of the year, especially when it comes around to the holidays, and we start thinking about … Facebook ads are getting really really crowded. It’s really good to look for other alternatives. It’s really good to look for some options that are going to allow you to get in front of your audience, connect with the people you want to, but maybe connect with them in a way that’s more aligned with what they’re looking for when they’re on that network.
Twitter is definitely a really good example of that because going to look at what are they looking for when they’re here? What are they thinking about when they’re here? What are they focused on when they’re here? A lot time that comes down to getting the right content in front of them and that might be better to do on Twitter than it is Facebook any time of year, but especially going into the holidays. I know for me, during the holiday time starting in October, I don’t run a lot of Facebook ads. In fact, November and December I don’t generally run any Facebook ads, but I do take that budget and I put it over in Twitter. I put it in LinkedIn. I don’t generally put it on Pinterest because you’re going to run into the same distribution problems you’re running into on Facebook. For me, Twitter and LinkedIn, I can maximize my budget in a big big way and drive a lot of relevant traffic to what I want to be driving them to. Whereas, it’s just more difficult to do on Facebook.
In the spirit of getting ready for that now, and not later which we’ll talk about in the next couple of episodes, I want to share a little bit about what you need to know about when it comes to Twitter ads. I love this stuff if you’re somebody who’s thinking, “I have zero Twitter ads. I don’t need to listen to this episode.” A lot of the things we’re going to talk about today are relevant for any kind of ads you’re creating. Really if you look at it big-picture, these same lessons apply to any piece of marketing you’re doing. If you don’t know these things, you’re going to run into less than satisfactory results, we’ll put it that way.
Let’s jump in and talk about what these 3 things are.
#1: know your goals.
If you don’t know what result you want to see from a piece of marketing, you’re going to fail right from the start. Here’s why, not just because you’re not going to be able to get any sort of good measure of whether it was successful or not, which you’re not. Not because you’re going to feel like you’re spending money an nothing’s happening, which you will. Mostly because you can’t give your audience a clear path, you can’t give the consumer of the ad, or consumer of the marketing, a next step and a call-to-action if you don’t know where you want them to go, what result you want from it. That really is a really critical step 1. Know your goal.
When you look at Twitter ads you can have a lot of goals. You can talk about trying to drive traffic to an opt-in. You can talk about trying to drive traffic to a sales page. You can talk about trying to increase engagement and replies. You can talk about trying to increase your following and actually grow the audience size that you have there. Those are direct goals for the ad. You want to that, but that direct goal for the ad is actually going to be based on a larger goal. Let’s think about this from an example we’ll used throughout the show. I like to have some sense of consistency with you guys.
Let’s talk about Hit the Mic Backstage. Hit the Mic Backstage is a premium membership community where people can get social media trainings. Let’s say that I’m using Twitter ads because my ultimate goal is to increase the membership of Hit the Mic Backstage. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m running a Twitter ad right to the sales page. What I might be running is a Twitter ad to an opt-in that’s got a trip-wire and then that trip-wire helps get them into the membership. I have to know my big-picture goal so that I can backtrack that to what’s my goal for each of these ads.
Within a campaign or within a larger setup, I may run a couple of different ads. In the stretch of a launch or maybe pre-launch, it’s about me growing my following a little bit, actually getting some targeted new followers to help increase the scope of people I’m talking to. Then maybe it’s driving traffic to value-based content. Then maybe it’s driving traffic to an opt-in and a sales page. Know what your big goal is so you can work backwards. The big goal for today is getting members into Hit the Mic Backstage. We’re going to work backwards and say, “Okay, we’re going to actually run ads that are tweets about Hit the Mic Backstage and about the opt-in that drives traffic that.”
That’s going to be the best way to go because now I know exactly what I want to say in that ad to help move them along that path and towards the goal I have outlined. You see how knowing your goals really is the first step. It’s going to put everything else in place. Especially when you talk about … If you don’t know what your goal is, you don’t know who your ideal client is. For me, for example, I don’t know who I want to target an ad to if I just know that I want stuff to happen. Now, am I driving traffic towards Hit the Mic Backstage or am I driving traffic to consulting clients? Those are different clients for me and so those are different parameters. That’s different targeting and so unless I know that goal, I can’t know that targeting.
That’s why we have to do the goal first, because the #2 thing we need to know when we’re setting up our Twitter ads is who are we targeting.
You hear me talk about this a lot when we talk about Facebook ads because targeting really is the difference maker. It really is the piece that can make or break the success of the campaign, because you could have the best copy and the best graphics and the best landing page in the world but if you’re showing them to the wrong people it’s going to be incredibly difficult to see results. It’s going to be impossible, in fact, to really get the traction that you want to get. Know your target, and not just the age and their gender and maybe where they’re located. I’m talking specifics. Who else are they following?
One of the cool things of Twitter ads that we can do is we can actually target the followers of other people. We can actually target exactly who is interested in other things. Think about the people you admire, the other people they’re looking to for advice on what you’re talking about, their favorite shows, their favorite actors. Those sorts of things where when you know them, you know all about them. Not just their age, not just their gender, not just the fact that they live in the states or they live in the U.K. or whatever. It’s knowing what are they interested in, what are they doing, who are they connected with on Twitter?
That’s going to be a really valuable part of knowing how to target your ad. It’s really really incredibly powerful when you can say, “The people who follow these 6 people are the people I’m speaking to and so that’s what my targeting is.” Now you’re speaking to a much smaller audience, a smaller section of people. Especially going back to #1 when we’re talking about your goals. If your goal is to increase your following, you’re only going to see value from that if you’re targeting the right group of people to follow you. You’ll get followers.
You can put $100 into the Twitter ads machine and say, “I want more followers.”, and you’ll get more followers. If you don’t have specific targeting, the people who follow you are not going to add any long-term value to your business. Yes, you got followers. Maybe you paid 25 cents a follower, and I’m just making up numbers here for the sake of an example, but that 25 cents per follower is only money well-spent if that new follower is somebody who is interested in what you’re talking about. Who is looking for your advice. Who is looking for your products. Who is looking for your information, your services, whatever. Make sure again that that targeting is there. I would rather pay $1 per follower and know that these are for sure people who are going to be buying from me in the near future, because now I’ve spent $1 to make whatever your product or service price is instead of spending 25 cents to get a number. A number that’s very likely going to un-follow me if I don’t follow them back.
I’ve tested this a lot of ways and I’ve seen it play out exactly the same over and over again. When you don’t get specific with the targeting, you will just see a mass follow and then a mass un-follow. You’ll end up right back where you started. The couple of people who hang on just aren’t quality. Make sure your targeting is there.
#3: your budget.
I feel like this is not talked enough about when we talk about ads of any kind. I feel like it might especially be important on Twitter. Twitter can blow through a budget very, very, very quickly if you don’t know your goals and you don’t know your targeting. You’re going to be sort of all over the place, sort of fire hose of Twitter ads. Knowing your budget is really really valuable because the smaller that budget is, the more important it is for you to know that targeting is going to be tight. When you have a larger budget, you have a little more wiggle room with your targeting. You have a little more wiggle room with your goal, even. You have a more general goal, but when your budget is small you need to have a very specific end-result goal. You need to have a very specific set of targeting parameters so that you know you are getting your maximum value.
Start early with your budget, and I don’t just mean, “Oh, well I want to spend $100 on this campaign.” How much do you want to be spending per ad? How do you want to be spending per week? It may be that you’re running several different ads over the course of a month for a launch. Not just what does that month budget look like, what does the budget look like for each phase of that? If you don’t have that, it’s very very likely that you’re going to spend way more than you anticipated spending. I don’t want that to happen. Know your budget and then let those goals, let that targeting reflect what that budget is because it’s going to be important that you keep track.
When you don’t know your budget, when you don’t know your targeting, when you don’t know your goals, it’s impossible to get any sense of return on investment. It’s impossible to say, “Yes these worked or yes these didn’t.” I’ve had people email me again and again and again and say, “You know, Twitter ads just don’t work.” They do work, just like Facebook ads, just like LinkedIn ads, just like anything. You have to do the work to make them work. It would be super nice if you didn’t, but that’s the way it is. Make sure you put in the time to go through these things.
If you want to know the brass tacks of how to actually build your next Twitter ad campaign, check out hitthemicbackstage.com. Like all of the training since I’ve Hit the Mic Backstage, you’re going to be watching me actually build Twitter ads. I’m going to walk you through every step, every screen, so that you can build your ads with success. That’s the how, this is the what. This is the strategy of it. Make sure you have these things in place before you build that stuff, but come on over and join us at hitthemicbackstage.com and get the specifics of how to walk through Twitter and really build the ads that will make you some ROI goodness. I will see you on Tuesday.
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