How to Run Twitter Ads For Your Business: Your 5-Step Guide

You might have a Twitter account personally, and maybe you’ve even made one for your business to share your latest news, sales, and information. But have you been using this social media platform to the fullest extent? Twitter has more than 336 million monthly users, including 24% of all American adults, and thereby offers a massive audience for any business. And for those who want to join the world of Twitter advertising campaigns, getting started is fairly easy. In this article, we’ll teach you how to run Twitter ads in five easy steps, from creating a promoted account on Twitter to targeting the right audience and choosing the perfect creatives. So, make sure your coffee is hot, your computer has plenty of battery, and let’s get started.

Step 1: Create a Twitter Ads Account

Did you know that 63% of Twitter users follow small business accounts? If you don’t already have a Twitter account, it’s easy to set one up. Simply go to Twitter.com or download the app on your mobile device and choose “Sign Up.” The app will ask you for an email and password, and lead you through creating your profile, from pictures to a short bio. 

Once your account is complete, you can start creating ads by going to the Twitter Ads page. From there, you can choose between promoted tweets and a formal ad campaign. Promoted tweets automatically take recent tweets by Twitter advertisers and promote them in audience newsfeeds. Formal campaigns allow you to choose the exact tweet and creatives you want to promote—this is what we’ll be focusing on in the steps below.

Step 2: Select your objective 

An objective is your goal for the campaign against which you wiill measure success. For example, you may be looking for more followers, or want people to install your app. For ad campaigns on Twitter, you can choose from eight different objectives: 

1. Awareness: Promotes your tweets (similar to the easy promote option). Payment is per 1,000 impressions.
2. Tweet Engagements: This option strategically gears your ad towards engaging audiences. An engagement is a “like,” retweet, or reply. Payment is per engagement.
3. Video Views: Promote a video ad on Twitter. Payment is per view.
4. Followers: Increase your follower count via your ads. Payment is per new follower.
5. Website Clicks: Use your Twitter ad to generate leads on your website. Payment is per click.
6. App installs: Encourage Twitter users to download and use your app. Cost is per app download.
7. In-stream Video Views: Places your video in the newsfeed on Twitter. Payment is per in-stream view.
8. Quick Promote: Automatically puts together your ad—designed for businesses who are strapped for time.

Step 3: Fill in the Details

Now comes the fun part: making your Twitter ad! After you choose your objective, Twitter will bring you to a details page, where you’ll be asked to input important information regarding your ad. Here, you can name your campaign, set up your billing method, choose the app or website you want to promote and set the campaign dates. You can write your tweet, and add in videos, photos, and hashtags to promote user engagement.

For each campaign, you may choose to set up multiple ad groups. Ad groups fall under the same campaign objective, but allow you to test different ads to see which is the most profitable/effective. You can set up variables with everything from budget to timing to creatives, and then compare your ads to find the best option for your brand.

Step 4: Select your Target Audience

A target audience is made up of the people you want to engage with because they’re most likely to buy your product or service. Targeting helps to get your content in front of the right people, so you’re actually paying for quality leads instead of potential dead ends. Twitter’s services allow you to target an audience in multiple ways. Here are three popular options: 

• Keywords: Find your audience based on what they’re tweeting about. You’ll need at least 25 keywords to use this function. Not only does this trigger if your audience used the keyword in their tweet, it also works if your ideal user interacted with a tweet containing one of your keywords. 
• Demographics: Who are your buyers? Are they men or women? How old are they? Where do they live? Demographics allow you to segment out people who fit your ideal buyer persona.
• Followers and interests: If you have a wellness app, you might want to reach people who follow fitness hashtags or influencers. The followers and interests option lets you capture views from an audience who enjoys content related to your offering, regardless of age, location or gender.

Step 5: Bid and Launch

Before launching your campaign, you’ll need to consider your budget, both overall and per conversion (be it followers, engagements, or installs, etc.). For every campaign, you’ll choose an overall maximum spend, as well as the price you are willing to pay per conversion, which is your “bid.” 

Bidding for Twitter ad space works similarly to Google Ads. For every potential “spot,” an auction is automatically run by Twitter. The auction evaluates ad relevance, resonance, and recency, along with your bid amount. Then, the system chooses the best ad to show the user. You don’t pay until the user engages with the ad in the way you’ve specified in your objective.

Once you have everything set up, it’s time to launch! As your campaign runs, you can check your budget status and track ad performance on your Twitter ads account, and make adjustments to increase your visibility and conversions. 

Don’t have time to run your campaigns on your own? The professionals at Marketing Supply Company can do it all, and ensure that your campaign is optimized for peak performance. Contact us today to get started!