Every day, somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million tweets are sent by Twitter's 302 million monthly active users, 80% of whom access the social network on mobile devices. Twitter has focused hard on creating valuable advertising tools to get brands into the all-important newsfeed, where ads offer the same experience for users as organic content.
If you're looking to up your Twitter Ads game, give these insanely powerful ad targeting strategies a try:
1. Get Creative with Keyword Targeting
How do you research keywords for your Twitter ads? If you're using the same list you created for your AdWords ads and just dumping it into Twitter using the multiple keyword import tool, you're missing the mark.
Try a tool like Topsy, the social search engine, instead. You can search specific keywords to see how often they've come up in the last week. Or, compare up to three terms to see their performance over the last month:
This can help you decide which keywords to use, but also helps inform the day of week and time of day you should post, as well.
2. Tailored Audiences = Remarketing on Twitter
Remarketing/retargeting is a must for pretty much every advertiser out there -- I just can't imagine what reason you would have for not attempting to recapture the attention of users who had already expressed an interest in your business!
Twitter's remarketing product, Tailored Audiences, launched late in 2013 and works in the same way as other remarketing tools you might have tried. Visitors to your website are tagged so you can get in front of them again on Twitter with targeted messaging.
Targeting people based on their activity on your site allows you to get super personalized with the content you choose to show them on Twitter. For example, you can put an offer for a specific product in a remarketing ad on Twitter, targeting people who visited the relevant category on your ecommerce website.
Or, you can promote a piece of content on a topic they've already expressed interest in on your website.
The key to making Twitter's remarketing a super powerful tool for you is to match the intent expressed in the behavior with the ad messaging or offer you're retargeting with.
3. Use Partner Audiences to Reach People with Expressed Offline Intent
Twitter launched 'Partner Audiences' in March this year to give advertisers the ability to target users based on their offline activity. These audiences are powered by insights from Acxiom and Datalogix and are available under "Select Behavior" in the Twitter Ads UI.
Image: Twitter
Right now, there are over 1,000 different audiences available and Twitter has added new ones since the initial launch. In the screenshot above, for example, you can see 12 broad audience categories, but there are now 14; technology and philanthropy have been added.
You can get crazy specific with Partner Audiences, layering these insights based on their offline purchases and characteristics with Twitter's other targeting options. Just look at the options in the Demographics tab:
4. Add Lookalike-Only-Targeting to Expand Your Reach
Twitter's Lookalike-Only-Targeting is a mouthful, but it works in the same way as Facebook's more simply named Lookalike Audiences.
Basically, it helps advertisers expand their reach by creating an audience of people with traits and characteristics similar to those in the Tailored Audience. If you wanted to get your ad in front of people likely to install your mobile app, for example, you could use lookalikes to get in front of people similar to those who already installed it.
Where it gets super powerful though is in your ability to exclude people. You can expand to lookalikes, but exclude users based on interests, keywords, or other factors. This helps you pre-qualify leads and ensure you're getting the most relevant, motivated traffic to your site.
5. Target the Right Devices for your Landing Page & CTA
Twitter targeting allows you to choose which devices and platforms to target, so use it! If your landing page isn't mobile optimized, you're not offering mobile Twitter users a great experience by sending them there.
On the other hand, if your offer is geared towards people who are on the go - say, a one-day only offer for locals in a specific location - you might want to skip the desktop entirely. If your landing page CTA is click-to-call, you probably don't want desktop, either.
Think carefully about the entire experience a person will have, end to end, in dealing with your ad. Make sure it makes sense and if not, tighten up your targeting!
There you have it - 5 super powerful ad targeting strategies you can put to work on your Twitter today. Be sure to check out my tips for insanely powerful Facebook ad targeting, too.
Main image via Shutterstock