It’s a given that you should be using Twitter for your event marketing efforts. However, when it comes to this social network, most people only use it within its primary context. That is, sending out tweets and creating a hashtag to go along with it.
So many people overlook the prospect of Twitter Advertising and the potential for boosting your existing social media promotion. Here’s a few tips to ensure you leverage Twitter Advertising the right way to make it a worthy investment.
How Twitter Advertising Works
Advertised tweets, for the most part, are not unlike regular tweets. Your tweets, though, will be labeled as “promoted,” so users will be able to distinguish it from organic tweets. With this option, promoted tweets can be submitted and seen by users within your designated demographic. Cost-wise, Twitter advertising is also normally more budget-friendly than PPC options like Google advertising.
1.) Experiment with Multiple Campaigns
The art of Twitter Advertising is a trial and error process, and some campaigns are going to be more successful than others. Experiment with multiple promotional tweets using different wording, photos, and hashtags. Within days, you’ll be able to determine a pattern. Do tweets with action and commanding words perform better? Do posts get more retweets when it contains a photo or video?
You should have at a minimum four different tweets. While they can have a similar message or link to your event page, they should all be worded differently and/or contain different pics, GIFs, or videos.
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While experimenting, consider using industry-specific language to really resonate with your demographic. If catering towards a young demographic, for example, then consider using informal language like text-speak and emoji’s. If promoting a digital marketing event, for instance, then a promoted tweet may look something like this:
Attend our event and learn how to achieve a top ranking on the SERP for highly competitive, longtail keywords, all without blackhat tricks.
The tweet above works because it uses words that only people within the digital marketing industry would understand. This gives followers a sense that the tweet is exclusively meant for them.
2.) Include an Offer or Deal
Promo tweets should especially contain some type of deal or special offer. People, after all, like to be flattered with freebies. Include the offer in a tweet that includes a call-to-action. Here’s an example of a promo tweet with an offer for potential event attendees:
Reserve your ticket in the next 24 hours and get an exclusive offer with savings up to 50% off the ticket retail price. (insert link here)
A tweet like the one above is effective because it includes a CLA, not to mention that it provides a limited-time offer that people have to act on soon if they wish to take advantage of the special.
3.) Try Handle Targeting
Handle Targeting lets you target your promo ads to followers of specific handles. If you were selling tickets to a video gaming event, for instance, then you can target the ad towards followers of gaming pages or other fan pages related to the gaming industry.
Once your campaign is live, you can monitor your performance stats and filter them according to specific handles. Based on the metrics, you can remove your ads from handles that are getting a lot of clicks but not converting. When looking up specific handles, you can also look up a number of other actions taken on the ad, such as followers, favorites, and retweets.
80% of Twitter users use their cellular devices when reading or sending tweets.
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It’s recommended that you eliminate handles that are not “pulling their weight.” Log into your dashboard and look at the engagement rate. As a rule of thumb, it’s recommended that you remove handles that have an engagement rate below 2.50%.
4.) Incorporate Keywords
Searching a topic on Twitter is not a whole lot different than performing a search query in the search engine. With that in mind, your promoted tweet should include longtail keywords that someone in your industry might enter when looking for tweets within your niche.
If you were hosting a video game conference, for example, and the event included a launch preview of a new Call of Duty title, then what might people enter when looking for tweets about the news? This may include keyword phrases like:
- Call of Duty launch
- CoD launch
- Call of Duty trailer
- CoD trailer
The keywords above would then be included in your promo tweets, such as in this example:
Attend our event and be the first to preview the new Call of Duty trailer and acquire free, limited-time merchandise #CoDTrailer
5.) Have a Checklist Ready
Before officially kick-starting your campaign, have a checklist for how you want to go about the process.
Here is a sample checklist:
- Objective: What do you want to achieve with this Twitter campaign? Do you want to increase ticket sales? Promote an early bird sales event? Clearly define your goal so you have a way of measuring your success.
- Design: Is the landing page for the site you want to promote ready? Is it fully optimized for mobile devices? This is important because an estimated 80% of Twitter users use their cellular devices when reading or sending tweets.
- Target audience: Have you defined who your targeting handles are going to be?
- Drafted tweets: have you come up with multiple tweets with various wording and images/videos.?
- Budget: Have you determined your allotted budget for the campaign? What will be the cost per click?
- Date: when will you begin the campaign? You should begin at least four weeks out from the event date and preferably sooner.
Make Twitter Advertising a Part of Your Marketing Foray
You’re only using a part of Twitter by sending out normal tweets. To reap the full advantage, be willing to invest in Twitter Advertising to reach a whole new and untapped audience.
Guest Author: Dan McCarthy
Dan McCarthy is an Event Manager at JD Parties, an event management company based in the UK. Dan has 5 years of event project management under his belt. He has worked on many successful events, and currently he shares his knowledge by writing on the company blog. Follow him on Twitter @DanCarthy2.
The post Why Twitter Advertising is Your Key to Event Promotion appeared first on The Social Tables Blog.