What is the Cost of Twitter Ads and How to Build a Campaign
Last update: 29 August 2023 at 01:45 pm
-“Twitter has reached its expiration date,” is one of the most preposterous myths you will ever come across. Many even consider it a dying social media website.
Well, according to a letter to its shareholders and Statista, Twitter’s 2021 revenue was $1,284 million, and by the end of Q2 2022, there was $237 million worth of average monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAUs). Thereby, proving that this old bird still has a lot of potential to skyrocket your business.
This fast-paced platform can be used to achieve a variety of business goals, including brand awareness, driving sales, lead generation, and more.
But, the saturated marketplace of Twitter doesn’t make things easier. The ever-growing competition and limited tweet lengths add to the challenge. Without a strategy in place, your tweet may disappear into the never-ending pile of tweets within minutes of being posted.
Hence, leveraging Twitter advertising and creating an effective campaign is imperative.
In this blog, we will help you determine the Twitter ad’s cost and provide tips to assemble a coherent Twitter campaign to achieve your business goals.
Types of Twitter ads and their costs
The cost of Twitter ads depends upon the ad type you choose. Listed below are three common types of Twitter ads –
Promoted tweets
These are tweets sponsored content that help advertisers reach a vast group of Twitter users or get engaged with the existing follower list.
Promoted tweets have a label “promoted,” displayed at the left-hand bottom, and function the same as regular tweets. This means your follower or audience can retweet it, reply to it, like it and do more.
When it comes to the cost, you can expect to pay anywhere between $0.50 to $2.00 for every first user action of the promoted tweet. This means, on average, a promoted tweet can cost you $1.35 each time Twitter user clicks, retweets, or replies to your tweet.
Promoted account
These are paid ads that promote an account to either gain new followers or increase brand awareness in the marketplace. A promoted account can help push your account to a wide range of users who may find your account interesting or haven’t followed you yet.
You can even target a particular audience when running this type of advertising campaign to make the most out of it. The label “promoted,” is also displayed on promoted account ads to distinguish it from other accounts.
You are required to set a bid amount on how much you wish to pay for every follower you gain through this ad campaign. The typical cost of running this advertising campaign is between $2.00 and $4.00 per follower.
Promoted trends
Based on who you follow, your interests, location, etc., you can find current trending topics and hashtags on the right-hand corner of your Twitter page.
Promoted trends appear at the top of the trending list and feature the label “promoted.”
To appear on the promoted trend list, you are required to place a specific bid amount. For instance, the average cost of placing is $200,000 a day, which makes it ideal only for large enterprises.
As an SME or start-up, you are better off with affordable alternatives – Promoted tweets and promoted accounts.
Also, based on who is helping you run the campaign and how – can affect twitter advertising costs.
For instance,
- With an in-house team, expect to pay the salary plus benefits.
- You can spend $15 to $120 per hour with a freelancer that charges hourly rates.
- Social media marketing agencies, on the other hand, can charge a monthly charge of $4000 to $7000. The best thing about hiring an agency is that you gain access to qualified experts and relevant tools within the said amount. Also, let’s not forget the expertise and skills the experts bring to the table.
Benefits of Twitter ads in a social media marketing strategy
Here are a few of the many benefits of leveraging Twitter ads campaign –
Boosts engagement opportunities
It is predicted that by the end of 2022, there will be more than 325 billion users on Twitter, thereby making Twitter one of the vast pools to boost a brand’s engagement opportunities with potential customers.
Besides, the diverse audience group available on Twitter can help you attract an audience based on their high spending power, making your investment in Twitter ads worthy. If you can utilize promoted trends, you will likely reach the audience you crave for.
The best thing about the Twitter ad is that it isn’t repetitive as YouTube and Facebook, thereby preventing the users from experiencing “ad fatigue.”
Plus, it is seen that Twitter users are more engaged and curious when compared with other social media sites, thereby making it a better platform for boosting engagement opportunities.
Low-cost paid marketing alternative
Compared to other paid promotion platforms, Twitter has a low cost-per-click (CPC) rate.
Based on the bids, billable actions, and type of ad you choose, Twitter’s ad pricing will help you create a campaign that best suits your campaign budget.
Even with a low-cost CPC, Twitter manages to offer the most expensive promotion option that may be out of reach for SMEs but is still quite effective for big brands.
Apart from Twitter ads, billable actions can have an impact on Twitter advertising costs. This is because billable actions feature video views, pre-roll views, install and followers, and engagement.
Based on which feature you use, you will be charged by twitter when your target user triggers the feature.
Even auction bids can influence the Twitter ad cost. The higher the bid, the better the ad visibility. Even a cent can make a huge difference. Also, ensure to consider the quality of your ad, meaning it should be relevant, recent, and reverberate.
Boosts marketing ROI
Twitter ads are excellent for achieving better marketing ROI. And when combined with other social media marketing campaigns and methods, you can yield exceptionally high returns.
Since the audience on Twitter varies hugely from the audience on other social media platforms, you gain an opportunity to cover more ground, thereby boosting the campaign’s reach.
This, in turn, boosts your chances of drastically increasing the overall ROIs because you are targeting a new audience instead of targeting the same over and over again.
Plus, the low-cost ad opportunity offered by Twitter makes it possible to experiment with a new audience and ad types, which may help in boosting the overall marketing ROI.
Obtains valuable customer insights
With thousands of tweets every second, Twitter can prove a valuable source of gaining insights into customer behavior and more.
For instance, you can use Twitter to research trends, fresh topics, etc., that your audience like and care about, thereby giving you a way to reach them effectively.
You can easily scan through the Twitter Explore page to determine trending hashtags and topics in your locality and relevant to your business. The details gathered can be incorporated into your ad campaigns to make the most out of them.
Fosters a brand community
Similar to other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc., Twitter makes it easy to have a first-hand conversation with the target audience. The same can be used to build and cultivate your brand’s community.
For instance, you can start or join relevant conversations, engage with the community and build a genuine and loyal following.
Perhaps, create a hashtag and encourage your target audience to use the same to be featured on your official Twitter account or something similar!
Engaging with the audience through replies and mentions can also boost your brand’s chances of being visible in the non-followers list.
Generates brand awareness and personality
The best thing about social media platforms like Twitter is that it allows you to share information quickly and start a conversation with the target audience in seconds.
If your target audience finds your tweets and content valuable, then the chances of them being retweeted are always high. Also, the greater will be the likes and comment count.
However, it is important that you maintain a style and tone of engagement with the audience. Also, ensure that your brand tone matches the brand’s personality, thereby retaining consistency.
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The type of topics and conversation you are interested in and the tone of your tweets will help entice an audience whose ideas and views match yours.
If you need a refreshed strategy for your brand, you can use the Organic Tweets Starter kit worksheet to establish a tone of voice.
Different steps to setting up Twitter ads
Now that you know the different types of Twitter ads, their costing, and their benefits, it is time to proceed with creating a campaign.
Listed below are six steps to effective and successful Twitter ad campaign setup –
Step 1 – Set up a budget
Before you proceed to create the ad campaign, it is important to spend some time determining your budget. The idea is to identify how much you can spend on your campaign to yield the benefits.
Start by looking at your overall digital marketing budget and note down how much money you will be allocated to other strategies. Once you have an idea of what is your social media marketing budget, you can easily divide it among the platforms you wish you run paid ad campaigns on.
Step 2- Identify your campaign’s goals and objectives
With a budget set, it is time to identify your campaign objectives and goals. What do you wish to achieve through your social media campaigns? Knowing the answer to this question can help you set up your campaign for success.
Here are some goals you might want to set –
- Follower’s count – This goal is best to set when you wish to boost your follower count. With campaigns that boost follower count, you require paying for each follower your account gains.
- Website visit – This goal is best to drive significant traffics to the website. Every time someone clicks on the ad to visit your site, you will be charged. Other engagement typically remains free of charge.
- App install rate – Do you want more people to download your app? Focus on campaigns that earn app installs. Every time someone clicks on the ad to download the app, you will be charged.
- Video views – With a video ad running, your notion must be boosting its view count. Focus on campaigns that earn video views.
- Engagement rate – To build brand recognition, you will require focusing on ads that boost engagement. Such ads charge for every interaction, including clicking, retweeting, liking, or following.
When you know your campaign goal and objective, it becomes easy to pick the right ad type for your business.
For instance, a promoted tweet is best for earning website visits, while a promoted ad account can help earn followers.
Step 3- Decide a bidding amount.
As you might know by now, Twitter ads function on a bidding system. You need to set a bid amount to run the ad.
You can choose from three bidding options –
- Target bid – This bid is only limited to campaigns with the goal of earning followers or website visits. With a target bidding strategy, Twitter optimizes the bid to meet the average daily Twitter advertising costs that either beat or meet your target bid.
- Automatic bid – As per automatic bidding, Twitter will auto-optimize your bid amount based on the objectives of the campaign.
- Max bid – With maximum bidding, you choose how much of an engagement your business is worthy of. With this bid, you may not require paying the full amount every time.
Step 4- Select your tweet.
The next step is choosing the tweets you wish to feature in the ads. It is best to stick with ads that are capable of building brand awareness and earning new leads for your business, especially if you wish to create a lasting first impression of your brand.
You can either create an entirely new tweet for your ad or use one that you have already tweeted. It is up to you to determine which tweet will best suit the ad.
Step 5- Target your audience.
The most crucial part of setting up a Twitter ad is selecting the target audience.
Twitter makes it possible to target people based on factors like location, age, language, demographics, and more, thereby ensuring you reach the right people at the right time. You can even use advanced targeting factors like country, postal code, and metro to narrow down your target audience list.
Twitter also provides an option to upload a custom list of the target audience. This list can be used to retarget those interested in your brand or to create a target audience similar to a familiar follower base.
Step 6- Launch the campaign and monitor results
By now, you must have set all the required perimeters for your campaign, meaning it is the “show time.”
Launch the campaign and monitor it simultaneously to make any necessary tweaks and optimizations to keep improving it.
To be concluded
If your notion is to expand your brand through social media, then Twitter is a must-have weapon in your marketing armory.
With various beneficial features such as having a tailored audience, being performance-based, and being one of the cheapest alternatives to advertise on, Twitter is something you certainly cannot ignore.
With the tips and tricks laid in front of you, you can now proceed to create Twitter Ad campaigns on your own.
