Twitter and Advertising:Four New Avenues for Socially Savvy

Marketers

Eric Anderson, VP of MarketingJamie Beckland, Emerging Media Manager

But First…

We’re going to assume a base knowledge of Twitter.

But First…

And we’re going to address Twitter advertising for corporate brands, not personal brands.

Photo: The SEO Review

Let’s state the obvious: marketers Twitter.

73% of F500 brands are on Twitter 20% of all tweets contain brand/marketing content

Why? Because Twitter has features that naturally attract marketer interest:

Huge audience Free impressions Short learning curve Ease of tracking

But marketing ≠ advertising

Marketing = bringing customers to your business Advertising = paid announcements about your

product Like most social media, Twitter has historically been

good for marketing, but not for advertising.

≠

The most successful brands on Twitter use it for marketing, not advertising Southwest has over 1MM followers

And is featured on 5k lists

Southwest treats customer service as part of its Twitter marketing strategy

Public Relations

Customer Service

So what’s the BEST way for a brand to use Twitter?

You have 4 main options, none mutually exclusive:

Brand Tweeting Twitter-Integrated Advertising Twitter-Based Promotions Paid Tweeting

Brand Tweeting

The most basic way to share marketing messages Must be used in context of community’s values When done correctly, it’s still the best opportunity

for most brands

Brand Tweeting

Corporate accounts and brand accounts have different goals

Integrating Tweets into other Marketing

Integrating a Twitter stream adds dimension and dialogue to other marketing contexts, which increases engagement

Volvo broke new ground with a Twitter-integrated display ad:

White Horse and Mountain Hardwear went further by allowing the user to tweet within the ad:

Integrating Tweets into other Marketing

Turbo-charges performance of paid media units Engagement rates for this averaged 5 times higher

than rich media, and 15 times higher than standard ads

Allows for extensive use of low-cost ad networks Paid + social = wide reach + targeted impact

Avoid the Skittles Scenario: 2 Simple Rules

1. Always delay and filter2. Cultivate relationships with your followers before

you ask them to carry the marketing ball for you.

Twitter-based Promotions

Two key factors in the success of a promotion are 1) ease of entry and 2) ease of pass-along.

That makes Twitter an ideal promotional tool: users can enter with a hashtag, and pass along by retweeting.

Twitter-based Promotions

Twitter contests can involve clues that build over time – also very easy to execute

Twitter-based Promotions

Some brands require that users Follow in order to enter.

Twitter is the most promo-friendly of the current social players. Their guidelines:•Discourage the creation of multiple accounts•Discourage posting the same tweet over and over (and over) again•Ask users to include an @reply to you so you can see all the entries•Encourage the use of topics relevant to the contest

 

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Twitter-based Promotions

Paid Tweeting

Twitter announced Promoted Tweets in April 2010 Prior to this, the only paid option has been a poor

one: “sponsored” tweets, in which supposed influencers pretend to be passionate about your brand.

Don’t Bother with Sponsored Tweets

Difficult to coordinate impression volume

Confuses editorial with advertising

No control over messaging

What Are Promoted Tweets?

:: :

:

What Are Promoted Tweets?

Promoted Tweet must be an actual Tweet You must be the author Only 1 tweet can be promoted at a time in search

results

Pricing Model for Promoted Tweets

Currently, CPM Rates are not confirmed, but likely less than $10

CPM Twitter wants to understand value of PTs Eventual ROI model (CPI) based on “resonance”

Promoted Tweets Use “Resonance” for Determining Quality Twitter is currently testing with selected partners

The goal is to understand the value of actions Possible actions include:

Next Phases of Promoted Tweets

Currently, PTs are only available in search, and there is only 1 results (Q3 2010 broad rollout)

Soon, PTs will be included in the Twitter API and they can be used on third-party sites and clients

Eventually, PTs will appear in an individual user’s tweetstream

Possibilities for geolocation and social graph comparisons

Many Ways to Use Twitter…

But remember there is a high signal/noise ratio Providing value to users is still critical, and destined

to become more so Any use of Twitter marketing has to be part of a

broader content marketing strategy

SignalNoise

Questions?

Thank you!

Eric Anderson: eanderson@whitehorse.comJamie Beckland: jbeckland@whitehorse.com

www.whitehorse.com

Twitter: @whitehorsepdx