As a brand, you might be confused on whether Twitter Ads can provide a good ROI for your marketing budget or pushing more money on Facebook Ads can deliver better business results.
Before kick-starting Twitter Marketing, it would be great if you can set clear the goals you need to achieve from the ads. Any marketing strategy implemented without a clear objective would fail to deliver results, and Twitter is no exception.
Facebook & Google Ads are undoubtedly quite popular among marketers. So, it’s important to know the reasons why brands should leverage Twitter Ads:
Facebook has a very powerful targeting back-end but the text limit of 20% sometimes can be a hassle. Communicating the message with call-to-action & brand logo might seem difficult sometimes. Twitter doesn’t have this limitation & this is a major advantage for running detailed offer ads.
Twitter Lead Generation Ads have a great advantage that it generates lead with one-click on Twitter, without the need for the interested audience to click & go to the landing page or a website. This reduction in the funnel length increases the conversion rate for your lead generation. Recently, Facebook has also launched its Lead Generation Ads on similar lines (currently this feature is only available through the Power Editor).
The Twitter Ads dashboard is simpler in comparison to the more complex Ads interface of Google. It requires practice & time before the Ads creation can be mastered. Facebook Ads interface can fall in between Google & Twitter.
Twitter allows you to accurately target the followers of a particular account. This can be a great way to target the fans/customers of your competitors. Facebook allows you to target the fans of a page only if you are the page admin.
Keyword targeting feature is similar to Google Adwords where you can target people who have tweeted using certain keywords or have interacted with tweets containing those keywords. Broad, Phrase & Negative keyword targeting is allowed.
Twitter has 140 characters restriction for tweets but you can leverage the Twitter Cards that allow you to add more text content along with links, quite similar to Facebook ads. We shall look at the different Ad types in the late section.
Twitter offers many different type of Ads such as Promoted Account, Promoted Tweet, Website Click/Conversion, App Install, Lead Generation, Promoted Trends and Video View ads. Let us have a look at each of these types below:
Promoted Account / Follower Ads:
When someone follows you on Twitter, you get the chance to engage with them over time. Studies show that followers just don’t follow you, the interactions with them benefit your business over a period of time. As per the Small Businesses Customer Insights Survey conducted by DBS, 70% users who follow SMBs provide free advertising via retweets & 43% will make purchases from them. This percentage can vary based on the quality of the follower you have & hence, it is important to acquire followers who can become your potential customers.
Before creating the ad, you should create a strong short description that focuses on why potential fans should follow your account. If you are an ecommerce player, you can showcases shopping deals. These ads will appear in the following places:
Lead Generation Ads
The Lead Generation Ads are ads implement using the Lead Generation Cards. These Lead Generation Cards can be used to collect email addresses and qualified leads. It’s designed in a way that the user doesn’t have to click on the ad and go to an external website or a landing page. If interested in the offer description, the user can submit his information with one-click from within the Twitter App itself. His Twitter handle & email address is directly sent to you as soon as a user submits the lead. The Leads can be downloaded from the Twitter Cards dashboard.
Promoted Tweet Ads
The Promoted Tweet ads help amplify the reach of your tweets to a wider audience. This can help you get more engagement on your tweets & at the same time showcase your content to your target audience. These appear in the home timeline of the targeted users. The setup process of these ads are similar to the Promoted Account ads.
Website Clicks / Conversion Ads
The Website Click Ads are implement using Website Cards. The Website Cards are ad units which allow users to preview horizontal creative image, descriptive text, website Url & a big call-to-action in their timeline. You can also link the preview of your website in these website cards.
App Install Ads
With more than 75% users accessing Twitter from a mobile device, brands have a huge opportunity to tap & drive downloads for the mobile apps. An App card is to be created – it has title, description, app icon and the option to highlight features such as your App’s rating. It requires your App ID to submit the card. Once the card is ready, it can be linked to the app install ad. Users can install or open the App directly from the tweet.
Promoted Hashtag Ads
Trends that appear on the left side of your Twitter page is one of the most watched sections on Twitter. It’s a great way to keep a tab on current hot topics. Hence, promoted hashtag ads allow you to be in the right place & a perfect trigger to grab eyeballs, trigger conversations and launch new products/brands.
The Twitter Ads allow you to select the location of the display of the ads to the targeted users. You can select to show the ads in their timelines or search results (in case of promoted tweets / app install ads alone). The platform selection is limited to iOS devices, Android devices, Blackberry phones, Desktops, Laptops & Mobile Web on other devices.
Targeting is undoubtedly an important part of the ad creation. Targeting the wrong audience can waste your marketing budget while proper targeting can help you have a great ROI and help you reach your objectives. The available targeting options on Twitter are discussed below:
Keyword Targeting
The Keyword Targeting Ads are used to target users who have either used the keywords in their tweets, engaged with tweets around those keywords or have searched for those keywords on Twitter. The matching options for each keyword are as follows:
When typing the keywords, Twitter will allow you to choose between the above options. You can also import a matching keyword or a phrase from another document. On the selection of the keyword & modifier type, Twitter gives an estimate of the audience size for that keyword.
Interest & Follower Targeting
This option allows you to target the users based on their interests and the accounts they follow. Interest targeting on Twitter is very wide hence, it is advisable to use only the popular interest that are recommended by Twitter. Follower Targeting is very accurate and is recommended. You can manually type the Handles you want to target (for example - @MurugappaGroup) or import the list of usernames from a document. You are not required to be a follower of the account you are targeting. On selection of the handles, Twitter provides you an estimate of the reach as well as the other suggested handles in the same reach. There is also an option of Lookalike Audiences through which you can allow Twitter to target users similar to the followers of handles you want to target.
Television
In recent times, leading Television Shows & News Channels have leveraged Twitter to engage with their audience. Twitter allows you to target users who engage with such TV Shows on Twitter. This is an option currently limited to few countries like US, UK, Italy, Spain, etc.
Tailored Audiences
From the ROI point of view, this is one of the best form of advertising on Twitter that allows you to target fans who have already interacted with your brand. This interaction includes visitors to your website and are more likely to convert. You can also use an existing customer database & import the Twitter-ids or mail-ids.
Location Targeting
The Location targeting feature allows you to select the geographical location of the users who you want to target. You can target a country or state or a city.
Now, the last but an important part of any ad campaign - measuring the performance and results of the campaign. The summary of your campaigns are displayed on immediately logging into your Twitter Ads account.
Some metrics that are important in terms of performance measurement are:
Impressions: The number of times a tweet or an ad has been displayed
Engagement: Action taken by users such as a follow, click or an install
Follows: The number of users who have followed your handle based on the ad
Spend: The total spend for the campaign (the cost per action would vary based on the campaign types and campaign goals)
Conversions: This shows the number of users converted (if you have used conversion tracking for your campaign). This is an important metric for Offer campaigns or for ecommerce players. For Follower campaigns, the conversions would show the number of followers gained for the promoted account.
Audience Interests, Demographics & Locations: This is an important metric to check the accuracy of your targeting. It shows the topics your acquired followers are interested in, their geographical locations, tweets they engage with (based on Interest cluster) and the demographics. The demographics data would be of real interest to brands that go after a niche audience say, only females or youth.
Twitter is not radically different from other ad platforms in its basics – you have got to be prepared with the details, run the ads & test to see what works for you. Deep dive into the reports and see whether your campaigns are delivering and what needs to be optimized. Keep a track on all campaigns regularly.
You cannot acquire a customer for life. In ecommerce, loyalty is a thing of the past. Many startups and new businesses struggle to find the right balance between customer acquisition & retention. This is especially true for the ecommerce industry. In the quest to growth hack to the next level, ecommerce businesses go all out to acquire new customers sometimes at unsustainable costs.
Over a longer term, online retailers might want to discontinue the channels that have a consistently higher cost of acquisition (CoA). But customer acquisition cost alone is not the right metric to evaluate the performance of an acquisition channel. Ecommerce businesses should instead be including average customer lifecycle value for customers from a particular channel as an important metric for strategic decision-making. This article can help ecommerce businesses garner a better perspective to guide their business decisions.
In simple terms, customer lifecycle value is the projected value a customer generates over the entire lifetime of their interaction with the brand. Focusing on CLV can help a company determine optimize the marketing spends, allowing it to focus on more profitable customers.
CLV as a metric assumes greater significance when put together with CAC. The CLV:CAC ratio is a powerful metric to define the Return on Investment (ROI). Focus on both the levers can help you devise a winning strategy.
Let’s take a look at the comparative illustration of 3 customers from different acquisition channels (A, B & C) assuming 1 year as the time period under consideration:
First step would be to segregate the customer acquisition and purchase data on the basis of marketing channels. Once this is done, there are 2 principal models of calculating the customer lifecycle value:
Under this model, the gross profit from all historic purchases of individual customers is summed up & divided by the total number of customers. This gives the average CLV for each acquisition channel.
This is an advanced method built upon the historic model. Predictive model uses the past customer behavioral pattern to predict the lifetime value of customers. This factors taken into account by this model are as follows:
Assuming next 10 years as the time period (T) for consideration, let us look at the formula that can help you arrive the lifetime value.
Average customer value per month (v) = N*B
Total customer value per year = S = v*12
Total lifetime spend of the customer = L = S*10
Average gross margin per customer lifespan = G = L*m
The final CLV value obtained can be plugged in the ROI ratio (CLV:CoA). Greater the ratio, the better the impact on the company’s growth strategy. The ROI ratio can be used as a good measure to evaluate the performance of the marketing channels and accordingly optimize the budget allocation.
For the CLV model to work, the data set under consideration has to be long enough to provide. CLV is not just for evaluating the marketing channels and campaigns, it can be a great lever to look at the overall business strategy for ecommerce businesses. There is nothing wrong in looking out for new customers. But, it’s important to look at the value brought by ten new customers acquired vis-a-vis ten retained customers. From the cost perspective, it mostly turns out cheaper to retain existing customers. With the wide array of choices thrown open to the consumers with just a click of a mouse, brand loyalty and customer retention becomes more important.
A quick look at Nielsen’s Global Loyalty Sentiment Report provides good insights into the consumer sentiments that result in switching retailer & brand-hopping.
The 5 factors listed above- price, quality, service, selection and features; can together drive the lifetime value of your customers. Doubling the CLV of existing customers is equivalent to doubling the customer base. Here’s some handy tips that can help online retailers increase the CLV:
In the rapid-growth ecommerce boom, it’s easy to get lost in the race for acquiring new customers. Brands go upto the extent of acquiring new customers at 10x the historical averages. They fail to remember that retaining your existing customer can cost lesser and would pay in the longer run to get hold of these low-hanging fruits.
Often when we track results via digital marketing, we tend to track website traffic along with goals (transactions or leads generated). One element we have seen many bushinesses miss out on is tracking how many phone calls were generated via the online medium. If you do not track and calculate the calls generated, it is a significant number of leads that are missed out or rather not counted into the digital metrics.
The power of pushing a phone number on your landing page, social page, or website is dynamic. Depending on the nature of the business and the product/service type, placing a phone number makes it easier for a customer to engage with your business. Call tracking via Google Analytics, Google AdWords & Google Plus allows you to monitor which visitors from your website, social ads, and other digital promotions who have conversed with you via phone. While the three methods do not encompass or track all calls but its a huge step from not tracking the calls.
So lets look at each of these tracking methods in a bit more detail. Once you have implemented all these three methods, you can add these numbers to your existing results metrics to understand the true impact of your digital marketing efforts.
On Google Analytics
When users click your phone number (on a mobile device) to call your business, Google Analytics is able to track these via what they call "Event Tracking". Events in this scenario could mean phone calls or even downloads, video plays etc. Configuring the Google Analytics event tracking code while easy, requires some technical know how. So do involve your technology or web team to help you get this done. This google analytics event tracking code is used to record a user’s interaction with the website elements and in this use case we tracking the number of people who clicked on the phone number to call the business.
Example:
Specifications to call the _trackEvent() method in the UI element of a page:
As a result, all user activity on the on-site contact numbers provided is calculated and displayed as Events in Google Analytics (under the Behaviour tab)
On Google AdWords
Customers can call your business after clicking on a Google ad and learning about the products and services that you offer on your website. The AdWords click-to-call ads help you connect with these customers. These ads encourage calls to your business by showing the phone number on the ad. On smartphones and other high-end mobile devices, these phone numbers are often clickable and cost the same as a standard CPC would demand.
Click-to-call ads also help you to gain insights about the calls. These stats help you understand which keywords and ads are driving the most phone calls, which results in the optimization of these ads to make the graphs better. To activate these you will need to go to the Ad Extensions Tab.
On Google+
Google+ provides the easiest steps towards gauging the call metrics. One has to simply make sure that his/her business page furnishes all contact coordinates clearly. Furnishing all information makes your contacts visible in the search engine, where customers are given the power to call your business by a single touch of the button.
The metrics towards these calls can be viewed in the 'Insight' tab of you the business's Google+ page.
Learn more about Event Tracking – Web tracking & click-to-call ads to unlock the potential of your landing page or website, to monitor the amount of audience who convert through calls.
“In digital marketing, if you stop learning, you die!” For all those who work, think & breathe digital, this holds true. Digital Marketing is a dynamic, ever-evolving and fast space. This space is so rapid that each day brings along a new lesson, a new idea, and a new angle. The best part is there is always scope for more learning, henceforth, improvisation. And for a digital marketer, the learning curve never ceases to be.
Here’s a compilation of a few learning sources from around the world that can help you stay up-to-date with the digital media trends -
1.Moz – Search Engine Optimization can often seem like a trailing game for marketers who don’t have the amenity of a dedicated search engine team. In a cut-throat competitive scenario, SEO techniques and great content often become the shining knights in armors and it is required for the marketers to keep themselves updated with the ins and outs of the SEO ranking. Moz blog is one such explicit resource that helps to brush up on topics that underlie many routine activities involved in the digital practice. The blog encompasses everything related to content marketing, search engine optimization, latest updates by Google, responsive design, and building communities. Whiteboard Friday blogs are something my team and I look forward to since there is plenty to take away from Rand Fishkin's juicy insights on interesting SEO & Content Marketing topics every week!
2. Convince & Convert – The name says it all! Their blog section is more like a splendid guide to digital marketing and they definitely help in improving social media and content marketing strategies because of all the abundant data which is based on audits, strategic marketing plans, guidelines for content and social media marketing. The best part about the blogs that are shared is that they are entirely focused on helping businesses grow online. Topics like "How to get heard in a noisy world" , "5 simple tweaks to optimize your form conversion" , "How to turn B2B prospects into customers" etc. explore the whole wide area of the digital space to the online marketers and help them understand what could be done better to gain conversions.
3. QuickSprout – Founded by Neil Patel, one of the top 10 online marketers in the world the blog offers all that can be instrumental in revenue growth. Neil is a web analytics and conversion expert and also the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. The blog has a lavish range of case studies loaded with interesting web insights, all focused towards manifold increment in web traffic and conversions. Here's one for reference which we found extremely interesting -
4. Social Media Examiner – One of my all-time favorite posts from this social media focused blog forum would be the one which is titled “26 Creative Ways to Publish Social Media Updates”. The reason being that brands struggle to produce innovative content for social media and this article displays 26 different ways one can approach storytelling on social media. Social Media Examiner is an excellent content source for outstanding tactical coverage of all things social media from Mike Stelzner and his brilliant team.
5. Hubspot – The inbound marketing blog showcases anything and everything related to marketing and sales. The articles delve into precise how-to-topics and the trends that hover in the industry. When you are looking for specific marketing solutions/answers and are looking to adopt new ideas and practices, stop by hubspot! We recently came across a blog from Hubstop "How to Grow your E-mail List by Running a Contest" and tried applying the key points to one of our campaigns whose main aim was to build engagement whilst compile a brand new subscriber database and guess what? It works!
6. Content Marketing Institute – This is the dynamo of content marketing industry. The multi-author editorial team delivers informative content and tactful insights daily for the advanced content marketers around the globe.
The above featured blogs showcase how content marketing can do so much more than just getting people interested in reading your content. We believe that great content eventually leads to business generation and the kind of insights available from Content Marketing Institute helps us think through our content strategy and improvise it on a regular affair.
7. Search Engine Land – Owned by Danny Sullivan, a leading SEO expert in the online marketing space, this is the best venue to grasp in-depth information about SEO, SEM and social media. As digital marketers, we indulge in a lot of advertising online through social media channels and Google. But the key lies in constantly improving and optimizing the ads to get conversions at the best possible prices. Search Engine Land offers information in abundance that revolves around how Google works and search engine marketing. Some of the popular blogs are as follows.
8. JeffBulas.com – Jeff Bullas is a blogging prodigy and a social media marketing genius. All his blogs are about ‘everything social media’ and e-mail marketing and have straight-forward approach of sharing information that can be extremely viable in driving the businesses towards an optimum visibility online. He was titled by Linkedin as a “Top Social Media Expert You Need To Know” and he has also made it to the Forbes’ Top 40 Social Marketing List. Some of his most interesting blogs are around how visual media works best for tapping your audiences and why is it necessary to be visually appealing on digital media.
9. Simply Measured – It is pretty simple with the kind of information Simply Measured has in store for the readers. Strong information backed with data insights and powerful social analytics is what the blog provides which is required by businesses to help them grow.
The type of information and content available at Simply Measured helps us stay updated on what's new in the online space and how it could be beneficial to us. For online marketers to understand how a new discovery can be used to it's full potential to build leads and the brand, there is no other venue better than this one.
10. Audience Bloom – Audience Bloom is a hub for data and content that is productive in nature. The content has great in depth information about various social media and SEO tools that can be extremely helpful in staying up to date with the digital trends.
The reason why my team and I go gaga over the posts shared by Audience Bloom is because apart from the usual digital mantras, they also cover topics that are realistic in nature and help digital marketers as individuals in expanding their knowledge horizon. I as a social media manager, of course have some favorites like the ones mentioned below -
11. Youtube Google Business Channel – A splendid forum for knowledge sharing and google insights in the form of video blogs makes it more interesting for the viewers. The blog contains multiple videos about how Google functions and tools that can helpful in leveraging Google products.
What could be better than watching videos and accumulating knowledge? A couple of recommended videos would be "Promoting App Installs With Ad Words" and "Online Branding - Win Customers In a Moment".
12. Campaign Asia – Campaign Asia is an authoritative voice of media that showcases and highlights the emerging trends in the digital world.
Stay up to date with the giant marketing trends and do what's best to stay ahead of the race in the digital world with the help of these tidbits. We are on it! If there are other blogs that you follow please do share them with us!
Tracking results is paramount not only for an entrepreneur or a startup but also for large enterprises. Google Analytics is the most popular Website Analytics Tool with close to 20% of all websites using it (as per Built With).
Using the tool, one can analyse data on a monthly basis to understand who is coming to your website, what are they doing there and what is driving them to come to the website or transact with you. Google Analytics a powerful yet free tool which can help grow your digital marketing strategy. To get you started, here is a slideshare with list of Top 10 Things to Analyse your website using Google Analytics.
India is a significant market for social media giants. We have 100m+ users on Facebook and over 33 million users on Twitter. Mobile web penetration has also been one of the main contributors in the active social media usage. Almost 84% of the 100 million users on Facebook access it through their mobile phones. Keeping all of the above mentioned facts in consideration, it is fair to conclude that the reach on social media is exponentially huge and for brands to tap on this opportunity would result in a vital growth for their businesses
Ernst & Young have released the second edition of the Social Media Marketing Trends in India. They collated data based on the insights shared by top brands in India that are social-media savvy. The previous Ernst & Young study was centered on how brands explored social media to build communities online & sustain engagement. This time, the key focus was on understanding how far have the brands come in the digital space and also the social media maturity levels with respect to the processes and policies, technology and governance across organizations in India.
Let’s have a look at what has changed since 2013!
(Image Courtesy - Ernst & Young)
The study also highlighted that brands across various industries have realized the implication of tapping on social media channels and understood its peculiar demands.
How do brands in India function digitally?
How do brands measure success on social media?
What’s the next big thing?
The study also states that Social CRM, Social Commerce & Gamification will be the future for the brands to explore and harness their growth on.
The full Ernst & Young report on Social Media Marketing Trends in India can be found here.
Facebook has announced that they will shortly be introducing product ads, wherein advertisers can showcase and promote multiple products and even entire product catalogs through ads on the social network. This seems to be great news for advertisers, especially for ecommerce companies as this will enable more products to be shown to a wider audience.
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Quoting from the announcement,
“Product ads can be customized for use throughout the customer journey, from discovery/awareness through purchase. Here are some options:
Advertisers can automatically reach people who visited their website/app (via Custom Audiences), or reach people based on specific interests, locations, etc.
Advertisers can curate ads as they see fit. For instance, they can highlight products that were viewed on their website/mobile app or showcase best selling products. Or they can create a multi-product ad that highlights the different benefits of a single product.”
Advertisers can upload entire product catalogs and then use advanced Facebook Ads targeting techniques to reach the right customers who would be interested in those products.
We can’t wait to try out this new feature and share our experience on the results acheived. Do share your experience with it as well.
Recently, I conducted a workshop on Digital Marketing for Startups in India as part of the Weekend Ventures #StartupLounge. The workshop focused on the digital marketing methods that can help startups in building their brand & in getting results (in terms of app downloads, ecommerce sales or lead generation).
Social Beat co-founder, Vikas Chawla's article on the advanced ?Facebook? ad techniques to focus on in 2015, featured in the Business Standard.
Focussed not just on social media metrics, but on business results
Till 2013 social media analytics was focussed on social media metrics like reach, impressions, page likes, post likes, number of retweets. It was only in 2014, that there was a focus on measuring business results (online orders, lead generation, sign ups etc). This trend is likely to get more entrenched in 2015, with even small businesses focussing on achieving their business goals via the digital medium. With free tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights, brands can now track how many leads or online sales or signups they had and as to which digital medium helped them get these results.
For example, for some of our ecommerce companies close to 30% of revenue comes from Facebook and upto 5% from emailer campaigns. Moreover, we are able to identify which ads contributed to the revenue and leads. While it’s important to engage with the audience within Facebook, we have found it to be more effective to drive traffic via Facebook Ads directly to the website or landing page and track results there.
So it’s no longer going to be just about acquiring fans or engaging with the community, but about how the brand is being built and what results are achieved.
Using CRM to build a single view of the customer
Retailers, E-commerce sites and larger enterprises have started initiatives to integrate offline data with data from multiple online channels including website, emailer campaigns, Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels. Powerful CRM tools are going to enable brands to build a single view of the customer and to see what kind of targeting communication can be given to them. Around the world, tools like Marketo, Act-On & Sailthru have been doing this at an enterprise level but in 2015 such tools will become more accessible to small and medium enterprises even in India.
Focus on consumer insights to serve the right ads to the right people
Machine Learning Analytics & Automation will help brands focus on granular consumer insights and allow for right ads reach the right people. Tools like FanPlayr & Gigya already have powerful & intelligent tools to enable this and these are going to get more sophisticated over time.
For example, Planet Superheroes, which is into Superhero Merchandise has used FB to segment users who like specific superheroes and are online spenders in India. So superman t-shirt ads are targeted to users who like Superman and fit into the age & location demographic relevant to the brand. This level of granular targeting is possible only in social media.
Content creation based on analytics
Social media listening tools and content analysis is starting to happen where brands can predict what kind of content will help in engaging with their audience. Brands like Red Bull have kept content at the core of the digital strategy and that’s the approach many brands are starting to take.
