Twitter and Advertising: Four New Advertising Avenues for Savvy Marketers

Twitter and Advertising: Four New Avenues for Socially Savvy Marketers Eric Anderson, VP of Marketing Jamie 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 Always delay and filter 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-based Promotions 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 © 2009 White Horse Productions, Inc. Content may not be reused without permission.

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 Signal Noise

Questions? Thank you! Eric Anderson: eanderson@whitehorse.com Jamie Beckland: jbeckland@whitehorse.com www.w h itehorse.com Twitter: @whitehorsepdx

Twitter and Advertising: Four New Advertising Avenues for Savvy Marketers

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