Twitter introduced retargeted ads as a pilot program in July 2013, and the social network is now extending those targeting capabilities to all advertisers. Beta testing suggests brands that bring retargeted ads into their social marketing strategies will see stronger engagement and conversion rates, according to Twitter’s blog post announcing the wide-scale roll out. Whether marketers invest in paid ads or continue to refine their organic social media content, it’s clear there’s pressure to move beyond initial success to drive ROI even higher.
If companies choose to use the new ad retargeting function, Twitter’s ad partners harness browser cookie ID information from brands’ websites. This data is then cross referenced by ad partners to identify consumers who have visited the site and also have Twitter handles. Using this data, they push sponsored content to the top a qualified group of followers’ newsfeeds, a service that Twitter views as a value add for both parties.
Brands will be paying to get their custom content in front of the warmest leads, and Twitter users will only see ads that are relevant to them. Of course, Twitter intends to respect peoples’ privacy through a number of measures. Participating brands will not be able to see identifying information about members of their target audiences, and Twitter members can opt out of ad target campaigns by unchecking the “Promoted content” box in their privacy settings.
However, marketers don’t have to budget for new ad options to create highly effective campaigns. They can use social listening to learn what audiences’ respond to and share most frequently. When marketers find those sweet spots, they can focus their energies on the tactics that yield the best results. For instance, Brafton recently reported posts containing images and videos are drastically more effective at earning Likes, shares and comments than text-only updates.
It’s up to marketers to siphon user feedback in an organized and meaningful way so that they can produce collateral that followers can’t help but interact with and share.
