Here’s 5 Smart Ways to Plan Your E-commerce Sales Promotion

Ready for your next sales promotion?

For some ecommerce teams, it’s a time-consuming task deciding which items to markdown and how to publicize a sales event. However, sales promotions play an integral role in attracting customers.

A survey found that up to 50% of consumers make a purchase only with a promotion. Shoppers desire a good deal before they invest in your products. Moreover, your business may want the additional revenue.

“Sales promotions can give you the edge you’re looking for when it comes to revenue. Successful companies know that sales promotions are among the most effective methods of increasing sales and building customer satisfaction,” writes Emily Weisberg, content marketing manager at ThriveHive.

Take a strategic approach when planning your sales promotions. Below are five smart ways to help your team.

1. Select Specific Incentives

Sales promotions take various shapes and forms. Cater your incentives to fit your consumers’ needs.

Start by using customer analytics. Historical purchasing habits can uncover what promotions performed well. Social media comments also provide first-hand details on whether customers possess interest.

Next, match your findings with a sales initiative. From mystery discounts to purchased-based donations to bundle sales, several options exist.

Monetate “found that 56% of businesses agree that flash-sale campaigns are better received than regular campaigns.” Limiting the timeframe creates urgency for the customer to act now.

(Image Source)

Thinking about free offers? PaySimple’s Vice President of Knowledge Lisa Hephner explains the power of free incentives:

“Everyone loves free. Whether it’s free gifts, free refills, or free service segments, free sells. One of the most powerful free offers is free shipping for online orders, as evidenced by multiple studies where respondents highlight it as the most important factor in making a purchase decision.”

Figure out the best promotions for your customers. Review your data before moving forward.

2. Cross-Sell With a Purpose

Every sales promotions doesn’t need to involve discounting your signature product. Instead, it can focus on secondary items.

Cross-selling is another opportunity to provide value to your customers. Buyers love convenience, and they want to save time shopping at one place. And it eliminates the hassle of sifting through multiple ecommerce sites.

Align your promotions with products that complement one another. Give consumers the chance to buy everything they need from your store.

“Savvy marketers use this concept to increase sales by informing consumers how one product complements another. Cross selling can take several forms. Understanding your customers’ motivations helps you choose which approach to take,” says Sara Huter, a contributor at BusinessBee.

For example, if your company sells cell phones, your team can offer a promotion on the accessories, like bluetooth earbuds, phone cases, or charging cables.

(Image Source)

Research found that “cross-selling was shown to be much more effective when presented on the checkout pages versus the product pages.” So, add images of promotional products in the sidebar menu.

Plus, cross-selling aids with bringing in more cash flow for your business. Amazon credits up to 35% of its revenue to cross-selling.

Think differently about ecommerce sales promotions. Don’t remove cross-selling from your list of possibilities.

3. Microtarget Your Customers

Microtargeting isn’t a new technique to your team. Nevertheless, you may be failing to put it into practice.

Segmenting your audience lets your business offer the right promotions to the right individuals. Customization speaks directly to consumers—signaling that you know exactly what they need.

Melissa Jenkins of Mel Jens Designs believes “running a successful promotion is all about finding that delicate balance between audience segmentation, great timing and setting the perfect price or placing the perfect offer.”

Examine your data to segment properly. Try geographical locations, buying habits, income levels, or even past purchasing behavior.

Dealers United Auto Group created mock ads targeted for car shoppers within 25 miles of the dealership that possess an interest in pets. Specificity is vital for effective micro targeting.

(Image Source)

A study reveals that 51% of marketers believe sharing data across their organizations is a major issue. Avoid data limitations that will hinder segmentation for your sales promotions.

Create an open dialogue across departments to gather all data about your customers. You’ll have more knowledge to build an accurate buyer persona.

Pinpoint who needs to know about your sales event. Microtargeting is a benefit to your company.

4. Hype Up Engagement

Draw attention to your sales promotions with social media and email campaigns. This extra engagement will get people interested in your sales incentives.

Facebook users spend an average of 50 minutes a day on its multiple platforms. Work with your team to promote sales on your social pages. Or even enlist the help of industry influencers to spread the word.

User-generated content (UGC) is also another way to lure shoppers toward your brand. Actual consumers enjoying your products authenticates your value to hesitate buyers.

“User-generated photos are a great way to generate social proof. Prospective customers see that your products are regularly being purchased people just like them, and feel more comfortable doing something that others are doing,” says Dan Wang, a content specialist at Shopify.

Big box retailer Target retweeted a post from loyal shoppers who made a funny video in one of its stores. Encourage customers to submit UGC of them unboxing your products.

when @Target is having a sale http://pic.twitter.com/RIUu6p3zLs

— spooky addie |-/ (@blurrytylerjosh) October 15, 2016

Also, keep your email subscribers in the loop about promotions. Craft engaging emails that explain the benefits, provide social proof, and use a distinct call-to-action.

“When it comes to creating a high-converting marketing offer email, the final piece of the puzzle is using a prominent call to action button. This is important because buttons make it clear to the reader what the next step is and encourage them to click-through,” states Aaron Beashel, director of demand generation at Campaign Monitor.

Shout your sales promotions from the rooftop. Get shoppers excited to participate.

5. Move Toward Customer Loyalty

Returning customers spend on average 67% more than first-time customers. Consider promotions as a pathway to retaining customers.

Give your customers an opportunity to discover your brand’s values and culture. Sign up shoppers for your weekly newsletter, or enroll them in your rewards program.

Customer loyalty centers around building worthwhile relationships. However, buyers may only be interested in your promotions.

“The use of sales promotions can be positively utilised in order to encourage brand loyalty and brand switching by companies. However, academic research suggests that consumers can become loyal to sales promotions rather than a brand,” states Zhorna Ali, a sales and marketing assistant at M3.

To avoid consumers from brand switching, companies must thoroughly personalize their sales promotions strategy. Focus on specific product categories to remain competitive within the market.

Rather than giving sales incentives to everyone, Bare Escentuals limits its promotions to its loyal fans called Beauty Insiders. In the example below, customers received three free items with any order.

(Image Source)

Create plans to engage customers beyond your sales promotions. Earn their loyalty.

Prep for Sales Promotions

Planning for your next sales event involves lots of time and decision-making. You want to boost your revenue and satisfy customers.

Choose buyer-specific incentives that will attract people. Cross-sell products that complement one another. And think beyond the promotion by focusing on customer loyalty initiatives.

Upgrade your sales promotion. Prepare for it today.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

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Search and Social: Scariest Moments of 2016

Happy Halloween! Has our industry scared you this year? have you lost sleep over some traffic dips or frightening rumor?

Here are a few of the scariest moments in search and social industry for the year of 2016:

January

Another “Phantom” 2016 Core Algorithm Update Was Not Panda

Everyone was waiting for either panda or Penguin to come, yet the unnamed algorithm scaring webmasters at the beginning of the year appeared to be neither.

April

New Wave of Unnatural Outbound Link Messages

Google sent a bunch of penalty warnings mostly to bloggers discouraging them from linking out to commercial websites.

…In general, when you’re getting a free product (or service, etc) in exchange for a post, you need to make sure that the links there are nofollowed — be it to the original product page, a sales page or affiliate link on a site like Amazon, or to their social media profiles. You don’t need to nofollow everything on your blog, just the links that are involved in an exchange like this. Obviously, it’s also good to disclose this kind of relationship to your readers too — on the page I was looking at, you did that already, but others might not be doing that.

A solid question here is of course:

If they can tell that a particular link is “supposed to be” nofollowed, why don’t they ### well just ignore the link?

The answer is simple: It’s a scary tactic to discourage webmasters from doing it in the future.

May

117 Million LinkedIn Account Emails and Passwords Leaked Online

“It’s not just the fact that the same passwords may be used on other sites, but an e-mail address can give thieves pointers to other services, and, of course, help towards identity theft”

July

July Sees a Wave of AdSense Account Closures

The rumor that Google is closing AdSense account resulted in quite a stir. Yet, it turned out to be a mild one.

Almost all the cancellations appeared to be either inactive accounts, hardly used accounts, or low volume traffic accounts – i.e. accounts that are pretty much useless to the ecosystem.

Facebook Changes its Algorithm to Put Friends Posts Above Publishers

Had you spent money to accumulate likes to your business page? Well, after that update, it turned out to be pretty useless. Now you had to pay to get your content in front of your followers anyway.

August

Google to Downrank Pages With Intrusive Interstitials

Google announced that it would downrank pages with intrusive popups in mobile search. LOTS of websites still run those: Here’s how to get prepared for the update.

Things Go From Bad to Worse for Keyword Planner:

“Google’s Keyword Planner…is now restricting the amount of data available to non-advertiser or low budget accounts.”

Google had taken the keyword data from Google Analytics previously. Now it’s taking it away from Google Keyword Planner. Google, nooooo!

September

Google: Spammy Widget Links Violate Webmaster Guidelines

Nothing new here but still confusing and scary: How to tell a “spammy” widget link from a well-deserved editorial widget link? The line can still be pretty blurred, can’t it?

Penguin 4.0 is Live

Finally, Penguin came! It was the last to be announced, so embrace the no-Panda, no-Penguin era to come. Now, each time you see a traffic drop in Google Analytics, you’ll have to guess what it might be and there’s no one to confirm your fear!

Chrome to Target HTTP as Non-Secure

Google Chrome will start to warn the users of a non-secure page if there’s a login page on it. It’s going to be a major user experience issue, so you may need to switch to https as soon as possible.

Have I missed any search and social scary moments in 2016? Please share them in the comments and they will be added!

The post Search and Social: Scariest Moments of 2016 appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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The Movies That Give Us the Heebie-Jeebies

To say Halloween is our favorite time of the year would be an understatement. Between the massive influx of tiny candy bars, to the costumes, to the big party we throw, Vidyard takes the haunting season pretty seriously.

One thing we can’t live without this time of year is scary movies. And if you ask enough people, you’ll start to realize there’s one common denominator of every scary movie fan — the one that really gives them the heebie-jeebies. You know that movie. No matter how many times you watch it, there’s still always that scene that makes you jump.

So, in honour of Halloween, we sat down with our costumed coworkers on Friday and ask them about what moves really give them the creeps:

So now comes the big question! What’s your favourite scary movie? And what scene really gets under your skin? Tell us in the comments!

Happy Halloween from the Vidyard Family!

 

The post The Movies That Give Us the Heebie-Jeebies appeared first on Vidyard.

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Vidyard Named a Leader for Online Video Platforms for Sales and Marketing by Independent Research Firm

Report finds “more firms see video as a way to address their top challenges of using engaging content to connect with customers and prospects”

KITCHENER, Ontario – October 31, 2016 – Vidyard, the video platform for business, has been named a leader in Online Video Platforms for Sales and Marketing by independent research firm Forrester Research, Inc. The recognition comes as part of The Forrester Wave™: Online Video Platforms For Sales And Marketing, Q4 2016, which analyzed the most significant providers in the space.

Vidyard achieved the highest score for current offerings among all participants in the report, landing highest possible score for 23 of the 39 criteria, including administration, syndication and distribution features, sales enablement workflows, enterprise application integrations, reporting and analytics, global support and security. Vidyard was the only vendor to receive the highest possible scores in the player features; marketing and lead generation tools; and targeting, personalization and discovery criteria.

“Vidyard has a clear vision of video’s future that resonates with its customers and Forrester alike,” wrote analyst Nick Barber in The Forrester Wave™: Online Video Platforms For Sales And Marketing, Q4 2016. “It understands how important user-generated content (UGC) will be for brands and businesses, and it plans to roll out further support for UGC and analysis of it. Its roadmap follows up in-video personalization with support for real-time rendering of dynamically personalized video content, which will increase viewer engagement.”

The Forrester Wave methodology included a rigorous process of vendor surveys, scenario-based product demos, executive strategy briefings and customer reference calls to validate each vendor’s products and qualifications. Forrester analyzed nine vendors’ video platforms across 39 criteria.

“I believe that this research shows that video has become a core component of modern marketing and sales with businesses looking for more advanced distribution, personalization, interactivity and analytics to help them turn viewers into customers,” said Michael Litt, Vidyard CEO and co-founder. “In my view, Forrester’s work proves there’s been a massive shift in the video technology market beyond publishing and advertising. Now the conversation is about how to use video to better connect, engage and convert customers and support the entire buying journey even after the deal closes.”

In addition to analyzing vendor offerings, Forrester noted the rise of online video and its growing importance for business. “The sales-and-marketing-focused OVP market is growing because more firms see video as a way to address their top challenges of using engaging content to connect with customers and prospects,” according to the report. U.S. adults spend nearly two hours a day consuming video, more than any other online activity, and online video has become a must-have for businesses. Video conveys emotion much better than the written word, and the human brain processes it 60,000 times faster than text, according to the report.

Businesses that want to capitalize on video need to harness their own video channels and can’t simply rely on YouTube for distribution, largely because it lacks the rich analytics and integrations that come with platforms such as Vidyard. Integrations with CRM and marketing automation platforms enable marketing and sales teams to easily create and share videos with customers, track their true engagement in the content and measure its impact on revenue.

“Vidyard is an excellent fit for companies that want more than just a video repository but want to deploy and measure videos with specific integrations into CRM systems and MAPs,” Barber wrote.

To view The Forrester Wave: Online Video Platforms For Sales And Marketing, Q4 2016 in its entirety, visit here: http://ift.tt/2f0j3tx

About Vidyard

Vidyard (Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video intelligence platform that helps businesses drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, TD Ameritrade, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewer into customers.

Media Contact:
Brad Hem
Phone: (281) 543-0669
press@vidyard.com

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How to Find the Conversion Drivers of Your Website with the Funnel Report

There may be a lot of unanswered questions you have about some the big-picture questions with your website. Perhaps you’re asking:

Do demo requests or signups lead to more paying customers?

Does that product video lead to more signups?

Does the self-service onboarding plan lead to more customers?

Does offering a buy one, get one sale increase purchases?

In cases like this, there are options that a visitor can take to reach conversion. But, it’s often difficult for marketers to know which one has a better effect on the funnel.

The Kissmetrics Funnel Report answers these questions. Here’s how.

Finding the Biggest Conversion Drivers on Your Site

The traditional SaaS Funnel looks something like this:

• Visited site
• Signed up for a trial
• Used product
• Upgraded to paying

But what if a visitor could sign up or schedule a demo before using the product? The only solution to knowing which one converts better would be to create two separate funnels and compare the results. That is, until now.

The Kissmetrics Funnel Report allows you to add and/or statements in a step. So our hypothetical funnel could look like this:

• Visited site
• Signed up for a trial or Scheduled demo
• Used product
• Upgraded to paying

Here’s how to set that funnel up, and how to view the results:

View the Funnel Results

I’m not going to bore you with the details of setting up a Funnel Report. We’ve covered it before here and here. As long as you have your events and properties set up, creating a Funnel Report is as easy as putting shoes on. Let’s get straight into the results.

We’ll first look at the people that signed up:

And scheduled a demo:

Notice a difference?

Looks like signups drive significantly more product usage and customers (54 compared to 0). If this was your data, you’d know you should remove demo requests from the website so 100% of users go straight to signing up.

What’s Holding Back Your Marketing Site?

How many elements are on your website, seemingly harmless but actually detracting people from signing up or converting? They’re there, but you don’t know how they’re affecting the rest of your funnel.

Using the Or statements (like we did) in the Funnel Report is a great way to find the best performing elements on your site. Best of all, you don’t need to run an A/B test. All this data is already in Kissmetrics, and as long as you’ve been tracking it, you can see the performance.

Happy optimizing!

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is the Blog Manager for Kissmetrics.

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The Ultimate Guide to Getting Sky-High Conversions From Twitter Ads

Will anyone actually click my ad and buy my product?

It’s a terrifying question, but an important one. Turns out that everyone (including you) wants to get more conversions from a Twitter ad campaign.

You spent countless hours writing lead magnets, creating landing pages and sales pages, and then later you set up a Twitter ad campaign to get some traffic.

While running ads is a great way to get some quick exposure, Twitter is a different ad platform. If you don’t understand the way it works, you might be wasting your money as well.

In today’s post I’ll be sharing some killer tips and resources to get sky-high conversions from Twitter.

So, would you like to know how to advertise on Twitter?

How about more advanced approaches to getting more followers, more leads, and more customers for your business?

But let me make it clear…

If there are secrets or special formulas that can magically unlock the power of Twitter advertising out there, I don’t know them.

What I do know, is exactly what the experts are doing — day in and day out.

And now, you will too.

But first let’s take a look at why you should invest in paid Twitter ads.

Why You Should Invest in Paid Twitter Ads

Twitter is a great social media channel for marketers, as it unofficially has 310 million monthly active users. Paid Twitter ads is an incredible way to complement your social media efforts. With Twitter advertising you can reach thousands of targeted customers and followers.

But why do you need to invest in paid twitter ads?

Organic Reach is Declining

Recently, Twitter made changes to their feed. Now, instead of getting all the recent tweets, Twitter only shows the tweets which they think are relevant to you.

Much like what Facebook did with their platform.

And just a few months ago, Twitter launched Engage which is for celebrities, influencers, and public figures that’ll curate the most popular tweets, mentions and replies.

This clearly shows that the reach of social media is plummeting day by day. Considering this scenario, Twitter paid ads is a way to go.

Adwords and Facebook Ad Costs Are Rising With Each Passing Day

Just last year, Search Engine Land reported a 20-25% increase in Google Adwords CPCs. More and more brands are investing in the same keywords which, of course, increase the competition and thus, the cost.

While Facebook ads were pretty cheap when they first started offering it, nowadays due to millions of advertisers, its platform is also becoming expensive.

For instance, Forbes reported a 21% increase in Facebook average ad pricing and the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) increased by an incredible 29% rate.

Considering both these reports, Twitter now looks like the promising ad channel. Facebook still beats Twitter on average cost per ad, but with some optimization and targeting options you can lower Twitter ad costs, even lower than Facebook.

Your Customers Spend a Ridiculous Amount of Time on Twitter

With each passing day, we’re getting more attracted towards social media. While Facebook is a beast with 1.2 billion monthly active users, Twitter’s 310 million monthly active users can’t be neglected.

According to DMR stats, 34% of active Twitter users log into it more than once in a day.

Looking at all these points, you’ll know that Twitter advertising is the way to go if you’re looking to make profits online.

Now let’s learn how to set-up the perfect Twitter ad campaign.

How to Setup the Perfect Twitter Ad Campaign

Twitter has a robust advertising platform. However, it is quite difficult to understand if you’re just starting out.

But don’t worry. Here’s how to setup your first Twitter ad campaign.

Step 1: Choose your primary objective

To advertise on Twitter you’ll need to log into your Twitter Ads account. For that head over to ads.twitter.com and enter your credentials.

Now, you’ll need to choose your primary objective. Whether you want to get more leads, more traffic, or just more followers.

Twitter has 6 types of campaigns to choose from, these are:

1. Followers
2. Website clicks or conversions
3. Tweet engagements
4. App install or re-engagements
5. Leads on Twitter
6. Video views

Choose a relevant campaign type and click on it.

Step 2: Select your targeting options

Once you’ve determined the campaign type, it’s time to set up the rest of the campaign. Name your ad campaign, choose all the relevant options, and select your targeting options.

Targeting is an extremely important feature for you to reach to your ideal customers. Twitter has 11 targeting options. These are:

1. Location
2. Gender
3. Languages
4. Devices, Platforms, and Carriers
5. Keywords
6. Followers
7. Interests
8. Tailored Audience
9. Behaviors
10. TV Targeting
11. Event Targeting

I recommend you choose relevant targeting options so you don’t end up wasting your time and money marketing to the wrong audience.

Step 3: Adjust your bid to make your campaign profitable

This is the place where most people get Twitter wrong.

Twitter sells its advertising via auction. That means the more you’re willing to pay, the more likely your ads will be shown, but if you set the bids too low, you’ll get no impressions.

So Twitter provides an option for that. It’s called automatic bidding.

This is how it works: you set a daily maximum budget and set the pricing to automatic bid, and Twitter will make sure your budget is spent very quickly. It might help you in winning auctions, but you don’t want to or have to win every auction.

So, avoid using automatic bid in most of the cases.

In fact, I recommend you to start with $2, then test with the ads, analyze the results and finally scale the campaign.

After doing all the steps, finally launch your campaign.

How to Make Your Campaign Go Viral

You’ve setup your first Twitter campaign. You now understand the platform and know its basics. You also know the way it works.

Now it’s time to optimize your campaign to make it viral. Here’s how:

1. Get High Quality Score to Lower Ad Clicks

First of all, you obviously don’t want to pay higher for ad clicks, when it’s possible to cut them down. Like Facebook and Google, Twitter also has it’s own quality score, which sometimes it refers to as “Quality Adjusted Bids”.

Larry Kim, the founder of Wordstream, actually found that the higher your engagement rate will be, the lower your ad will cost.

Here’s how Twitter determines quality adjusted bid:

1. Resonance: This is a metric to measure your engagement. Basically, the more likes, retweets, and comments you get, the higher your quality score.
2. Relevance: It checks whether a user is interested in your tweet.
3. Recency: This metric checks for the freshness of the tweet. If your tweet is fresh, then it’s going to get higher priority.

Here’s how to get a high quality adjusted bid:

Keep your tweets fresh
Like I already mentioned, Twitter keeps a check on the freshness of your tweet. That means Twitter is less likely to show your older ads. Here’s an example:

(Image Source)

This is a snapshot of Larry Kim’s Twitter ad dashboard. Notice how the impressions go down with each passing day.

Twitter wants to show fresh content to its users. So you’ll want to test different variations of each ad and consider replacing them with newer ads, instead of running the same ones for lengthy periods.

Promote your best stuff
The best possible way to get a high quality score and lower your ad costs is by promoting your best stuff i.e., the tweets which organically gained more exposure.

(Image Source)

This tweet by Larry Kim resulted in 1488 retweets and 1284 favorites.

Larry got these amazing results because his post was truly epic. So, when you write epic content like this:

• How do colors affect purchases?
• The Complete 101 List Building Strategies
• The Science of Social Timing Part 1: Social Networks

Your content has 100x better chance of going viral.

Narrow your audience
Relevance is another important metric in Twitter.

You don’t want to promote your content to the audience that shows little or no interest. Instead want to narrow your audience, target a smaller but precise audience who is interested in your content.

This not only helps get high conversions, but also helps you get higher engagement.

2. How to Find Your Best Content to Promote

Tweet engagement is a pretty important metric when it comes to advertising in Twitter. Not only does Twitter determine the pricing based on the tweet engagement but it also decides the exposure it’s going to get.

High engagement posts is the way to go in this scenario. Here’s how to find high engagement tweets:

1. Login to Twitter Analytics
2. Once you’re in there, click the tweets tab and then click export to export all your tweets
3. Twitter will take a few seconds to process it, depending on your account, then it will send a request to download CSV file
4. Open the file and sort the “Engagement Rate” tab by descending order
5. Now, the top tweets you get are the ones which are most engaging. This is where you should spend your dollars

Once you find your top engagment posts, head back to Twitter and start the advertising campaign for those top tweets.

3. Use Relevant Keywords to Narrow Down Your Audience

Keyword targeting is an amazing feature in Twitter that lets you to find the people based on the words and phrases they’ve tweeted or searched for on Twitter.

Each keyword has 6 options to match your ideal customer:

1. Broad Match: Broad match searches for all the tweets containing that keyword independent of the order.
2. Phrase Match: When you select phrase match, Twitter will search all the tweets that contains the keywords in exact order plus there may be other keywords present between those tweets.
3. Exact Match: It searches for the tweets with exact keywords in the exact order without any word in between.
4. Negative Match: Negative match will remove all the tweets with that keyword in any order.
5. Negative Phrase: Negative phrase will remove all the tweets that contains the keywords in the exact order.
6. Negative Exact: It removes all the tweets with exact keywords in the exact order without any keyword in between.

4. Use Behavior and Demographic Targeting Options to Boost Engagement

Like keyword targeting, Twitter offers behavior and demographic targeting which is a strong metric to find the relevant audience.

You can use behaviors and demographic targeting options to target the people who want to, and can afford to buy your products. Here’s how:

You can select their behavior like business type, industry, sales revenue to find the customers who might be interested in your offering. You can then select their demographic options like their income, education, and employment to find the customers who can afford to buy your products.

5. Create Tailored Audience for Each Buying Stage

Twitter also offers website tags, which is similar to the Facebook pixel. With this tag you can track different types of conversions for the customers visiting your audience, like:

• Site visit
• Purchase
• Download
• Sign up
• Custom

Once you’ve captured these visitors, you can then advertise to these customers in Twitter. And the best part?

You’ll get higher engagement for your tweets, meaning high quality score and low cost of the ads.

6. Leverage Twitter Lists For Best Results

Twitter lists is a great way to organize your followers, clients, influencers, and your team members. Many people know this feature but very few actually utilize it.

In Twitter advertising, Twitter lists is a great way to advertise. Here’s a great example of this:

Larry Kim wrote a blog post for WordStream.

He shared the post throughout his social media account, then promoted the post to the list of influencers using Twitter Ads.

(Image Source

Within 48 hours, the post picked 500+ press mentions and 100K visitors. All of this with just a $50 budget and 10 minutes of campaign setup.

Pretty cool, right?

Your results may vary.

7. Upload Your Email List to Create Your Own Audience

In Twitter, you can upload your email list to create your own list of audiences. With this feature, you can advertise to your email subscribers.

This is a great feature especially when you want to nurture your leads or promote your products. Here’s how to get started:

1. Head over to Twitter ads. Select Tools and click audience manager.
2. Click create new audience. Then, select upload your own list.
3. Fill out all the information, upload your email list and click create list audience.

This list audience is extremely beneficial in Twitter. You can promote your blog posts, lead magnets, and promote your products.

8. Use Retargeting to Promote Your Content

Remarketing is an incredible way to advertise to your website visitors or your email subscribers. In Twitter, you can either use promoted tweets, Twitter cards, or promoted tweets.

All of them gives you a great option to get more exposure. To use retargeting, here’s what you should do:

1. You must upload your email list to retarget your email subscribers
2. You must create a website tag and install it in your website

I recommend you set up a website tag and install it. It’s buried deep in Twitter, but it’s actually the first thing you should do before running any ad. Here’s how to generate a Website tag:

Login to Twitter Ads. Then, click tools, followed by conversion tracking.

Next up, agree to the Terms and Conditions and then click generate website tag for conversions.

In the next page you’ll get the website tag. Install the tag in your website to setup conversion tracking.

Once done, you can advertise to your website visitors based on their behaviours and their purchase.

Measure your Strategy’s Success

You’ve created your first ad. You’ve also optimized your ad to get sky-high conversions. Now, finally it’s time to analyze your ad’s performance and tweak it, if needed.

Let’s start…

1. Test With the Different Variations of the Same Ad

Twitter loves fresh tweets and that’s the reason it gives high preference to fresh tweets. You don’t want to continue running your old ads; instead, you want to create new variations and test with them.

Here are some ideas to test your ads:

• Test changing the headline of your tweet
• Test changing the call-to-action button copy
• Try moving the URL to the front or in the center of your tweet
• Add relevant hashtags to your tweet, to see if it helps
• Try adding, removing, or changing the image

2. Use UTM Parameters

UTM parameters are simply the tags to measure your online marketing campaigns inside Google Analytics or Kissmetrics.

It helps you analyse and measure your online marketing efforts.

For instance, if you’re offering an eBook and want to track the number of users who visited the landing page from your Twitter ad campaign, then you simply ad this tag to your URL.

http://ift.tt/2dPFwEU

Then, you can track every conversion in Kissmetrics. But, it’s quite a headache to create URL every time you create a new ad. For this, you can use Google’s URL Builder, which does a pretty decent job in generating UTM tags for your URL.

3. Analyze, Tweak, Repeat

Finally, it’s time to measure your ad performance.

(Image Source)

Pay close attention to your Twitter Ad dashboard, view your engagement rate, clicks, replies and likes.

Make sure to double check this data with Google Analytics or Kissmetrics (a more robust option). This will help you find the actual number of clicks you’re generating.

With these results, check which campaigns are working and which aren’t. Delete the campaigns that aren’t working and double down on the stuff that’s working.

Conclusion

Twitter ads can be profitable; they can help you generate great ROI. But you must allocate your time to test with the platform.

Remember, Twitter can be misleading (hello, automatic bid) and at times their suggestions won’t work for you. Forget everything that Twitter told you, forget the best practices they told you.

Instead go by this approach, avoid the major pitfalls that Twitter offers and you’ll get incredible ROI from Twitter ads.

About the Author: Aman Thakur shows marketers and bloggers, simple and effective ways to build their mailing list super-fast. Download his exclusive bonus 101 list building strategies to grow your email list. A writer by day and a reader by night, he can be found online tweeting about marketing, or watching Cricket matches.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2dPDHbi