Twitter opens its doors to SMEs

Twitter has opened the gates to businesses around the globe, including Australia, offering paid advertising space to small and medium businesses, where they are able to determine the budget, paying for only the specific actions you want.  

According to Twitter, around 62% of consumers have purchased products based on Twitter engagement with a business. But until now, Twitter has only offered its advertising platform to larger brands. This move could potentially create opportunities for businesses to gain visibility and allow consumers to purchase products from within the platform.

Twitter has created a number of tools and templates to assist SMBs to set up their advertising campaigns. Twitter says the tools have capabilities to measure the analytics of a campaign for clicks, conversions, email addresses and track results over time. Good news for those who struggle to collect Twitter analytics manually.

Some of the benefits Twitter says its advertising will offer include:

1. Increase website traffic

Twitter commonly is used by businesses to direct their target audiences to their website using links. This is not always successful as the links can be diluted and easily become lost in the stream of endless content.

To combat this Twitter offers website cards which allow businesses to create an image with a call to action button. The call to action button is designed to increase click through as it is more prominent than a link within a tweet. However, a call to action button alone won’t create the click through, the content and image needs to capture the audience’s attention.

2. Improve newsletter open rates

Newsletters remain a common way for businesses to communicate the latest news to subscribers. Open rates are important as it alerts businesses to how many subscribers are engaging with the content.

As Twitter now provides businesses with the ability to target select audiences, an ad campaign can reach the subscribers that aren’t opening their newsletter. Although this is not a guaranteed way of engaging with the subscribers, as the target audience email details need to match their Twitter account in order for the tactic to work successfully.

3. Close uncompleted transactions

E-commerce faces many challenges, one being incomplete transactions. Using an online platform to make a purchase, consumers can become easily distracted. Your Twitter ads will be able to target those customers with uncompleted transactions. While this is a good way to specifically target engaged consumers, there isn’t a way to gauge the reasons for the uncompleted transactions.

4. Lead generation

The traditional approach to lead generation has proven to lose consumers at each step in the process, meaning the shorter the steps the more likely potential customers will engage with the business. Enter the Twitter lead generation card. The idea of this tool is to help collect customer information as once a customer clicks on the card Twitter completes the contact details based on their Twitter information.

However, not every Twitter user has a complete or descriptive profile and you may not get the information you need.

While Twitter advertising may not be for everyone it could have the capability to enhance SMBs online presence, potentially gaining exposure and integrating e-commerce. If it aligns with your business goals and strategies Twitter ads could be a worthwhile investment.

Catriona Pollard is the author of From Unknown To Expert, a step-by-step framework designed to help entrepreneurs develop effective PR and social media strategies to become recognised as influencers in their field.