Want to tap into a network with 302 million active users per month to drive webinar signups? If so, Twitter is the place to be. Over the last couple of years, Twitter has made significant advances in their advertising platform and targeting options, making it almost as powerful as Facebook or LinkedIn ads. In this post, we’re going to look at how you can use Twitter Ads to increase your webinar signups.
Setup Your Twitter Ads Account
To get started with Twitter analytics personalisation and ads, you will need to login to your Twitter account and go to the Twitter analytics personalisation and ads dashboard. Here, you will be asked to comply with Twitter’s services. You agree to configure your one time account settings including your location and time zone.
Next, you will be shown your Twitter advertising options, each of which are clearly defined.
You can click the Select button to see details about each and choose the one that best fits your needs. Now, let’s explore the Twitter advertising options that can help you drive more signups to your webinars.
Create a Tweet Engagements Ad
The Tweet Engagements Ad allows you to promote a tweet that you have posted to your Twitter account or that you create directly for your ad audience. This is a sponsored tweet that will look like most tweets in your ad audience’s news feed.
To create a Tweet Engagements Ad, you will click the Select and Continue button. Alternatively, you can click the Create New Campaign button at the top right of your Twitter analytics personalisation and ads dashboard and select the Tweet Engagements option.
First, you will name your campaign and choose when you want your ad to run.
Next, you will choose a tweet from your account to promote or create a new tweet. If you create a new tweet, it will be shown to your ad audience only, whereas those selected from your account are shown publicly.
The advantage of this Twitter advertising format is that your ad will look more like native content on Twitter. The downside is that there is no call to action button and you will pay when someone retweets, favorites, expands, clicks on, replies to, or follows you from your tweet. From here, you will select your targeting and budget options, which we will discuss later in the article.
Create a Website Clicks or Conversions Ad
The Website Clicks or Conversions Ad allows you to promote a tweet containing the Website Card. This card will include a call to action button that directs your ad audience on their next step.
For this ad format, you will want to choose whether you want to use Twitter to track conversions, which will mean you need to install the conversion tracking tag on your website, or specifically the page that people will land upon once they register for your webinar. Note that if you have a new Twitter Ads account, you will need to enter your credit card information to get all of the advertising features, including conversion tracking, which is found under the Tools menu.
To create a Website Clicks or Conversions Ad, you will click the Select and Continue button. Alternatively, you can click the Create New Campaign button at the top right of your Twitter Ads dashboard and select the Website Clicks or Conversions option.
First, you will name your campaign and choose when you want your ad to run. If you have created a conversion tracking tag, you will select that here as well.
Next, you will create a tweet and Website Cardthat will be shown only to your ad audience.
The advantage of this Twitter advertising format is that it is priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, meaning you’ll only pay when someone clicks through to your site. It also includes a specific call to action button that your ad audience will be able to follow to your registration page. From here, you will select your targeting and budget options, which we will discuss later in the article.
Create a Leads on Twitter Ad
The Leads on Twitter Ad allows you to promote a tweet containing the Lead Generation Card. This card will allow you to collect your ad audience’s information as a lead directly on Twitter.
To create a Leads on Twitter Ad, you will click the Select and Continue button. Alternatively, you can click the Create New Campaign button at the top right of your Twitter Ads dashboard and select the Leads on Twitter option.
First, you will name your campaign and choose when you want your ad to run.
Next, you will create a tweet and Lead Generation Card that will be shown only to your ad audience.
When you click to add the Call to Action button, you will be asked for additional details, including the purpose of the Lead Generation Form, the text for the Call to Action button, a privacy policy URL, and a fallback webpage to direct users to if there is a problem with the card. The latter page would be a landing page where people can go to signup for your webinar.
When people click on the call to action button of a Lead Generation Card, Twitter will allow you to capture the name and email address associated with their Twitter account. If you use Driftrock, Eloqua, ExactTarget, Infusionsoft, LoopFuse, Mailchimp, Marketo, Pardot, Sailthru, Salesforce, or Silverpop, their information will be instantly added to your CRM, email, or marketing automation platform. To promote your automated webinars with Leads on Twitter, you can create a Lead Generation Card that asks people to submit their information to learn about your next upcoming webinar on a specific topic. For this, you will create a list in your CRM, email, or marketing automation platform specifically for the webinar you are promoting through the Lead Generation Card. When people are added to your list, you can set up an autoresponder that invites the new subscriber to register for your webinar. Note that if you don’t use one of the above-mentioned platforms, you will need to manually download the leads from your Lead Generation Card and upload them to the CRM, email, or marketing automation platform you use. This may not be a convenient option if you are promoting automated webinars as you will have to regularly download and import your new leads, which will cause a lag time between when people are signing up to when they are receiving their first email. If you have to manually import your Twitter leads, create an ad to let people they will be notified of your next webinar. Then make sure that you download and add them to your CRM, email, or marketing automation platform at a select hour of the day or on a select day of the week to get your leads in the funnel before your next automated webinars run. The advantage of this Twitter advertising format is it is priced on a cost-per-lead (CPL) basis, meaning you’ll only pay when someone submits their contact information through your Lead Generation Card. It also includes a specific call to action button that your ad audience will be able to use to submit their information to you on Twitter and reduces the loss of conversion between Twitter and your website. From here, you will select your targeting and budget options, which we will discuss in the next section. After you have set your targeting and budget options and launch your campaign, you will need to go to the Creatives menu and select Cards.
Click on the Lead Generation Card you just created for your Leads on Twitter Ad campaign.
Click on the Edit Card link.
Scroll down and expand the Destination URL and Data Settings options. This is where you will configure where your ad audience is redirected to after submitting their information and where you will configure automatic importing of leads to Driftrock, Eloqua, ExactTarget, Infusionsoft, LoopFuse, Mailchimp, Marketo, Pardot, Sailthru, Salesforce, or Silverpop. Configuration instructions for each can be found on the Lead Generation Card information page on Twitter Business.
If you do not use any of the above-mentioned platforms, you will go to your Lead Generation Card in the Creatives > Cards section and click on the export icon to download your leads.
While this ad format takes the most time to set up, it is the most beneficial, especially for those using the above-mentioned CRM, email, and marketing automation platforms.
Define Your Target Audience
Once you’ve created your ad, your next step will be to target your ad campaign to a specific audience that is most likely to register for your webinar and convert into a sale for your product or service. You will have plenty of targeting options to choose from, starting with standards such as location, gender, language, and the devices used by your target audience.
After this, you will have several additional selections to further refine your audience.
First, you can choose to show your ads to keywords your ad audience may search or tweet about.
Then, you can choose to show your ad to people who follow specific Twitter accounts you specify. For example, if you are creating a webinar on ecommerce, you might want to target followers of Shopify, Magento, Bigcommerce, and similar business Twitter accounts.
Next, you can choose audiences with specific interests. Start typing in any keyword to see matching interests tracked on Twitter.
If you have lists of email addresses or Twitter usernames you would like to advertise to, you can import them using the Lists option. You can also target people who have visited your website using the Website Visitors option. Both will take a couple of hours to a couple of days to start working, depending on the size of your lists and the number of visitors that you receive to your website.
If you can target your webinar audience based on their TV viewing preferences, there are lots of targeting options to choose from for shows, networks, and genres. For example, if you are targeting aspiring chefs, you can use the Food Network and shows like Hell’s Kitchen in this section.
Do you want to target audiences with specific behaviors? Use the Behaviors section to do so – start typing in keywords related to a specific behavior, like purchasing a car or a home, to see what Twitter tracks and allows you to use for ad targeting.
In addition to including Tailored Audiences and audiences with specific behaviors, you can also exclude them.
Set Your Budget
Once you have defined your targeting options, you will need to specify your budget. It’s as simple as telling Twitter the maximum you want to spend daily on your ad and the maximum you want to spend on the lifetime of your ad.
For those running daily automated webinars, you could choose a maximum daily budget to ensure that you are getting new signups every day. Under Advanced Options, you will find the options to choose automatic bidding (letting Twitter specify your cost per action or click), target bidding (specifying your target cost per action or click), or maximum bidding (specifying your maximum cost per action or click). Once you’ve finished creating your ad, targeting your audience, and setting your budget, you will save your campaign. Once approved by Twitter, it will begin running immediately or when you specified in your ad settings.
Monitor Your Results
As soon as your ad starts running, you will be able to see analytics data for each of your campaigns in your Twitter Ads dashboard under Campaigns.
Here, you will see the overall impressions, number of specific results based on the campaign objective, rate of conversion, and budget spent. If you have multiple campaigns running, you can use this area to see which campaign is the most successful, pause ads that are not performing as well, and focus your ad spend on the campaigns that are best.
In Conclusion
If you are looking to increase Twitter webinar signups, Twitter advertising is a great platform to use to get the attention of your ideal attendees and customers. Be sure to try each ad format – tweet engagements, website clicks and conversions, and leads on Twitter to see which one gets you the best results! Also, to continue increasing webinar signups, be sure to see our guides for using Facebook Advertising and LinkedIn Advertising.
