Within the realm of social media advertising in particular, one of the most remarkable developments has been the evolution of audience targeting. As someone who’s regularly in the back end of various social ad platforms managing paid campaigns, I’ve observed some of the most rapid expansions of targeting capabilities within Twitter’s native campaign builder. It’s not uncommon for them to push a new update or feature every few months. I’ve compiled top targeting best practices, which will help you drive greater precision and efficiency for your clients’ campaigns. Sometimes, little things can make a big difference. Small tweaks to the Tweet copy you use in Twitter Ads campaigns can lead to marked improvements in results.

There is a lot to consider when running a Twitter ads campaign. And whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, it’s helpful to review best practices from time to time to ensure your campaign has the best chance of success.

Here are tips you can put into place right now to improve your Twitter ads campaign. Get your pen and paper ready!

When using Twitter Ads, you want to ensure that you’re attracting highly qualified leads, and by that we mean the Twitter users who are most likely to become customers. It may seem obvious that a Twitter user, who has clicked your ad, is interested in what you’re offering. That said, the right targeting will ensure that your money is well spent on qualified leads and your conversion rate is boosted.

You should have a good idea of the type of Twitter user you want to attract. Take a look at your own community using a tool such as SocialBro and access information like bio Tag Clouds, which provide insight into the common keywords in your community’s Twitter biographies. You will get a good idea of what makes your current Twitter community tick. You could also try Googling particular keywords and looking at ‘Searches related to…’ to get an idea of alternative keywords, to make sure you’re covering the most relevant users.

One thing that makes Twitter Ads unique over Facebook or other social networking platforms is the potential for reach and exposure. But potential reach can only get you so far, it’s important that your content is top quality, engaging both during your campaign and in your regular day-to-day. Tweet your newly acquired followers and have a clear call to action to ensure that Twitter users are enticed to follow you. With 43% of Twitter users revealing that they would purchase regularly from an SME they follow, it’s important your content appeals to your target audience.

The key thing to bear in mind when using Twitter Ads for business - Don’t promise the world and offer a peanut. If you’re driving traffic to a landing page, that landing page content needs to be top quality. Otherwise, you’ll be paying for people to click your link, look at your page, and click away without ever getting to know your business. Promotional Tweets offering a discount or incentive for people to follow and engage with your business works well.

Include images and links in your engagement campaign tweets. Engagement campaigns are great for brand awareness and generating discussion. In a recent webinar, Twitter revealed tweets with images that contain links receiving 86% higher engagement rates than tweets with text only. What’s more? Tweets with images have a 200% higher engagement rate than those without. So, grab your camera or smartphone and start snapping! The most effective ads on Twitter use images or videos and have fewer than 100 characters. Use vibrant and interesting images to catch Twitter users’ attention in their feeds. With interesting imagery, the odds of your ad being shared, liked, or retweeted increase.

Your contents should be optimized for mobile devices. Looking at the platform stats, I was surprised to find that, out of the 11,000 impressions, only 3,000 were delivered on desktop or laptop computers; the other 8,000 impressions were delivered on mobiles devices, and most of which are Apple devices with iOS platform.

This tells us that when a Twitter user clicks to access your landing page, contents on that page must be optimized for viewing on mobile devices. A regular web page will look cluttered on the smaller screens of mobile devices and will likely turn visitors away.

Your tweets should have an effective “call to action” You need to incorporate some sort of “call to action” (CTA) in your tweets to engage people, prompting them to click, retweet, reply, or follow. However, you should avoid sounding like a salesman in ads by using “Buy Now” as the call to action. The ad should inspire conversation and sometimes a different call to action is needed. Before anything, you must understand the consumer's wants and needs before selling your product.

Twitter Advertising: 5 Best Practices to Follow