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Archives for April 2013

AdWords for Twitter – How To Set Up Keyword Targeting Campaigns in Twitter Ads [Tutorial]

April 19, 2013 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

Keyword Targeting in Twitter Ads

There was a big announcement on Wednesday in the advertising world.  Twitter finally launched a keyword targeting solution for Twitter Ads.  Yes, that means AdWords-like targeting for Twitter.  Many in the industry (including myself) have thought for a long time that Twitter should launch something like this… and it’s finally here.

As soon as I heard the news, I ran to my Twitter Advertising dashboard to jump in.  Based on setting up my first set of campaigns, I decided to write this post to detail how keyword targeting works in Twitter, how to set up a campaign, explain the targeting options you have, etc.  My hope is that after you read this post, you’ll be off and running with your first AdWords-like Twitter campaign. :)

What is Keyword Targeting in Twitter?
Let’s start with a quick introduction.  With this new release, advertisers can now promote certain tweets based on keywords that users are searching for on Twitter, based on keywords used in their tweets, or based on keywords found in tweets users recently engaged with.  When a match is made, your promoted tweet has an opportunity to win placement either in a user’s Twitter stream or in the search results (for when someone searches Twitter).

A Promoted Tweet looks like this:
Example of Promoted Tweet

 

Creating Your First Campaign
In your Twitter Ads dashboard, you should click “Create campaign” in the upper left-hand corner.

Create a keyword targeting campaign in Twitter Ads

 

Next, click the “Promote your Tweets” button to select a promoted tweets campaign.

 

Select campaign type in Twitter Ads

 

Once you select a promoted tweets campaign, you should click the button labeled “Target by keywords” to create a keyword targeting campaign.

 

Select keyword targeting in Twitter Ads

 

Your Options (Feed and Search)
When you decide to launch a keyword targeting campaign in Twitter, you’ll have to decide if you want to target the search results or users’ timelines.  I like that Twitter forces you to break out campaigns by type, since I would have recommended doing that anyway.   This will enable you to better analyze the effectiveness of your targeting (very similar to breaking out display network and search campaigns in AdWords).

Target search or users' timelines

 

Keyword Match Types
Next, you’ll need to address the keywords you will target for your campaign.  Similar to AdWords or Bing Ads, you have several options when targeting keywords.  You can choose unordered match (which is similar to broad match), phrase match, or exact match.  Unordered match will match your keywords, but those keywords can be in any order.  Phrase match requires the keywords be in the exact order you list, but other keywords can be at the beginning or end of the query.  And exact match requires a perfect match on the keywords you enter – without any other keywords in the query.  Exact match is the most restrictive of the match types and is only available when you target the search results.

Choosing keywords for your Twitter Ads campaign

 

Note, you can also import keywords as comma separated, or line separated (which is a nice option for importing keywords from other platforms).

 

Importing keywords in Twitter Ads

 

Negatives
If you are familiar with paid search advertising, then you already know the power of using negatives.  Well, Twitter Ads enable you to include several types of negatives, including negative broad match, negative phrase match, and negative exact match.  Note, negatives are only available when you target the search results versus users’ timelines.  This makes sense, since most tweets don’t contain a few words (like a search query does).  When you use a negative, it tells Twitter to not show your ad when the negative appears in a search query.

Using negatives in keyword targeted campaigns in Twitter Ads

 

Your Ad, I Mean Tweet
When you use keyword targeting, you are setting up a “Promoted Tweets” campaign.  So, you aren’t setting up ads.  Instead, you are choosing a specific tweet to promote.  That’s important to understand or you can make the mistake of tweeting out an ad-sounding message during the campaign creation process.  When you set up your keyword targeting campaign, you can select a tweet to specifically promote from your stream.  You can also create a new tweet to promote, if that makes more sense for your campaign.  And yes, that makes the most sense, since you will want to tag your destination URL’s so your analytics package can accurately report your campaign statistics.

Selecting a tweet to promote in Twitter Ads

 

Personally, I think Twitter can learn something from Facebook here.  Using Facebook Ads, you can create an unpublished post to promote, and then use various targeting methods to reach your audience.  I would love to have that ability using Twitter Ads.  For example, an advertiser could create specific tweets to promote that wouldn’t necessarily show up in their stream (that all of their followers would see).  That would also enable you to split test your tweets more effectively.  Hey, it’s just an idea. :)
Targeting Options for Keyword Campaigns in Twitter Ads

Location Targeting
Once you choose your keywords, set negatives, and choose your promoted tweet, you can target your audience in a number of ways.  For example, you can use location targeting to limit your promoted tweets to users in a specific geographic region.  As of now, you can target users by country, state, and metro area.  For example, you can target the United States, New Jersey, or the Philadelphia Metro area.  Note, you cannot target at a smaller city or town level (at least yet).

Location Targeting in Twitter Ads

Target by Gender
In addition to using location targeting, you can also target by gender.  There are radio buttons for “any gender”, “male only”, and “female only”.  Twitter infers gender by the tweets shared by users, by their profiles, and by their follow graphs.  Using gender targeting, you can test response rates by gender (by splitting out campaigns by gender).  That’s exactly what I did when setting up my first keyword targeting campaign.

Gender Targeting in Twitter Ads

Device Targeting
Keyword targeting campaigns also enable you to target by device.  For example, you can target desktop and laptops, iOS, Android,  Blackberry, and “other mobile devices”.  You can use this targeting capability to split mobile and desktop campaigns, to target specific platforms, etc.

Device Targeting in Twitter Ads

 

Bid and Budget
At the bottom of the campaign setup screen are fields for campaign budget, daily budget, and maximum bid.  You can also use standard or accelerated delivery for your daily budget, which will either spend your budget as fast as possible starting at midnight, or spread that budget throughout the day.  When setting a maximum CPC, Twitter will supply a suggested bid range.

Setting a bid and budget in Twitter Ads

Once you have entered your keywords, chosen a tweet to promote, set up targeting, and set your bid and budget, then you are ready to rock and roll.  Simply click the “Create Campaign”  button at the bottom of the screen to launch your campaign!

Long Overdue, But Glad Keyword Targeting is Here
Although many in the industry believe this is long overdue, I’m thrilled that Twitter has finally released keyword targeting for Twitter Ads.  Over the past few days, I’ve been setting up various campaigns and testing performance, engagement, etc.  I plan to write more posts in the near future, based on the results of my initial campaigns.  So stay tuned.  In the meantime, I recommend jumping in yourself.  You can set up your first keyword targeting campaign today by following the instructions I included above.  Good luck.

GG

 

 

Filed Under: sem, social-advertising, twitter

You Might Be Losing Out – How To Make Sure Sitelink Extensions in Bing Ads Are Tracked Properly [Tutorial]

April 14, 2013 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

Bing Ads released sitelink extensions in October of 2012, which enables advertisers to provide additional links in their text ads.  Google AdWords has had ad sitelinks for some time, so this was a great addition by our friends at Bing Ads.  For example, if you were an ecommerce website selling sporting goods, you could provide ad sitelinks for your top categories, like football, baseball, basketball, etc. right beneath your standard text ad.  Sitelink extensions are great usability-wise, while they also provide a nice advantage in the SERPs (since they take up more real-estate).

Here are two examples of sitelink extensions in action (2 Formats):
Example of Sitelink Extensions in Bing Ads for Lucky Jeans

 

Example of Sitelink Extensions in Bing Ads for Adidas

So, let’s say you set up sitelink extensions for some of your campaigns, and you’re basking in the glory of those beautiful ads (and the click through they are getting).  But, maybe your reporting isn’t lining up clicks and visits-wise.  Sure, there are several reasons that could be happening, but maybe it got worse since you launched sitelink extensions.  Well, the reason could very well be the lack of tagging on your ad sitelinks.  If those additional URLs aren’t tagged properly, then your analytics package could very well be reporting that traffic as organic search.  And that would be shame.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through why this could be happening, and how to rectify the situation.  After reading this post, you might just run to Bing Ads today and make changes.  Let’s jump in.

Sitelink Extensions and Tracking Parameters
In Bing Ads, you can include sitelink extensions several ways.  First, you can add them manually via the Bing Ads web UI.  Second, you can use Bing Ads Editor to add them locally, and then upload them to your account.  And third, and possibly the top reason ad sitelinks don’t get tagged, is that you can import them from AdWords via the “Import from Google” functionality.  Note, the import from AdWords functionality is awesome, so don’t get me wrong.  It’s just that it’s easy to import ad sitelinks and not know they are there.  Then you run the risk of uploading untagged sitelink extensions.

How To Create Sitelink Extensions in Bing Ads

So, you need to make sure that your ad sitelinks are tagged properly, based on the analytics package you are using to track campaigns.  For example, if you are using Google Analytics, then you need to make sure that you identify each click coming from your sitelink extensions.  That means you should be appending tracking parameters to your sitelink URLs.  For Google Anlaytics, you can use URL Builder to tag your landing page URLs.

Tagging Sitelink URLs Using URL Builder

 

How To Tag Your Ad Sitelinks in Bing Ads
Again there are various ways to include sitelink extensions in your campaigns, from using the web UI to using Bing Ads Editor to using the “Import from Google” functionality.  I’ll quickly cover each method below to make sure you know where to apply your tracking parameters.

1.  The Bing Ads Web UI
You can currently apply ad sitelinks at the campaign level in Bing Ads.  When you access a campaign, you can click the “Ad Extensions” tab to include ad sitelinks.  Once there, you can click “Create” to add a new sitelink extension.  If you have other sitelink extensions set up across campaigns, you will see them listed (and you can apply those to your campaign if it makes sense).

Creating Sitelink Extensions Using the Bing Web UI

If you want to add a completely new sitelink extension, then click “Create New”.  When adding the sitelink extension, Bing Ads provide a field for link text and then a field for the destination URL.  When you add the URL, make sure your tracking parameters are added!  If not, your visits will show up as “Bing Organic” versus “Bing CPC”.  Good for the SEO team, but not so good for the paid search team.  :)

 

Adding Sitelinks Using the Bing Web UI

 

2. Bing Ads Editor
I love Bing Ads Editor.  It’s an awesome way to manage your campaigns locally and then sync with the Bing Ads web UI.  And as you can guess, there is functionality for adding and editing sitelink extensions in Bing Ads Editor.  You can access your sitelink extensions by clicking the “Ad Extensions” tab for any selected campaign.

Once you click the “Ad Extensions” tab, you can add sitelink extensions by clicking the “Create a Sitelink Extension” button from the top menu.  Then similar to the web UI, you can add the link text and the destination URL.  When adding your destination URLs, make sure your tracking parameters are added.

Adding Sitelinks Using the Bing Ads Editor

 

3. Import from Google (in Bing Ads Editor)
As I explained earlier, I love having the ability to import campaigns, changes, etc. from AdWords directly into Bing Ads Editor.  It makes managing campaigns across both platforms much more efficient.  But, I’ve seen advertisers import campaigns from AdWords that have sitelink extensions, but they don’t realize it.  Then they upload their campaigns to Bing Ads and don’t understand that prospective customers are clicking their sitelinks, visiting their sites, etc., but those visits aren’t being tracked correctly.  Again, those visits will show up as “Bing Organic” in your analytics reporting.

When you go through the process of importing your campaigns, make sure you double check the “Ad Extensions” tab for the newly-imported campaign.  You just might find sitelink extensions sitting there.  And yes, they very well could be left untagged.  Make sure you add your tracking parameters before uploading them to Bing Ads (from Bing Ads Editor).

You can also uncheck the “Ad Extensions” radio button when importing your campaigns from AdWords.  Then you can add your sitelink extensions directly in Bing Ads Editor (via the second method I covered earlier in this post.

Importing Sitelink Extensions in Bing Ads Editor

 

Sitelinks Are Powerful, But Only If They Are Tracked
Sitelinks extensions are a great addition to Bing Ads, and they absolutely can yield higher click through rates.  But, you need to make sure those clicks are being tracked and attributed to the right source – your Bing Ads campaigns!  I recommend checking your campaigns today to make sure your sitelink extensions have the proper tracking parameters appended.  If not, you can quickly refine those links to make sure all is ok.   And when everything is being tracked properly, you just might see a boost in visits, orders, and revenue being attributed to Bing Ads.  And that’s always a good thing.

GG

 

 

Filed Under: adcenter, adwords, bing-ads, google-analytics, sem, seo, tools

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