I tried Twitter ads for the first time recently. I think it has some promise. I wrote up my results here:
Adwords vs Twitter vs LinkedIn ads, a small experiment
Has anyone else tried Twitter ads. If so, what were your experiences?
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Interesting. I just through a few bucks at a campaign for today and tomorrow, will report back.
Did you do a sponsored based on Twitter handles?
Yeah, sponsored tweet which I wrote just for this based on about 6-7 twitter handles. In my case as a first shot mostly competitor handles. I’m not sure it’s such a great tactic, but Snappy’s angle is simplicity and the tweet highlights that while targeting more complex competitors. Does feel kinda icky.
I took out me and my followers as I already beat them over the head and many of devs and such who I aren’t a perfect fit. I have some other ideas but just trying the simplest one first I can crank out off the top of my head on your inspiration.
I’m trying out the Twitter Lead Generation cards and not getting good results. I’m not spending much money at all so might be better in larger volume; but still getting a few thousand impressions but no real engagement, so far zero subscriptions after 3-4 days.
Really hard to tell if its my terrible marketing material or people just unlikely to actual convert, or poor targeting.
The acutally numbers, 3,766 impressions, 84 engagements, 0 conversions. Spend $13
I use them on and off, mainly sponsored tweets which are intended to drive traffic to a landing page. I mainly used a group of three tweets with different language targeting the same landing page. This works pretty well and I can see which tweets work best.
I also target specific handles, 10 or so, mainly competitors. Conversions have been good. I think I will continue with varied messages.
Given the industry standard convert rate of 1% from click to sale, perhaps it isn’t surprising if you haven’t had any conversions yet.
It does feel like you are riding on other people’s coat tails. But I can live with that if it brings me some sales. ;0)
So far getting 1.11% click through according to Twitter. 3,239 impressions and 36 clicks. What’s odd is I put UTM variables in the link but Google Analytics shows no referrals with the UTM vars. Only about 40 clicks total from Twitter. While that is more than the 36 Twitter says, we often get organic clicks from twittter so not sure what to make of that.
Perhaps GA isn’t updated fully yet (though visits and such seem to be, already showing data from the 24th).
Final tally for the 24hours or so it ran 3,554 impressions, 40 clicks, 1 follow, $50 spent.
Though, GA still shows nothing on the UTM vars. Twitter shows them there in all the UI’s (though never saw what they actually sent if it differed) so not sure what’s going on.
Normally sites like Hacker News don’t give you that much of a bump in conversions, even if they do generate a lot of traffic, for things like eBook conversion software or wedding table planners or whatever, that are targeted at “normal people”, but your class is really something that that demographic would like. So it might be worth trying to get noticed there. I posted this article, but it didn’t get much traction; maybe you can try again with another one in a few days.
I appreciate the submission. Submitting your own stuff seems to be both frowned upon and penalized. But asking people to submit stuff for you is a bit cheesy.
I have had a number of front page posts over the last few years. But it seems very random which posts do well on hacker news. I think a lot of it comes down to the luck of whether the first few people that see it upvote it.
Actually I think submitting your own stuff isn’t necessarily frowned on if it’s relevant and you don’t overdo it: in other words, if all you submit is your own stuff, yeah, you probably get dinged for it. Otherwise, why not? You worked hard on it, and you’re happy enough with it to share it publicly. I think both the information about twitter advertising and your course are very much on-topic for the site.
It’s very, very random and unpredictable what does well.