On Twitter, things move quickly.
Successful Twitter ad campaigns don’t happen by accident.
500,000 tweets are sent in a single day, according to Twitter statistics. So, if you’re trying to get your audience to care about what you’re promoting, you will need to put in the effort to stand out from the crowd.
As always, examples of Twitter ads out-of-context aren’t really helpful, so stay with us for a paragraph or two while we lay the groundwork for advertising on Twitter.
Why Do Twitter Ads Matter?
With millions of new tweets appearing in user timelines every day, is it even worth attempting to reach the platform’s audience?
The answer is yes!
Here are three explanations for this:
- 22% of adults in the U.S. use Twitter and appear to be geared towards urban, well educated, and higher-income users. Also, the site is viewed at least once a day by 46% of American Twitter users.
- 330 million people used Twitter every month by the first quarter of 2019 and has over 206 million daily active users. And although those figures decreased year over year, much of the decrease came from the platform eliminating automated bots. Implying more direct user interaction and (hopefully) less irrelevant noise.
- 75% of B2B and 65% of its B2C companies market on Twitter. Twitter currently outstrips Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat in that statistic. So, if you’re not advertising on Twitter, your competition may reach an audience you will not get a chance with.
Must Haves In Twitter Ads
If you’re new to advertising on Twitter, you should rely on a couple of must-haves to get your campaign off the ground.
Explain Your Offer Concisely
Twitter is built for users to search, skim, and skip around. The initial 140-character cap of the platform strengths this idea, but users still seem to favor brevity despite doubling the number of characters in 2018. As an advertiser, if you want to connect and convert, you need to grab and hold your audience’s attention quickly.
Target Keywords
Twitter has several layers of targeting audience, but if you are just beginning, you’ll want to test an initial collection of keywords to determine which ones are most applicable to your offer. From there, you can extend to target other niches such as behavior, demographics, and type of device.
Define Next Steps
This applies to most online advertising, but it is worth emphasizing that to proceed with your offer, your call to action should attract your prospect with specific benefits and steps. Language such as “Get Started Now” or “Free 30 Day Access” usually works better than a vague “Learn More” button.
Ask A Question
What’s more engaging than a question? Twitter data shows that when an ad includes a “?” it gets 25% more clicks.
Copy
A good idea is a good idea, and there are plenty of companies and brands out there making clever Twitter ads from which you can draw inspiration.
Twitter Ad Examples
Take inspiration from these ads and you will be making better and more engaging Twitter ads for your brand.
1. Progressive
This Progressive ad is a prime Twitter ad example of how to successfully reach your Twitter audience.
The copy is descriptive, sarcastic, and matches the message of rate transparency. Seeing the spokeswoman of Progressive in tears draws your attention and highlights the differentiator by comparing competitor rates to Progressive. The call-to-action is convincing and in line with the central message of the ad.
This Tweet targets buyers in Progressive’s conversion funnel “convert” section. Conversion funnels usually have four stages: attract, convert, close, and delight. The term “insurance” never appears in the text of the commercial. This is because the ad presumes that the audience understands that Progressive is an insurance company due to where the audience is in the conversion funnel.
2. Oberlo
Many businesses don’t have the universal popularity of Progressive’s name (or ad budget) and have to target their customers by more restricted means.
One such enterprise is Oberlo, a B2B drop shipping network. By using Twitter advertising to give personal inspiration just as much as business acumen, they are gaining a following.
Oberlo relies on a combination of knowledge and inspiration to address the issues and problems that their audience of emerging entrepreneurs and small companies struggle with. The offer in this Twitter ad example is a low stake, a free, branded desktop wallpaper with an inspiring quote, but it works wonderfully as part of a wider awareness campaign around the brand of Oberlo.
Comprehending the audience’s makeup and targeting them with relevant content is a highly successful way to get to the market without creating high-budget, expensive content.
3. Amazon
Amazon is a giant in eCommerce, but they still need to keep people interested and engaged with their brand to continue to be successful.
Promoting flash sales in this Twitter ad example helps to serve that purpose.
This special offer is for accessories from Kindle and Fire, which are both Amazon’s high-end products. Users who click on the ad probably already have one of those products, so Amazon is essentially rewarding consumers who have committed to their goods already.
By making the deal time-sensitive, consumers also have an additional incentive to convert quickly or risk losing out on it.
Twitter’s research reveals that people are more likely to click on an ad that mentions a percentage discount compared to one that discusses a dollar-specific saving.
4. Kikkoman
Kikkoman is one of the most popular soy sauce brands around the world. In this Twitter ad example, Kikkoman is promoting their soy sauce by showcasing a sticky-sweet grilled chicken skewer recipe.
While it is hard to say for sure without seeing the settings of Kikkoman’s campaign, they may have targeted this tweet to users with an interest in food, nutrition, and/or cooking. They might have built a target audience of users who expressed interest in those topics, used certain keywords in previous tweets, and/or follow similar accounts.
In this ad Kikkoman blends two relevant trends: 1) recipe tutorial videos, and 2) growing interest in healthy eating. Both patterns fit in well with their brand. Plus, they teach potential customers exactly how to use their products by showing a recipe.
Video content is king on social media platforms. Combined with the fact that photos of food still dominate social networks, food-related videos are positioned for success.
5. Zyppah
By widening your audience beyond its usual boundaries, partnering with celebrities, business leaders, and other influencers will help you earn more followers.
In this Twitter ad example, Zyppah hired former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal to promote better sleep.
You may not have the funds to make Shaq the face of your campaign. But it could be just as useful to partner with the right influencers. Working with influencers is a type of social proof that your campaign will produce more clicks and conversions.
6. Spotify
The music streaming service Spotify follows a variety of the best practices we’ve listed in this Twitter ad example. The copy is precise, the “sign up now” call to action is specific, and the deal is direct.
The notable feature of this ad is the three-month trial is $0.99. Lengthened free trials (or insanely-cheap trials) use a psychological tactic called risk reversal. This reduces the concerns of your prospective customers regarding signing up for your product or service.
Since the buyer can use the product for virtually nothing, the pressure of proving worthwhile moves onto the seller. However, if your product is effective, most consumers won’t want to opt-out when it is time to pay the regular price.
Spotify has used such deals to create a paying subscription list of over 87 million users. We can’t guarantee this degree of performance, but trial periods are a great incentive for subscription-based goods and services in particular.
7. Wendy’s
Visuals are an increasingly essential part of the reach of both organic and paid social media as shown in this Twitter ad example. While it may be difficult for technology companies to succeed in this, it is simple for food companies – particularly in the fast-food space.
After all, who wouldn’t be drooling over a photo of some freshly cut fries!? ?
Wendy’s knows this and has adapted their social media advertising to a visual-first approach. Each of their video advertisements has a static picture of their drool-worthy burgers and fries, while the background color changes.
The aim is to get people to click, and it succeeds, with flickering colors and delicious food. Because of this, Wendy’s does not have to create more in-depth video content. Twitter users will click since their senses will take over, especially during lunchtime.
8. Threadless
For many eCommerce vendors, holiday promotions are imperative. Twitter offers you the ability to meet consumers who are constantly looking for the right gifts as well as an offer or promotion to capitalize on.
Threadless, a retailer of web-based clothing, feeds into these needs with this Twitter ad.
Although the text might need a bit of firming up, Threadless offers an eye-catching picture, a persuasive offer, and a straightforward CTA, all bundled under a real Christmas tree with a puppy on top.
Also, content that causes an optimistic, uplifting reaction (like a puppy under a tree) will reinforce the relationship between your followers and your brand by offering momentary relief from the holiday season stress.
9. Skillshare
Skillshare links people who want to learn new things from world-class professionals.
By tweeting free class video previews taught by industry experts, people can check out the instructor and learn about the content of the course before signing up.
This specific Twitter ad example begins with a Google statistic that explains the offer. By watching a free Skillshare video to hold one’s webpage “front and center.”
Do not forget about your road to conversion, too! The link in this Tweet takes the reader to a class landing page, where they can then automatically sign up to take the free course.
10. Hubspot: INBOUND2020
This is another way to use Twitter as part of the overall marketing scheme for an upcoming event, in this case.
Event promotion on Twitter works well if you can get users to chat and create similar material, and if all that conversation occurs in the same place, it works even better.
HubSpot is promoting their 2020 INBOUND Conference in this Twitter ad example, and they have set up a hashtag #INBOUND2020 for Twitter users to communicate before and during the virtual event.
As you can see, both the profile text on the left and the Tweet to the right display the hashtag. They even added a countdown to the event as their banner.
By creating and promoting your event’s exclusive hashtag, you’ll gain traction and have a greater chance of trending on Twitter. This places you at the front of a much larger audience.
11. Choice Hotels
For a long time, advertisers have been tugging on heartstrings. Who isn’t still tearing up a little bit about the SPCA ad featuring Sarah McLachlan’s song, Angel? In the age of social media ads, the “It’s time to get together” advertisement by Choice Hotel is a Twitter ad example of this done right.
Every one of its ads is remarkably simple. It shows two loving friends in the tweet with the caption, “It’s time to get together.” This reminds the viewers that in their lives they need to get out and see old friends, family members, and other important individuals in their life.
For travel companies, this kind of marketing works particularly well. These businesses ultimately remind their customers of old friends they haven’t seen in years, enticing them to book a trip to go and see them.
12. Louis Vuitton
This Twitter ad example was created by Louis Vuitton with a simple, unique message:
The Horizon Soft luggage is lightweight.
For shorter ads that will appear in Twitter’s noisy Timeline, you need to keep your message simple and unique. Anything that gets too complicated is overlooked.
However, for a few reasons, Louis Vuitton also executed this video ad at a high level.
First, note that, in the first three seconds, they have a hook. It’s a human face, with a rather intense look in this case. Human beings are conditioned to recognize faces physiologically, so this helps stop users from continuing to scroll. It also helps that actor Kris Wu was selected who is an attractive, recognizable face.
The ad engages us after we’re hooked by displaying slow-motion imagery as the character begins to float away. The sequence is very dream-like when you combine the visuals with the music, but the ad also works without sound. This sort of thing makes one wonder why he floats.
He is floating because the luggage is lightweight, the primary message of course. To receive this message we don’t need a lot of copy or voiceovers. All of this occurs in less than 20 seconds, and the video’s production and style make it unforgettable. Grab your wallets, Louis Vuitton knows what they are doing.
13. Agricola
Italian home-and-garden shop Agricola wanted to push traffic to its new online store from different audiences. Since their market is very niche, the company has agreed to build a plan for targeted content produced in advance to engage with unique account followers.
In this Twitter ad example, Agricola used website cards to illustrate in-store deals, but this was just one piece of the puzzle. Also, they targeted followers of influential accounts related to their audience and tested various images and copies of ads.
Agricola’s efforts led to 210 times more site visits or a 21,000% increase.
14. AT&T
AT&T leverages NCAA tournament fever in the below-sponsored Twitter ad example to highlight the LG V20’s audio and video features and spread the word about their 50% off offer.
With the NCAA tournament in full swing in March college basketball dominates conversations everywhere. This prompt tweet from AT&T suggests you’ll need a device to watch the games on.
In this tweet, two visual elements stand out. First, the awe-inspiring shot of a basketball player preparing to dunk, and second, on the LG smartphone itself, the crisp image. AT&T is doing a good job visually connecting the optimistic emotions that people associate with college basketball with the attributes of the product they are promoting.
50% off is a good deal. There is, however, one criticism for the call-to-action of this ad: Instead of simply saying, “March special offer,” AT&T should have used this to generate more urgency to take advantage of the deal.
15. Volkswagen
Volkswagen promoted this tweet that highlights their Passat’s family friendly features.
In this Twitter ad example, VW used its 280-character cap well, using wordplay to point out what defines the Passat. They did not go crazy with the hashtags, either.
The image also supports the ad ‘s argument that the Passat has “family-size fun,” drawing attention to its spacious interior.
Visuals, visuals, visuals! We can’t emphasize enough the value of highly visual Twitter ads. Think of using a picture or video that highlights what separates your product or service, and use your 280 characters (or less) to illustrate the message that is being visually shown.
16. Casper
As one of several e-commerce mattress start-ups that have entered the market in recent years, Casper is seeking to stand out by promoting their in-home trial.
Casper brings in front and center an enticing deal, their 100-night home trial, to help overcome objections that prospective buyers may have to purchase a mattress online.
Casper is trying to differentiate its brand in an increasingly competitive marketplace by mixing minimalist copy and design with an offer to quash objections in this Twitter ad example. If you’re in a developing industry or have a unique product, take a page out of Casper’s book when it comes to 1) attracting attention and 2) managing objections.
17. RXBAR
If you’re still not familiar with RXBAR, their Twitter bio says it all: “Real foods with simple ingredients and no B.S.” They frequently post short, quick, and fun videos to promote their line of protein bars and other items, showcasing the simplicity of their packaging and goods. This Twitter ad example is a perfect example of their style.
18. Nationwide
Nationwide offers a behind-the-scenes look at their latest TV ad starring Leslie Odom Jr., in this promoted video tweet.
Rather than merely replaying their TV ad on Twitter, Nationwide shares additional material that was not in the initial commercial. By capturing additional engagement through various platforms, they maximize the effectiveness of their campaign with this tactic. This Twitter ad example displays humanity and humor with silly vocals from Leslie Odom Jr.
Organize your efforts to enhance your campaigns and boost ROI through traditional and digital media. But be sure you share something special or exclusive on social media. Find places where you can leverage content generated for one platform to be used in another, while you design your next campaign.
19. LEGO
Just because you have 280 characters to use; doesn’t mean that all 280 characters need to be included in your ad. Users quickly scroll through Twitter, so make sure your ad gets to the point, fast.
LEGO, in the below Twitter ad example, used a small amount of copy for its 2019 campaign #RebuildTheWorld. Only two words, an emoji, and a branded video were used to promote the campaign release.
With creative and to-the-point copy, its #RebuiltTheWorld hashtag was used almost 100,000 times in the first four days.
20. Periscope
Periscope effectively delivers a funny ad highlighting personality, using pattern interruption to create interest, and driving home one of the key Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) for their product in this Twitter ad example.
Final Thoughts
A fresh strategy that can produce results is one of the most difficult aspects of launching a new ad campaign.
To stand out, creative ideas need to be original enough, but classic enough to still achieve the primary objective. That means, more often than not, adopting a few formulas along the way.
Luckily, you can browse through these Twitter advertising examples the next time you prepare a campaign to gain inspiration, build on new ideas and, if you have to, copy the same strategies used by the best in the business.
For more social media ad inspiration, check out our Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook ad examples.
Reach out to our team today for all of your social media ad needs!