Though Twitter has a novel way of promotion but how effective is this medium for promotion in our Serviced apartment / Hotel Industry? Want to know more then read on.

My Pain:

Is Twitter an effective medium?

How do I target a specific segment of audience in Twitter?

How to launch a campaign in Twitter?

My experience:

We initiated an advertisement in the in-flight magazine (please read our blog How effective is it to advertise on in-flight magazine). Our objective was to communicate to maximum people (our own customers database & maximum corporate Air travelers) who were to travel in near future, about our free stay contest in the in-flight magazine (honestly the purpose was not that the people were dying to win the contest but got an excuse to reach out to all travelers about TrustedStay). Means our objective was to create an awareness that TrustedStay is a Pan India Service apartment provider. We were not bothered about leads at this point of time.

We decided to launch awareness campaign across Social Media. Twitter was one of them. If you want to know how to launch awareness campaigns on other Social Media platforms, follow the links below.

Launch Facebook awareness campaign in 30 minutes for Service apartment/Hotel Industry?

Who says LinkedIn is expensive for promotion in Service apartment/ Hotel Industry?

Audience: we defined our audience as under

Job Title (Industrialist twitter handle): Our serviced apartments decision makers are Admin, Facilities, HR, Procurement & Travel desk. The idea was to reach out to all these people in Social Media with any of the above designations who could be our potential client. But unfortunately Twitter does not have Job Title targeting. The closest we found was the Industrialist Twitter Handle targeting. We targeted a few Industrialists and we believed that there company employees follow them and hence we can reach out to our segment.

Company Name: Our service apartments users were mainly the following Industry, Banking, Insurance, IT, Automobile, Engineering, Pharma, Start-up’s, Major Corporate Group companies. So, we thought of targeting all employees in these companies.

Own Customers: We have a database of 35000 customers who contacted us for serviced apartment. Which includes customers who gave us the booking and who did not, but we captured their details in our CRM database. We thought of non-intrusive communication to all those who are in SM platform.

How to create an Ads Account in Twitter:

Creating an Ads account on Twitter is pretty straight forward since it does not involve creating pages. Here is a step by step process of how to do it.

1. Go to https://ads.twitter.com/
2. If you have not already logged into Twitter, click on “Get Started” button and log into your preferred twitter account from where you want to run ads.
3. Once you are logged in, it will take you the initial setup page. Select the Country as India & Time zone as  and click on “Let’s Go”.
4. Next, you will be taken to the Campaign Setup page where you can start setting up your campaigns.
5. Once you have setup the campaign – the instructions of which are in the next session. You need to add a payment method.
6. To add a payment method, click on the Account Name on Top right corner after “Help” button to see the dropdown.
7. Click “Add New Payment Method” from the dropdown and fill up your credit card information.
8. You are all set to start running campaigns. Also, note that the payments for Twitter will be USD and not in INR.

Campaign setup:

Twitter Campaign: (login to https://ads.twitter.com/login)

In case you want to reach out to your own customers who are on twitter. Do the following step before creating a campaign.

1. Click on “Tools” and Select Audience Manager
2. Click on “Create New Audience”
3. Upload your own list (email ID & Phone numbers) in CSV or text format.
4. Give audience name: CRM Contacts & upload excel sheet

Twitter will start mapping to the user

Gave total users: 2880. (only 2880 of our customers were on twitter out of our database of 35000 Customers)

Create Campaign:

Select “Reach”

Enter “Campaign name” (Inflight Magazine)

Daily Budget: USD $5

Period: Define dates

Adgroup-1 (Wanted to reach out to all Industrialist twitter handle & their network)

AdGroup Setup:

Ad group Name: Industrialists

Period: optional

Budget: optional

Bid type: Automatic

Optimization preference: Max Reach

Targeting

Your Audience: Blank

Demographics:

Gender: Any

Age: all ages

Audience Features:

Followers Look alike: Twitter handles of all the Famous Industrialist. A list of 86 Industrialist twitter handles were selected. Audience summary was 28.7 Mn – 35.1Mn. The expectation was that the industrialist followers will have his management following and hopefully our targeted customers.

Expand your audience

Creatives:

Create Tweet with the Video

Campaign Review

Adgroup-2 (Wanted to reach out to all Company twitter handle & their network)

AdGroup Setup

Ad group Name: Companies

Period: optional

Budget: optional

Bid type: Automatic

Optimisation preference: Max Reach

Targeting

Your Audience: Blank

Demographics:

Gender: Any

Age: all ages

Audience Features:

Followers Look alike: Twitter handles of all the Famous Industrialist. A list of 99 Companies twitter handles were selected. Audience summary was 9.6 Mn – 11.8Mn. The expectation was that the Companies followers will have his Co employees following and hopefully our targeted customers.

Expand your audience

Creatives:

Create Tweet with the Video

Campaign Review

Adgroup-3 (Wanted to reach out to all our database customer twitter handles & their network)

AdGroup Setup

Ad group Name: Own Customers

Period: optional

Budget: optional

Bid type: Automatic

Optimisation preference: Max Reach

Targeting

Your Audience: Blank

Demographics:

Gender: Any

Age: all ages

Audience Features:

Bulk upload your customer list. Audience summary was 1.44k-1.76K. The expectation was that non intrusively we will connect with our 3000 odd customers. The number was too less.

Expand your audience

Creatives:

Create Tweet with the Video

Campaign Review

Results:

Audience	Reach	Amount	Period	100% Video Views/1000 Rs Spent
Industrialist	300 L	4,000	11 Days	806
Company	100 L	1,000	9 Days	806
Own Customers	NA	NA	NA	NA

Although no of Videos viewed per Rs 1000  spent was high. We did not get the confidence that it was reaching to the right audience. We found that in the company e.g. Whirlpool, major followers were its dealers rather than the employee. Also in Industrialist the followers were politicians and unwanted segment. While Own customer on twitter was a disaster. Concluded not a good idea to create awareness  on twitter.

Incase you are wondering whether Twitter is the best platform for your ads, you can read this post about Which social media platform is most effective to create awareness for Service apartment / Hotel Industry?

My Conclusion:

I feel as of today, as the no of active user on Twitter in India is low. I suggest in our Industry focus on Facebook & LinkedIn, Refer my blogs. Please share your comments below.