A recent
study asserted that only 17% of users found Twitter ads to be relevant. Wait a second, my math skills are
limited -- but that means the other 83% of these ads are, gulp, irrelevant.Here we have a powerful social platform, serving relevant information to millions of interconnected people daily, and somehow
we marketers can’t seem to get right messages to the right people at the right time.
In the NFL, the last player picked in the draft earns the designation of “Mr.
Irrelevant.” It’s a tag that follows that player through the rest of his career. Right now, your brand is the Mr. Irrelevant of Twitter.
Don’t be that guy.
We’ve seen the promise of perfectly executed tweets, so we know relevance is possible. Was the now famous Oreo Super Bowl tweet relevant? Yup. Did Big Papi’s presidential
“selfie” insert Samsung into a relevant conversation to help them own that moment? Sure did. Fellow marketers, it can be done, and not just serendipitously. Planning for and becoming
relevant on Twitter isn’t a strategic question to be answered; it’s a tactical challenge to be executed.
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First, let’s acknowledge and accept that just because we can
get a message into someone’s feed whenever we want, doesn’t mean we should. Consider the case of “Bob,” a 35- to 54-year-old male, with a HH income north of $150K/year,
who tweets about travel, rum, and his favorite show, “Homeland.” Despite his demographic and interest profile, I promise you Bob is no more likely to enjoy being interrupted by a Promoted
Tweet about a Barbados getaway during “Homeland” than he would by a 30-second TV spot disrupting his viewing pleasure.
Running ads based on broad interests of followers can be part
of an effective strategy, but is it enough? Today we are held to a higher standard of relevance as the world continues to become “datafied.” Syncing demographics, interests, and data
is the only path to planned relevance.
If it’s data you want, well, there’s a “feed” for that. Real-time data sources are plentiful and powerful. There are
thousands of external data feeds, pre-configured to serve localized weather conditions, sports scores, and even when your competitors’ TV ads are running. Remember Bob? What if we sent a
Promoted Tweet about Barbados vacations his way every time a weather feed predicted a “wintery mix” or “freezing rain” for his Zip code?
There’s also internal
data to consider. Yes, you’re going to have to make friends with the IT and legal folks in your organization, but the investment in time will pay immediate dividends. Imagine a supermarket chain
leveraging store-level inventory and pricing data to trigger tweets to shoppers when new products hit the shelves, prices drop, or the produce is freshest.
Finally, there is a new type of
data signal that promises to synchronize location data with hyper-local, hyper-relevant messages. Technologies like iBeacon are a potential game-changer, but not without a price. Consumers are
going to expect -- no, demand -- even greater relevance from marketers in exchange for allowing their location data to trip automated messages to their devices.
Are we
ready for the challenge? 17% of our ads on Twitter are relevant? C’mon, we’re better than that.