The two things you need to know to make Twitter advertising work

Being genuine and adding value is the key to getting the most out of advertising on Twitter, according to the brand strategist of Melbourne startup Pitchi.

Pitchi is a platform which enables people to buy and sell through video. Entrepreneurs upload their Kickstarter-style product pitches, which are limited to less than 60 seconds, and shoppers can discover and purchase those products.

Launched late last year, Pitchi looked to social media in order to build an audience for the platform. Pitchi marketing manager Sandra Kirwan says the startup’s user base has grown 30-35% month-on-month. A paid campaign on Twitter resulted in 5.2 million impressions and 146,000 engagements. The cost per view across its product videos was $0.63, with a click to view ratio of 2.4%.

Kirwan says the most important thing for startup founders to consider when examining the effectiveness of social media advertising is the reason they’re doing it in the first place.

“If you go to Twitter looking for mass market reach you may not be happy with the results. But you’ll be definitely be happy with the engagements,” Kirwan says.

“Know the type of content you’re feeding to that audience and tie it off to a purpose. We made sure we gave people a taster, which then allowed people to get invested.”

She points to the example of the Cricket Cooler, one of the most popular items of Pitchi, which would eventually go on to appear on Shark Tank. Pitchi targeted its Cricket Cooler tweets at the Cricket World Cup and during the summer.

“We worked to educate the audience on selling via video. The concept of how they come with the Cricket Cooler, what it did, why they should buy it. And that got a lot of retweets and favourites on Twitter.

“What I like to do in marketing is keep things as authentic as possible. Your audience learns to trust you and drives investment in your platform. We’ve definitely seen that users continue to be engaged.”

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