Speed, influence, and impact: How to launch on Twitter

Launching something new is one of the hardest tasks that marketers face. With thousands of new brands, products, and campaigns debuting every day, it’s easy for your message to get lost in the crowd. If you want to break through, you need to reach the most valuable audiences when they’re most receptive. Context and influence matter.

Breaking through the static requires making the biggest impact possible on your launch day, and staying top of mind with your customers as the post-launch conversation takes off.

When something new is posted to Twitter organically, the conversation about the news typically peaks within 48 hours by first reaching major influencers and then flooding to the masses. When the initial surge of interest tapers off, marketers have an opportunity to maintain a baseline level of awareness by engaging with their audience and keeping their brand recognizable and relevant.

How can you ensure your launch performs its best during this critical 48-hour window and beyond? We’ve observed that information spreads on Twitter in three stages, which can be applied to launches:          

• Tease: Create buzz and awareness, and target a pool of influential early engagers

• Reveal: Drive mass awareness of your campaign by owning the conversation on your launch day

• Sustain: Build preference and maintain buzz to keep your brand top of mind

When we see the Tease, Reveal, and Sustain phases executed properly, we see consistent results from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel.

Twitter shifts brand metrics for launches

Source: Results based on Nielsen Brand Effect studies for 86 Twitter campaigns that launched something new between September 2015 and August 2017. The control group represents a segment of users not seeing ads from a given advertiser on Twitter over the course of a campaign. However, these users could be seeing ads from the same advertiser on other platforms/channels.

Use multiple ad formats to get better results

A single exposure to Twitter’s video ad products can have significant impact, but exposure to multiple Twitter video ad products drives better brand lift results across the funnel.

Exposure to more unique video ad formats improves all brand metrics

Below are our recommendations for finding success at each stage. Choose a product to focus on for each stage, combine several, or ask your client success partner for their recommendation for your specific goals.

Tease

Drive awareness, create buzz, and activate influential early engagers

Drive awareness: Promoted Video

During the Tease phase it’s all about building anticipation. Using Promoted Video in tandem with short-form video formats like animated GIFs is a proven tactic. With Promoted Video, we see an average lift in ad recall of +130% among video viewers.1

Drive engagement: Media Polls

Media Polls, a relatively new format on Twitter, also help drive interaction and buzz during the Tease phase — driving 7X higher engagement rates on videos.

Create buzz: Conversation Cards

Easily turn your existing video creative into an interactive experience that leads to sustained buzz for a brand using the Conversation Card. Offer users access to exclusive content that is unlocked after sharing your promoted content and #hashtag with their followers in an authentic and easy way.

Create buzz: Custom Branded Emoji

It’s also important to give your audience tools to drive conversation and intrigue about your campaign during the tease phase. Hashtag emojis, for example, drive an average increase in earned media by 420%.

Reveal

Drive mass awareness of your launch: Take over Twitter with a First View ad

When it comes to the big reveal — and your formal launch in market — relying on video formats such as Twitter’s First View product can drive KPIs. Sonos' use of First View led to 2.5X stronger purchase intent among users who engaged with the First View and 100% stronger brand preference among those who were exposed to the First View (compared to control group).  

Own the conversation with a Promoted Trend

Sustain

Maintain buzz to drive preference and keep your brand top of mind with Video Website Cards

As your campaign moves beyond its initial launch, this is where features like re-engagement targeting and formats such as the Video Website Card can begin to build frequency and preference, and move your audience further down the funnel.

Drive consideration: In-Stream Video Pre-Roll

Drive consideration and stay top of mind by running pre-roll ads that align with relevant videos your customers are already watching.

Long-term impact

If you’re looking for another powerful way to boost the impact of your launch, consider promoting one or more of your launch Tweets. Promoted Tweets are automatically amplified to a larger network of people than just your followers. You can even target a specific audience so you’re reaching people who are inherently interested in your brand. We’ve seen that brands that promote their launches on Twitter see sustained lifts in key brand metrics. In fact, awareness for promoted launches is 4X higher than non-promoted launches.