Twitter’s new self serve ads offering is now available to SMEs in Israel & South Africa. Aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, using Twitter marketing activities, these companies can increase their impact on the Twitter platform using self-serve advertising products like Tweets and Accounts. The SME advertising platform was previously only available in Canada, the US, Japan, and Ireland.
According to research*, Twitter is made for SMEs; 72% of people who engage with SMEs on Twitter are more likely to make a purchase after following, and interacting with, the SMEs on Twitter. 30%, it is reported, is more likely to recommend a SME after following the brand. Brands worldwide are using Twitter in order to engage with existing customers, and also reach new ones. Twitter is a platform that currently has over 200 million active users; tweets are in real-time; conversational and readily disseminated. If your brand is not already on the Twitter bandwagon, it is time for a rethink in strategy.
The self-serve platform is expected to be a major success in SA. It is already successful in the countries that the platform has already launched. This success can be attributed to the fact that SA is not very different to the other four countries. In fact, SA has many similarities to them in the way our SMEs utilise Twitter. South Africa’s SME’s are also very comfortable with the platform already, with many of them using Twitter as a way to talk with customers and consumers in real-time. It was also the SMEs’ creativity that demonstrated the power of Twitter as a marketing platform, with some of the most effective campaigns coming from these SMEs. Having conversations on-the-go and in real-time was suddenly en vogue.
Using the self-serve platforms means SMEs will not only get to enhance their Twitter activity, but their advertising with be highly-targeted and cost-effective: SMEs are only obliged to pay per engagement; that is, when someone interacts with them, usually via retweets; replies, favourites or clicks. As a result, SMEs can handle their advertising budgets accordingly, while still producing effective and relatively cheap impact. They are, effectively, getting the same product available to big corporations or brands, without the many barriers to entry often encountered by SMEs on various online platforms.
Tweet promotion or account promotion is also available to SMEs in SA, including Analytics, to gain insights into your customer’s behaviour and effective, targeted advertising.
SMEs webinars and case studies can be downloaded from Twitter.