If you are looking for ways to make an impact on social media through advertising, a great option may be the use of Twitter advertising. Twitter’s promoted tools can help your insurance agency get your message directly to your audience via social media. According to many industry sources 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter, and in conjunction with brand awareness it can be an incredibly influential tool.

When it comes to your insurance marketing strategy, while many of you may have dabbled in Facebook advertising, Twitter advertising can be just as simple and effective.

Types of Twitter Advertising

There are several types of options when it comes to Twitter advertising.

Promoted Accounts – The goal of promoting your Twitter account is to gain followers. These followers will then help your overall reach and drive traffic back to your website – thus, enhancing your insurance marketing goals.

• Things to Know
  • Suggestions are based on ad targeting
  • You are charged per new follower through the promotion
  • You will appear in the “who to follow”, “similar to”, and “search results”
  • You have access to social media analytics to see how well your promotion is performing

Promoted Trends – A promoted trend on twitter is something that is buzzworthy in real time. (Example: #NationalInsuranceDay) As an insurance agency, a great way to use promoted trends is to advertise a charity event you may be involved in. Create an event #hashtag and use it leading up to the event for promotion and during the event itself.

• Things to Know
  • A  promoted trend is featured at the top of the Trends list for 24 hours
  • When clicked the user is directed to your marketing message
  • Kick starts a social media conversation around your brand

Promoted Tweets – In social media speak, promoted tweets contain a marketing message. They are targeted towards both current and potential clients. This form of promotion may be the best option for the local insurance agents, due to the wide range of things you can advertise, from new products, a blog about the Affordable Care Act, or a charity event.

• Things to Know
  • You can target messages by: geography, interests, gender, device, and keywords
  • You pay per engagement and can set a daily budget
  • You have access to analytics to see how well your promotion is performing
  • Promoted tweets appear in “timelines” and “search results” as well as Twitter for mobile

Twitter has introduced a new update to its advertising arsenal called Lead Generation Cards. These cards work in conjunction with your promoted tweets to gain access to potential customer emails. For example, if you are running a promotion for a referral program you can add a lead generation card to your promoted tweets. In order for a user to be eligible for the prize or reward they have to tweet you their email address. These can be useful for future marketing efforts and encourages brand engagement.

These Twitter advertising tools can be used alongside your other advertising efforts to increase your overall reach on social media and should be added to your insurance marketing best practices. With companies expecting to double their social marketing budgets over the next 5 years according to social media publications, now is the time to get started with social advertising.

For more information on Twitter Advertising be sure to check out our Strategy Guide!