In December Twitter launched self-service advertising. At the time it appeared that there was a $5K monthly minimum. Effectively that would have locked out most true small-business advertisers, who have a budget of roughly $5K annually.
Yesterday AdAge (and Marketing Land) reported that Twitter was partnering with Amex to offer a $100 credit to SMB advertisers to encourage 10,000 of them try out self-service advertising on the social site. It thus appears that the $5K monthly minimum has been dropped.
Amex says this is just the latest step in a series of digital marketing initiatives aimed at helping SMBs, which have included Facebook and Foursquare. Amex is trying to create unique value for both its cardmembers and its merchants. I have been quite cynical about some of those efforts in the past.
My questions in to Amex surround the issue of support and education. Will Amex or its subcontractors (if there are any here) provide customer support or instruction around what to do? Experienced SMB Twitter users may not need much help beyond setting up accounts and campaigns. But in general self-service hasn’t worked for the bulk of the SMB marketplace.
Twitter advertising is thus probably another area for “resellers” and third party agencies (including YPs) to manage on behalf of their customer-advertisers.
What do you think? Do you think this will “fly” with SMBs; or do you think Twitter will need agencies and enablers — as Google has — to capture SMB ad dollars?
February 17th, 2012 at 9:05 pm
Do you know if Twitter will let SMB geo-target their spend to the city or sub-state level? Otherwise this might be more for a SMB product or brand that is OK with U.S. geo-target? Or is the targeting method more strictly tag based?
February 17th, 2012 at 9:50 pm
Yes there is geotargeting at the city level. I don’t know how accurate. I would assume it’s IP-based.
February 18th, 2012 at 5:37 am
Twitter had so many unique ways to monetize their massive audience. It’s disappointing that they chose such a standard approach.
I wish they had put their efforts into building a premium Twitter management tool for corporates. Something that would put Hootesuite and the likes to shame.
February 18th, 2012 at 3:21 pm
[...] Twitter & Amex Lure SMBs with $100 Credit Share this: [...]
February 21st, 2012 at 10:04 pm
I’m wondering who the first CMR for Twitter is going to be. Senior management seems to be maniacally focused on establishing use cases for Twitter, but it’s not clear how replicable those experiences will be without having some sort of agency with national scope and capabilities there to provide assistance.
Further, as @Mike pointed out, Twitter needs to go local, but I’d go a step further: I think Twitter needs to enable businesses to market to a neighborhood; i.e. enable geofencing. The five-county Los Angeles metro area alone has about 54 distinct local neighborhoods that have little to do with each other.
Lastly…as the conversation over at the Screenwerk post on Hearst’s LocalEdge grows, it’s a sure sign that any company that has aspirations in this space needs to do more than throw warm bodies into the fray.
February 22nd, 2012 at 4:33 am
@Brian: excellent points. I think there’s a CRM aspect to Twitter and a customer acquisition dimension, which you address with the geofencing suggestion. Right now if businesses can gain followers they can reward them or message them about offers or events, etc. New customer acquisition is harder for somewhat obvious reasons. Right now Twitter is not a good customer acquisition tool for SMBs.
March 2nd, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Twitter has a lot of potential in SMB, that IMHO is still almost entirely untapped. In our own business, fanminder (Social/Mobile loyalty for SMBs), we see less than 1 in 10 small businesses who use Facebook, using Twitter – and of those who do, they often see it as “that Twitter thing” that just sits there and gets auto-posts when I do Facebook or my email.
The barrier to using Twitter won’t be jumped by waving a $100 of meaningless dollars to fence sitters. The issue at heart is the low, daily usage of Twitter by a typical storefront’s customers and the inability for storefront owners to keep adding channels to their marketing. So I think its up to the local marketers to make use of Twitter’s new ad product for the right type of small business.
Also, as a former employee of the Amex Small Business division, I know they really get small business, but one has to ask: Which small businesses think of their credit card issuer as their digital marketer?
Best, Paul
March 2nd, 2012 at 3:30 pm
@Paul. I agree that it’s strange to think about turning over your marketing to or relying upon a credit card issuer for your marketing