Twitter hopes its new ad tools targeting SMBs will be a hit
Singapore
MICRO-BLOGGING site Twitter is hoping that two advertising tools that it introduced recently will help it reach out to more businesses, particularly small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), in the Asia-Pacific region. The two tools are the self-service Twitter Ads and Twitter Flight School.
Aliza Knox, Twitter Asia Pacific's managing director for online sales, noted that small businesses are the economic backbone of every Asian market, accounting for the majority of businesses, jobs and economic output.
"This is why we are so excited about making our self-service Twitter Ads platform more accessible to SMBs across the region. With no minimum spend, they can engage in real-time with customers and increase sales targeted at the 284 million active Twitter users worldwide," Ms Knox told The Business Times.
Self-service Twitter Ads is now available for SMBs in Singapore, Australia, Japan and New Zealand in the Asia-Pacific region and in 28 markets worldwide. Other large SMB markets in the region - India, Indonesia and the Philippines - are on the roadmap too, Ms Knox added.
Twitter Flight School is a new online resource designed to help agencies of all sizes make the most of marketing on the Twitter platform, she added. "Twitter Flight School offers tailored content and bite-size modules to address different agency roles and functions, including senior leadership, account planning and campaign management."
Ms Knox noted that the company has had a very positive response from the Twitter self-service ads for SMBs because "it is easy to use and it is cost-effective - SMBs control their budget, only pay per engagement, and no minimum spend is required".
She added that Twitter also provides objective-based campaigns through its advertising platform which is "ideally suited to small businesses".
"SMBs can select from a range of key objectives, including Tweet engagements, website clicks or conversions, app installs or engagements, followers, or leads and only pay if the campaign objectives are achieved," she said.
Ms Knox said Twitter Flight School addresses the growing need for businesses and agencies which want to make use of Twitter to #TakeFlight and take their content on Twitter to the next level, and use promoted products and other tools to get the right message to their target audience. "Our agency pilot partner, Mindshare, has committed to training 1,000 agency professionals across the region within the next 90 days."
She noted that Twitter's international revenue (that is revenue generated from outside of the United States) grew strongly in third quarter of this year, reaching US$121 million, up 176 per cent year on year, and now accounts for 34 per cent of worldwide revenue.
"Asia Pacific, including Japan (APJ) is the largest and fastest-growing region for Twitter today. It is the growth engine for Twitter and we are seeing strong user and revenue growth from all key markets including Australia, Japan, India, Indonesia, Singapore and South Korea," Ms Knox said.
She added that Twitter makes most of its revenue from brand advertisers, "so with the launch of Twitter ads for SMBs, we're opening up a whole new revenue stream for us across the region".
Ms Knox noted that in Singapore, 99 per cent of companies are SMBs which employ two-thirds of the workforce. "SMBs are a big engine of growth, but it's also a highly competitive market. A successful marketing campaign today demands engagement, and this makes real-time mobile marketing a very important business strategy for SMBs, particularly with the holidays around the corner."
Giving an example, she noted that Twitter's small business holiday insights research shows that Singaporeans plan to spend nearly S$1,380 on holiday purchases. According to the survey:
"With half of all Internet, mobile and social media users worldwide in Asia today, we see many opportunities across the region. India, Japan and South Korea are among our fastest-growing markets this year, and we are expanding into more markets to reach new users, partners and advertisers. We've recently announced we'll be opening offices in Indonesia and Hong Kong (to serve the Greater China region) in the first quarter of 2015."
She noted that India and Indonesia provide significant growth opportunities today. There are more than 150 million Internet users in India and 80 million in Indonesia.
Telco deals provide more affordable access to all mobile users in emerging markets such as India (900 million wireless subscribers) and Indonesia (150 million wireless subscribers).
These are also two of the most prolific Twitter user markets in the world, she added. Giving some statistics, Ms Knox noted that the scale and range of Twitter usage during India's recent general election was "something quite breathtaking". She noted:
She added that in Indonesia, there ware 95 million elections-related tweets in the lead-up to the presidential elections. Joko Widodo was the top-mentioned politician on Twitter in Indonesia this year.
