Social media experts have been placing bets on which social network would be the first to successfully break into mobile ads. Thus far, all the big contenders have had a heck of a time unlocking the secret of getting users who visit social networks on their phones to click on ads. Yet last week, the smart money was placed on Twitter after a big brand touted major success using mobile ads on the platform.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Asian restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s saw a killer return on its $25,000 Twitter mobile marketing campaign launched last winter. In a Lunar New Year promotion, P.F. Chang’s used Twitter to tempt users with dinner discounts, bringing in folks searching for terms like “Chinese New Year” on their mobile phones or personal computers. P.F. Chang’s said roughly 1 million people clicked on the ads in the first four days of the campaign, and a full 70 percent of that ad interaction came from mobile Twitter users.
While P.F. Chang’s digital content and community manager Jason Miller calls the success of the campaign “staggering,” he admits there may be some limitations with Twitter-based mobile ads. The company launched a similar campaign in April to ho-hum numbers. Miller speculated that Twitter ads might be better suited for time-sensitive events and promotions rather than for steady, awareness-building campaigns.
“That may be where Twitter ads fall flat,” Miller said in an interview with WSJ.
Speed bumps aside, P.F. Chang’s success story is one to surely cause marketers to salivate at the possibility of mobile marketing on Twitter. With mobile use of Twitter rising quickly, clickable, interactive ads that engage will be the golden ticket every brand is searching for. The best Twitter campaigns are those that transcend mere marketing babble and really get the Twittersphere talking. With mobile, we suspect brands and marketers will have to work even harder to inspire lightning-fast clicks as well as engaged tweets.
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