X Marketing Basics, Strategies, and Examples

From marketing agencies to small e-commerce business owners, many advertisers now consider social media campaigns key components of their brand strategy. However, each social media platform has its unique strengths and formatting requirements. In this article, we’ll focus on marketing strategies for X to help you take your X business account to the next level.

X announced a rebrand in July 2023, less than a year after being acquired by Elon Musk. In addition to a new name, the brand overhaul also ushered in several key changes to the X marketing product suite. We’ll walk you through what you need to know about how to use X in your marketing efforts, aligning them with your business goals.

What is X marketing?

Long before its rebranding as X, businesses of all shapes and sizes were using the platform to deliver their messaging to targeted audiences. While the platform’s sudden 2023 rebrand sparked a great deal of controversy and skepticism, X still reports an audience of 535 million global mMAU (monetizable monthly active users).

While X offers plenty of features for digital marketing campaigns, many are only available to users who subscribe to certain subscription tiers. In addition to the individual premium tiers (which come with up to 25,000 characters instead of the standard 280), X offers a specialized subscription option for businesses and organizations to enhance their content marketing strategies.

Main benefits of X marketing

Given the large number of social media platforms to choose from, you may wonder why you should advertise on X. After all, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok boast millions of users.

The key to selecting the right social media platforms for your digital marketing campaign is focusing on those that best align with your target demographic and marketing strategies. For example, a campaign targeted to Gen Z users would likely enjoy more success on TikTok than Facebook, which tends to attract a slightly older demographic.

Instagram is often the go-to platform for visual advertising strategies, while LinkedIn is geared toward professional outreach. How does X stack up?

Benefits that set X apart from the competition include:

• Real-time information. One of X’s defining features is its emphasis on real-time updates. The platform’s slogan, “It’s what’s happening,” reflects its track record of keeping users up to date on everything from breaking news stories to the latest trends.‍
• Customer service. X offers businesses a fast and easy way to interact with customers. ‍
• Reposts. X’s repost function makes it easy for your followers to help spread your posts to a wider audience.‍
• Key metrics tracking. Premium features like X Analytics make tracking your X ads campaign straightforward. The analytics dashboard tracks key metrics on every post and provides valuable insights via an overall monthly report card.‍
• Customer engagement. As a platform, X is less about posting ads and more about sparking conversions with followers. It’s a great place to get to know your target audience and introduce them to your brand’s unique personality.‍
• Ad formats. X offers five key ad categories, each with its own subcategories. Additionally, you can choose from a series of objective-based campaigns aligned with different stages of the marketing funnel, helping you achieve your business goals with targeted marketing services.

How to create an X marketing strategy

X can be an excellent place to increase brand awareness, website traffic, and sales—but be aware of jumping in without a marketing strategy. Much like any other successful venture, a solid X campaign requires strategy and planning.

In this section, we’ll walk you through how to build a solid foundation for your X digital marketing campaign.

1. Know your audience

To have a meaningful conversation, understand who you’re talking to. While this advice may seem obvious, plenty of unsuccessful campaigns have been launched by marketers who ignored it.

No matter what type of products or services you intend to sell, understand who is most likely to be interested in them. This group is known as your target audience, a group of people who will generally share a set of characteristics.

From demographics like age range and gender to hobbies and income level, try to form a clear picture of your target audience. Is your brand more likely to cater to 18- to 24-year-olds from California who love to surf? Or to eco-conscious millennials who live in rural areas?

Answering these questions upfront will give you a far better idea of the type of language, visuals, and media that are the most likely to appeal to your audience. If you’re looking to revamp an existing X account, this is the time to do a thorough account audit to pinpoint what’s working and what isn’t.

2. Know your competition

There’s nothing like a little healthy competitor analysis in digital marketing. Checking out the competition is a great way to see what is (and isn’t) working among your shared audience.

Pay close attention to how each competitor interacts with their audience on X as opposed to other social media platforms. Even something as simple as the posting time that seems to be most optimal can give you valuable clues for your own campaign.

Additionally, look for key trends that you could put your own spin on, as well as any content gaps that you’re in a position to fill. You can use competitor research to develop benchmarks for goals you’d like to strive for in the future.

You might even check out resources like Semrush or Hootsuite that include competitor analysis tools. These professional-level tools can provide detailed breakdowns of everything from which hashtags are trending to what search engine optimization (SEO) keywords your competition is using.

3. Perfect your profile and voice

While X doesn’t allow for a huge amount of profile customization, ensure your brand is instantly recognizable to viewers. In general, you’ll want to use your brand logo as your profile picture and post a banner image that accurately features your brand colors and personality.

Equally important is deciding on a brand voice, which you’ll use in both your profile and posts. While many brands choose to be a bit more playful or relaxed on X, choose a voice that accurately reflects your organization’s personality and values.

Imagining what your brand would look like as a person can provide helpful clues to finding its voice. Many brands also try to adopt a voice that’s similar to those of their target audience to make themselves more relatable.

Even your industry niche can provide valuable clues to selecting an appropriate voice. For instance, a toy store might adopt a funny or even sarcastic tone, while an animal shelter would likely work to be warmer and more heartfelt.

Overall, you want to be approachable, relatable, and (most importantly) authentic. Don’t be afraid to take some time to find your brand voice, as you’ll want to keep it as consistent as possible over time.

4. Understand the difference between B2C and B2B

As you develop your X marketing strategy, decide whether to use business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategies. While the goal of B2C marketing is to sell products or services to individual consumers, B2B is geared toward selling to other businesses.

B2C and B2B have several important differences that are important for every marketer to understand:

• B2C marketing tends to be a bit less formal. It revolves around showing everyday customers how a product or service can solve their problems. B2C marketers often employ tactics like audience engagement, humor, and retargeting.

• B2B marketing is more formal and focused on product education, as the goal is often to make very large sales deals with company leaders. B2B marketers often use X to establish themselves as thought leaders in their industries and focus on tools like custom audiences to generate leads.

5. Set your goals

Before you launch your social media campaign, decide which metrics you’ll use to measure its success. The key performance indicators (KPIs) you use to measure your campaign performance can vary widely depending on your goals.

For instance, if the goal of your campaign is to increase brand awareness, you might focus on KPIs like:

• Engagement. How many people are interacting with your posts in general? ‍
• Reposts. Are people sharing your posts on their own X pages?‍
• New followers. Which of your posts are attracting new followers?‍
• Mentions. How often is your brand being mentioned by X users?

Another marketer who decides to use X to increase website traffic might focus more on metrics like:

• Link clicks. How much website traffic resulted from X link redirects?
• Conversions. How many X leads resulted in purchases?‍
• Return on ad spend (ROAS). How much revenue did the business earn for every dollar it spent on advertising?

Once you decide which metrics to track, you’ll be in a better position to develop time-bound goals to benchmark the success of each campaign. For instance, “Increase website traffic by 10% over the next quarter by using more targeted SEO research and increasing paid ad budget” is a specific goal that you can use to measure success.

X marketing best practices

Once you’ve solidified your campaign strategy and goals, you’ll be ready to get your campaign up and running.

In the next few sections, we’ll explore X optimization strategies and tips that can help you make the most of your digital marketing efforts.

1. Create a professional account

If you plan to use X to advertise your business, you’ll likely want to keep your personal and professional accounts separate. The good news is that signing up for an X professional account is both free and easy.

Begin by using your work email to create a personal X account. Once your new account is set up, you’ll be able to sign in and convert it to a professional account.

When you select the Switch to Professionals option, you’ll enter a brief description of your business and answer a few questions about your industry. You can also specify whether you’re a business or an individual creator. Once you complete the questionnaire, your account will be converted, and you’ll be good to go.

To qualify for a Professional account, you must meet a few basic eligibility requirements:

• You can’t have a history of repeatedly violating X’s user agreement.
• Your profile must have an account name, profile picture, and bio.
• You must use your real identity as opposed to a fictional or parody business name.

2. Verify your brand profile

While you could technically launch an organic marketing campaign without getting verified on X, most brands choose to opt for verification. Having a checkmark next to your name can go a long way toward increasing trust—not to mention protecting you from people trying to pose as your business.

To get a checkmark, you’ll need to subscribe to at least a Premium account.

Your account will also need to meet the following eligibility requirements:

• Accounts must have a profile photo, display name, and have been active within the last 30 days.
• Your account must be associated with a confirmed phone number.
• Your account must show no signs of being deceptive or misleading. This can include recent major changes to anything from your name or username to your profile picture.
• Your account can’t show signs of being used for spam or other types of manipulation.

3. Audit your X performance

While your marketing strategy should give your campaign a solid start, make sure you also use the tools offered in X Analytics. In addition to tracking progress toward your goals, these metrics can provide valuable insights.

Pay attention to which posts, hashtags, and media tend to perform the best. Does your audience tend to respond best to photos featuring certain subjects, or are videos the trick to drawing them in?

Do things like humor have a way of boosting your engagement, or does your audience love polls or conversation starters? Trends that emerge over time can be priceless tools for fine-tuning your marketing strategy.

But while X Analytics offers a suite of handy metrics, you may also want to use it in combination with more robust tools like Google Analytics. By tagging your posts with an UTM, you’ll be able to use Google Analytics to track what X users do after clicking a link to your website.

4. Understand hashtags

Hashtags are often used at the end of X posts and function like keywords, helping users search for posts on certain subjects or trends. They always begin with the “#” symbol but can’t include any other symbols, spaces, or punctuation marks.

When used correctly, hashtags can be a powerful SEO tool for attracting new users. For instance, a record store might use hashtags like #VinylLife and #vintagevinyl.

Some marketers even develop posts around popular hashtags like #motivationmonday to participate in popular trends. Just visit the Trends section of X to see which hashtags and topics are trending at any given time.

Just make sure you understand what every hashtag means before using it. Accidentally attaching an offensive or inappropriate hashtag to your post can harm your company’s reputation.

Additionally, be careful not to overuse hashtags. While one or two are great, using too many can make your posts look spammy.

5. Develop a social media content calendar

Consistency is a key element of any good X strategy, so don’t put yourself in a position to have to come up with new post ideas every day. Planning your posts in advance can make your life a lot easier and allow you to develop an overall posting strategy for the month.

You can often find free downloadable post-scheduling calendars online with theme suggestions. This is a solid way to incorporate different types of content, such as polls, GIFs, and videos.

The platform also offers a yearly calendar that highlights notable seasonal and cultural events. From holidays to Paris Fashion Week, it’s a nice place to find inspiration for joining conversations about significant cultural occasions.

You should spend some time exploring X’s resource section, where you’ll find additional free resources like connect playbooks.

6. Find a reputable social media management tool

There’s no need to stay glued to your phone or computer to stick to your posting schedule. Once you pinpoint the optimal times to post throughout the week, you can create a content calendar that auto-publishes your posts whenever you like.

Some social media scheduling tools to check out include:

• Hootsuite
• Buffer
• Loomly
• Sendible‍
• Semrush Social Media Poster Tool‍
• SmarterQueue‍‍
• Sprout Social

Many social scheduling tools also offer social listening features that can help you stay on top of brand mentions. Social listening tools monitor the number of positive, negative, or impartial mentions your brand receives and can calculate your overall brand sentiment.

7. Use X for networking

In addition to using X to interact with your audience, take the time to connect with other business owners and influencers. You might even reach out and propose partnerships with influencers or other prominent users who share your target audience.

Creating X Lists is also an easy way to stay on top of posts from your favorite influencers, reporters, or other accounts. You can choose to join lists created by other users or create your own based on a certain topic or interest.

When you choose to view a List timeline, you’ll only see posts from accounts included on the selected list. This makes it easy to stay up to date on posts from selected users.

Examples of great X marketing strategies

One of the best ways to master any skill is to learn from the success of others. We’ll introduce you to several brands to follow on X and explain why their strategies work well.

Wendy’s

Wendy’s X account is worth following whether or not you’re a fan of its restaurants. The fast-food chain’s posts prove just how far humor and witty interactions can go when it comes to keeping fans entertained.

Whether Wendy’s is poking fun at Elon Musk, presenting fans with crazy challenges, or posting hysterical memes, their antics are impossible to resist. With over 3.7 million followers and counting, Wendy’s is always coming up with new ways to keep its content fresh and fun.

NASA

With over 82 million followers, NASA is a master of using different content and marketing strategies. From fun historical facts to challenges that give users a chance to send their names to deep space, the organization is always coming up with new ways to keep things interesting.

The second post above is also a prime example of how to develop posts around unexpected hashtags. While NASA may not be the first organization that comes to mind when you think of small businesses, the organization found a creative way to participate in #SmallBusinessSaturday.

Starbucks

With over 10 million followers, Starbucks demonstrates why X ads don’t need to be complex to be effective. Many of the coffee giant’s posts are relatively simple close-ups of their delicious product offerings.

And for those who love lattes, sometimes all it takes is a photo of one to inspire an instant craving. If you’ve got a product with a knack for selling itself, don’t be shy about letting it take center stage.

Turn your strategy into a success story

While creating and painting an effective X marketing strategy takes a great deal of planning, it can pay off with enough hard work. Whether you’re interested in learning more about whether X is the right platform for you or need help with your strategy, Upwork is home to top social media marketers who’d be happy to help.

Or perhaps you’re a social media professional in search of your next client. Make sure to visit Upwork to connect with top social media clients in search of your skill set.

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