SNAPCHAT AS A MARKETING TOOL

If you’re thinking of adding Snapchat to your social media marketing mix, in order to strengthen your brand,  march on with that thought!  Snapchat can help you to increase community engagement and brand awareness through innovative marketing campaigns.

While it can feel overwhelming for some businesses, as compared to other social media platforms, it’s always a good thing to have a platform that provides new opportunities and ways to connect with your target audience.

 

Why Snapchat?

With over 100 million daily active users and 400 million snaps per day, Snapchat is one of the fastest-growing social networks.

As you might already assume, 71% of Snapchat’s U.S. users fall into the 18 to 34 age range.  Even if your audience doesn’t particularly fall in that demographic, Snapchat is becoming a vital part of global marketing strategies making it hard to ignore.  Here are some encouraging facts to engage with this platform:

• Snapchat was always among the top 13 apps downloaded overall

• Snapchat has more users than Twitter, and grew as much in one year as Twitter did, in four years total.

• 76% of Snapchat users also online shoppers.

• Snapchat’s daily users are spending an average of 30 minutes a day on the app.

Aside from the statistics, which can speak for the growth and engagement on the platform, there are some strong advantages to marketing on Snapchat.

 

Benefits of Snapchat:

• It’s Unique.  Snapchat is different than other platforms. Since the audience is very specific, you can reach this new audience in more creatively different ways. Though challenging, it’s also a big plus point.

• It feels genuine.  Social media networks, in general make efforts towards rapport building, and in some cases, provide unique “behind the scenes” experience to its members. The pictures posted on Snapchat,  aren’t of high quality, unlike a glossy Instagram or magazine image; it looks more informal and unedited, which immediately appeal to many users.

• Its current:  Snapchat amplifies this aspect of social media marketing ; it stresses on what’s happening right now. Edited pictures with filters to make them more interesting, but not essentially of a high quality, which give a spontaneous feel and the effects are simply there to add to the fun experience!

• Competition is lesser. Most big brands have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (also Pinterest recently). As challenging as it can be to even connect with users on these networks, it’s even harder to get attention to your content due to high competition. Though Snapchat is quickly increasing in popularity, there’s still lesser competition here, than on other platforms for business.

• Flaunt the persona of your brand Snapchat provides an opportunity to  highlight the personality traits of your product, most relevant to your audience, in a unique and creative way simply because of the fun and playful mood of this platform.

• Ideal to reach a new audience. Since Snapchat users are of a specific younger age group that you may be unable connect with yet on other social media platforms, Snapchat is the perfect path to do this.

What’s Snapchat?

For those new to Snapchat here’s what you need to know:

• A person or brand on Snapchat can send photos and videos called ‘Snaps’, to their friends and followers.

• These Snaps can then be viewed for up to 10 seconds before they disappear.

• Colourful filters, face-swapping effects, messaging, and other playful functions have made the app wildly successful across the board, age being no bar.

How to create a Snapchat story?

A Snapchat Story is a series of images and videos (basically, the Snaps you’ve taken and added to your Story in chronological order) that disappear after 24 hours.

You can create a storyline that plays out over a series of images or you can create a collage of visuals that highlights your brand.

 

What’s next?

Increase your followers.. Once your Snapchat business account is set up and you have mastered creating quality content, you can focus on growing your following in order to raise the number of views of your posts.

One method of increasing your followers count is to make great stories and share parts of them with followers on other social networks. The idea is to make the content so riveting that the user follows your lead and pops over to Snapchat out of curiosity, to find out what all the buzz is about.

Challenges:

• The platform, however, doesn’t make it easy to increase your followers, due to the absence of hashtags, a suggested user list, or features that make it straightforward to be seen to users looking for new accounts to follow.  People will have to add your brand like they would any friend — so the chances of them finding you is remote.

• Also, Snapchat puts a limit on how long its videos and photos are available for on the app. For instance, a video or photo will disappear as soon as a few seconds go by, never to be seen again by the recipient. This means that marketers need to make the most of every second they get on the app.

Therefore, to succeed on Snapchat, you’ll need to have a marketing strategy in place. And because Snapchat is such a different platform, the marketing strategy is going to be at least a little different than what you’re may be using on other platforms.

 

Marketing Strategy for Snapchat:

• Understanding Your Audience
  Your target audience may be a group of corporate executives, however, it’s important to sense the mood of Snapchat.  Snapchat has always been an app that encourages informal communication through the use of videos and photos.  People post pictures of their meals, vacations, and daily activities to share with friends, displaying casual behavior.For your Snapchat strategy, you need to decide on a tone of voice that will be used across the board for your product. Ideally, the language you use should be easy-to-comprehend, and your posts should include a sense of fun.  Doing so will make you seem more friendly and accessible – all plus points when trying to bond with your audience.

• Do your homework.
  Go through other accounts and follow other frequent users and  potential followers  to get a better understanding of how they use the app.

• Embracing the Time Limit
  The self-destructive nature of Snapchat could be perceived to be a hurdle, however, marketers can do wonders with this unique feature of the app.  It offers you an ideal opportunity  to get users of your products excited about an upcoming new product or an update, for example, teaser campaigns; Here you can use tantalizing images and video to tease them and, if executed seamlessly, can create some early buzz and chatter around it.

• Contests/ Coupons:
  Use Snapchat to run contests by inviting  Snapchatters to send you pictures of themselves using your product or even briefly explaining why they love your brand so much and offer a reward to those who do.Coupon codes also work well on this platform. For example, Sixteen Handles made Snapchat marketing history when they offered a coupon code in exchange for users sending them Snaps of themselves with the frozen yogurt. The frozen yogurt restaurant returned the snap with a coupon code, redeemable in store.  Besides, you can also see how many people are responding to you, and then you can see how many actually use the coupon code, which in turn helps you track responses.

• Create  Videos:
  Videos are a key component of Snapchat as well.  Although they also disappear once they have been viewed, marketers can use them to reach out to people who are interested in getting a sneak peek of the not-so-evident parts of professional life.  For example- Invite your fans to take a look at behind the scenes of your office get-together, or take a quick peek into your production office or studio. Where you choose doesn’t really matter, as the point of this is kind of content is to increase a follower’s sentiment of connection with you and your brand.However, you don’t need to be an expert to make a splash.  Remember: Snapchat is all about being informal and being able to identify with.

• Portraying Your Personality
  Snapchat gives you a chance, as it applies with any type of social media, to portray the true purpose and mission of your company, whether it involves providing a service or a product. The media that you share over the app should give people a better understanding of your company and what you have to offer.  Therefore, you should always be working to instill a personality into your posts to allow people to connect to your brand on a human personal level making it much easier to connect with.

• Connect with influencers.
  Connecting with influencers can make a huge impact on your Snapchat marketing– even if they’re more unlikely influencers that you’d expect to see.  When ‘Wet Seal’ partnered with a 16 year old influencer and Snapchat fashion star, it not only grew their following– but their sales too.On social media, there are individuals and role models with large active followings who either stick to a particular niche or who are popular because of their viewpoints on certain topics and products. Some of those influencers may be users of your products and if given the opportunity would love to say a thing or two about them in a more authorized capacity.You may want to invite them (or at least a well chosen few) to take over your Snapchat for the morning or even a whole day, allow them the take charge, to show your company from the viewpoint of a follower. This exercise can be great for escalating your reach with your audience.

• Build anticipation.
  Do you have an event going on now, or one going on soon?  Create hype as much as you can through anticipation and capitalize on it.  It’s the perfect platform for product launches because, unlike others in which your updates can get lost in time related feeds, posts on Snapchat remain viewable until opened by the user.  This approach I think naturally fosters much more engagement.

 

8 Types of Engaging Content to Post on Snapchat

The next step in establishing a strategy for your Snapchat efforts is to figure out what types of content you’ll publish. Here are a few ideas that will fuel your social marketing efforts:

1. 1) Behind the Scenes
   On Snapchat, people prefer the unpolished, authentic look.  Behind-the-scenes tours and sneak peaks at new products allow your audience to feel more connected and a part of the experience.  For example GE (@generalelectric) introduces its employees to its audience and special projects in a tour from the brand.

1. 2) Interactive Projects
   Get your audience enthusiastic by creating activities they can participate in. The Starbucks Snapchat Campaign featured an image they want people to draw on and send to their friends — a perfect example of a brand bearing in mind the platform’s unique features and using this to drive a share-worthy promotion.

1. 3) Takeovers
   Employee takeovers allow people get to be acquainted with your team members and see what life at your company is like. It’s an entertaining way to showcase your culture, the interests of your staff members, and also create new and interesting content that is outside the sphere of your office and products.

1. 4) User-Generated Campaigns
   Creating Snaps stories featuring your audience can drive the popularity of your account. Invite your customers, audience from other social platforms, as well as Snapchat friends to send you Snaps you can feature in an upcoming Story around a specific theme.  You could also add giveaways to generate further interest.

1. 5) How-To Videos
   ideos on how to do something, in short, instructional videos can prove quite useful and interesting to many.  Do your research.  Ask your sales team what questions they often get asked or check out the most, popular searches on your website, to arrive on a topic for your video.  You could even consider who on your team has an interesting skill and showcase this in a story.

1. 6) Interview With Senior Leaders
   Give your company’s senior leadership team a platform of Snapchat where they can speak directly to clients and prospects, provide their opinions, and highlight what’s next for your company that gets them excited.  This allows people to better get to know your company’s executives and can go a long way to increase confidence and respect for your business.

1. 7) Games
   Games can be an enjoyable way to get your audience interacting with you on Snapchat — either through the chat feature or by asking your audience to send you Snaps or could even feature these in your Stories.

1. 8) Finally
   Remember, if carried out with a proper strategy, planning, and execution, Snapchat marketing can provide you with positive results quickly. However,  avoid trying just what works for others, be unique, fun and appealing.  The trick to getting the most leverage from this platform is to continuously engage with your customers. Doing so, you can keep people coming back for more, giving you additional opportunities to roll out your marketing strategy.