Making Snapchat Work for Your Business

Is your business looking to reach a wider audience on social media? With so many of us glued to social media, engaging with your audience using these platforms is becoming a vital part of any marketing strategy. Your social media footprint can produce unique ways to increase brand awareness while speaking directly to your customers. Snapchat is a social media platform that offers an ideal way to get an engaged, mobile audience to interact with your business.

Why Should You Use Snapchat

For the uninitiated, Snapchat is an app that allows users, or Snapchatters, to chat with friends by sending and receiving disappearing snapshots called snaps. Users have the option to send snaps directly to friends or post them as stories for all their friends to see. This fun way to communicate has been growing in numbers since its debut in 2011.

According to Snapchat, over 173 million people use the app and spend an average of over 30 minutes daily on it. Also, Snapchat has a wide demographic reach. 37% of Snapchat users are between the ages of 18-24, 26% are 25-34, and 12% of users are 35 and older. And those numbers are likely to continue to increase as more and more users download the app. In an increasingly digital era, advertising on Snapchat has great potential to increase exposure as your business advertise their brand, products, events, and more to a young audience.

Filters, Lenses and Snap Ads

There are three different ways businesses can use the app to reach their preferred audience: Filters, Lenses, and Snap Ads.

First, Filters (or Geofilters) are a creative way to capture where Snapchat users are, whether that be a city or an event. To use a Geofilter a user can simply take a picture and swipe on the screen to view different options that include the date, time, location, and more. Businesses can create Sponsored Geofilters and tailor them to locations, events, or their own products and services. Sponsoring a Geofilter is a great option for businesses as it encourages users to take and share pictures featuring your brand creating additional exposure for your business. Geofilters are great for advertising events and, when used creatively, really have the potential to grab a user’s attention.

Sponsored Geofilters are usually seen by 40-60% of Snapchat users. Also, Geofilters can be limited to specific locations or regions. Price varies based on geographic targeting and duration so it is important to think about the best location and time to run your filter. One example of the exposure you can get from a Geofilter campaign is this filter created by General Motors. It had over 60 million total views and reached over 22 million people.

Next, sponsoring a Snapchat Lens is a fun and unique option to increase awareness. Lenses are animated masks that Snapchatters use on their pictures. Daily, Lenses reach over 16 million users. These Lenses appear after a user taps on the image of their face while on the Camera screen. Different lenses will appear toward the bottom of the screen and users can scroll through the various lenses to apply them. Like Geofilters, Lenses are a great way to promote an event or product by increasing awareness while simultaneously encourage sharing, but are uniquely positioned to encourage interaction.

One successful example of a Lens was made by Michael Kors for National Sunglasses Day.  The goal of this sponsored Lens was to increase awareness of Michael Kors eyewear products. With this sponsored Lens, Michael Kors had over 104 million views and increased ad awareness by 18% and also increased purchase intent.

Also, Snap Ads are another option businesses have. Ads on Snapchat are similar to other digital ads. In between users’ stories, short video or image ads are shown to users. Different forms of ads include webview that allows users to click on a pre-loaded website, app install which allows users to download a potential business’ app without closing the Snapchat app and long-form videos that allow users to view a trailer or short-video. Snap ads are a great option if your business is looking to raise brand awareness while reaching a specific audience.

One example of a successful ad campaign on Snapchat was from Bud Light. With their ad campaign, Bud Light had over 9 million views and reached over 3 million users. Through this campaign, they significantly increased awareness and purchase intent.

Creating a Business Account

Finally, another more involved option that can be valuable for your business is to create a Snapchat account. This option is great for smaller businesses that want to connect with loyal customers or potential loyal customers. An account would allow you to post your own stories to promote your business and have more direct communication with your target audience. Overall, Snapchat does a fantastic job of selling itself to businesses by talking about audiences, reporting, and insights.

Because advertising on Snapchat is relatively new, it won’t be long before businesses decide to try to promote their products and services on it. Snapchat does a great job in providing tools for advertisers how to create and manage ads and sponsored content. Also, the app even shows you how well the campaign is doing for your business which aides in reporting. Snapchat can do wonders to increase awareness of your brand. Will your business be the next Snapchat success story?

Need help with your content? EnVeritas Group can help you create the right content for the right audience and deliver it at the right time. Find out more about their content marketing solutions.

Will Tracy – Content Creator