Business Marketing Social Media Marketing

Snapchat Marketing: The Only Guide You Need to Up Your Social Media Game

Social media marketing is one of the biggest platforms on the globe for marketing your products, services or content. The list of social media platforms is growing every day, and you can use them for marketing your brand.

According to analysts and social media marketing experts, Snapchat has the potential to develop into a big marketplace in the coming years. Even though the platform is a little hard to get hold of, plenty of marketers prefer Snapchat for marketing a brand. The businesses who use Snapchat are getting good results out of their marketing efforts and campaigns. 

In this Snapchat guide, we are going to break down every element of Snapchat marketing and how we can get positive results for your business.

Since Snapchat is different from any other social media platform in cyberspace, it’s important that you know every detail about the application. But, marketers are often confused about how to market products on the platform, right from the kind of content that should be marketed to how to connect with audiences on the platform. 

Why Should Business Be Marketed on Snapchat?

Snapchat is listed as a platform where marketers can showcase a product or brand. Businesses might find it to be a bit overwhelming at the start, but marketing is always about trying new things and grabbing new opportunities to connect with the audience and potential customers.

Snapchat has shown that it can be a great platform not only to market your brand, but also to create an identity for your brand. Numbers speak for themselves. So, let’s take a look at some basic Snapchat statistics:

  • According to the stats, Snapchat Daily Active Users (DAU) increased by 8% in a year. There were 188 million DAU in the year 2018, but the number hiked to approximately 190 million DAU in the year 2019.

  • The snapchat app reaches 53.45% of mobile users.
  • 76% of snapchat users are online shoppers.
  • Snapchat has more DAU than Twitter.
  • According to projected figures, Snapchat global advertising revenue will reach $1534.2 million in 2019.

This was all about numbers. However, there are some other elements which actually help when you are marketing your brand on social media.

  1. Every brand that exists has a presence on social media websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It can be difficult to stand out in the chaos of all these brands. There’s still a lot less competition on Snapchat than any other platform.
  1. We’ve already covered this point once in the introduction, but Snapchat is a different platform with a different kind of audience. You can explore opportunities other than what you are already doing on this Platform.
  1. Snapchat is all about the present moment. People, especially youngsters love this about the platform. The images here are edited with filters for a little more excitement and fun. These things make the platform feel more authentic than any other social media website.
  1. CNN is a news channel so millennials were not much interested in it. But, after entering Snapchat, the millennial customer base of the CNN witnessed a tremendous growth. So, Snapchat gives you an opportunity to connect with a different audience base with different perspectives and images of your brand.
  1. Except for the paid advertising campaigns this platform is completely free. 

But before you jump on the bandwagon and start making videos on the platform you need to know who you are targeting.

Who is on Snapchat?

  • More than 60% of users are 13-14 year olds who own smartphones.
  • Overall, 71% of Snapchat users are below the age of 25.

From the above points, you can basically figure out that most of the audience on this platform are youngsters or millennials. 

The Basics to Snapchat Marketing

Once you are aware of your target audience, you need to know how you can effectively market your brand while building customer trust for the brand. 

Now that you have already gone through all the basic information about the application, we’ll take a proper look at the features available on Snapchat.

Features Available on Snapchat

There are a number of different settings which you can use on the platform. The settings vary according to the types of posts, image editing options, etc. You can choose different settings from your mobile and some additional features that can be used to interact with your audience.

Types of Content on Snapchat

Images

You can share images on the platform. The image can be directly taken from the camera or edited or taken from your pre-saved photos on the device. Snaps look the best in portrait form. It’s the best way to showcase them.

Videos

You can share small 10 second videos on the platform. The videos can also be edited like an image.

Snaps

Snaps are images and videos which are sent privately to a group of users. They can view this snap only for a certain amount of time and then it disappears from their feed. The snap option is found on the left-hand side corner of the main screen.

Stories

Stories are again images or short videos which can be shared with your followers or everyone according to the configurations of your privacy settings. 

Editing Options for the Post

Drawing tools

You can draw or doodle on your image, in any colour. 

Text Add-ins

You can add a text to your Images. You can also edit the font, colour, etc. of the text. Also, you can place this banner wherever you want.

Emojis

Emojis are the most fun part about texting. You can add different emojis by dragging them onto the screen. 

Settings That Can Lead to Successful Campaigns

Change in Display time

You can change the default display time of your image. It allows users to view the image for a longer or shorter period than the automatically adjusted 10 sec of time. If you increase the length of the video your engagement can increase.

Make your Profile Public

If your profile is used for advertising purposes, then ensure that it is public. If not, then you can go to the privacy settings on your profile to access this setting.

You change the settings of “Who can contact me” and “who can view my settings” from private to public. These are denoted as “My Friends” and “everyone”.

There is also an upgraded messaging service, where you can send private messages to any specific user.

Development of a Strategy to Market on Snapchat

In order to become successful on the platform, you need to have a clear marketing strategy in mind. It will help your revenue grow. And since snapchat is a different platform than all the other social media platforms, the marketing strategies created for this platform are also different.

Below are some of the very basic and tried tactics which work perfectly:

Offering Coupon Codes

Everybody loves free stuff. Hence, offering people discount coupons is a trusted tactic to enhance your business. Several major businesses, like Sixteen Hoodies GreenHub, have successfully used this tactic 

The best thing about coupons is that you can actually keep track of the engagement rate. You can see how many people respond to you, what action has been taken, and how many people actually used the coupon code. 

Connect with Influencers

Connecting with influencers can create a huge impact on your marketing. For example, Audi teamed up with “Pretty Little Liars” and posted exclusive content of the show on their Snapchat feed. This became beneficial for the show since they got a platform for promotions and it worked great for Audi because they gained 115,000 followers on the platform. 

If you think about the example given above, you may feel that that was a very unlikely pairing. But still, it did work out for both sides. So, on Snapchat it’s not a necessity that the influencer be strictly associated with your area of expertise.

Build Anticipation

If you are having an event, start creating hype right from the planning stage. You can build anticipation by releasing a teaser, a live feed or an announcement. 

So, if friendship day is coming up, share as many photos and videos as you can till the registration closes.

Target the audience which is present on the platform

Even if you are growing at a stable and significant rate on the platform, it’s not necessary that the audience you are targeting are the same audiences you targeted before. But it doesn’t matter. As long as they are your audience it’s a fine deal. 

How to Track the Engagement on Snapchat?

There are a few metrics that can help you determine your audience engagement on the platform:

  1. The number of times a Snap is viewed
  2. Number of people who responded to your snap or story
  3. The number of people that are engaged with your brand via direct messages

Once you have gone through this guide, you are ready to get started with Snapchat marketing. You just need to be determined and focused, and you will be able to make the most of this platform.

About the author

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Gaurav Agarwal

Gaurav Agarwal is the founder of ImaPRO - Social Media Marketing Agency in Bahrain, providing 360° Digital Marketing solutions across the globe from last 16 years. With his years of experience and expertise in Digital Marketing, he serves businesses from a wide range of industries, including Retail, Fashion, E-commerce.