How To Use Snapchat For Business Brands ,it inspired users by letting them tell stories, use fun filters and create off-the-cuff content. Since then, other apps like Instagram, Facebook, and now TikTok, have made their own versions of this style of storytelling. Even though Snapchat pioneered this style of content, it seems like fewer people are talking about the platform these days.
So, where does Snapchat stand as a social media platform and marketing tool in 2020?
By the end of 2021, Snapchat still has 229 million daily active users around the world. Although it may seem like fewer people use Snapchat for business, it has seen a 20.5% increase in usage since 2019. And its numbers have since been increasing.
Compared to Twitter and Facebook, Snapchat is the most highly trafficked social platform among teenagers and young adults. And Snapchat users post over 210 million snaps on the platform every single day.
Who can still benefit from Snapchat marketing?
If your brand caters to Gen Z or younger millennials, then Snapchat can have a considerable impact on your business. These generations have billions of dollars of direct spending power as well as influence over household spending.
Snapchat also tends to work best with direct to consumer brands who can use the app to drive traffic to an ecommerce website or app. Since Snapchat lets businesses create short, highly engaging content, it makes users heavily invested in those stories. Because of their high engagement rates, Snapchatters are 60% more likely to make impulse purchases based on products they see on the app. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
Ways to use Snapchat for business in 2020
So as a digital marketer, how can you use Snapchat in ways that make sense and cater to the demographics that are active on the platform? Here are a few ways brands can continue to incorporate Snapchat into their marketing strategies.
Cross-promote content from other platforms
To use Snapchat successfully, then you need to have followers on the platform.
If you have a large following on another platform, let those followers know about your Snapchat to encourage them to check out your content there. It helps to have a specific angle or focus on your Snapchat content or share things you don’t share on other platforms.
You can give your followers on other platforms a sneak peek of original content you’re posting on Snapchat. This will create excitement and encourage people to follow you on that platform as well.
Keep up with the latest social media trends to make sure that you’re always creating content that is fresh and engaging. This is especially important when targeting generations known for being in tune with what’s trending.
Create interactive filters for your brand
One of the things that makes Snapchat famous are the filters—or Lenses, as they’re referred to—and geotags on the app. Businesses have an opportunity to get their message in front of Snapchat users by creating interactive filters that Snapchatters want to use. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
The average Snapchat user interacts with a Snapchat Lens for at least 20 seconds and is likely to share images or videos of themselves using the filter. This essentially creates user-generated content that is promoting your brand to their audience.
With geofilters, you can create location-specific filters for when users are bear your business or location. This works exceptionally well for stores, restaurants or any business that has a brick and mortar storefront. When someone uses a geofilter or Lens on Snapchat, you’re getting instant exposure, free advertising and social proof to their followers.
Creating a branded geofilter can cost between $5 and $5,000 depending on how widely you want to promote the filter. A national campaign, with a high budget, can reach up to 60% of Snapchat users in one day.
Dunkin Donuts took advantage of National Donut Day by creating a goofy and fun Snapchat Filter that turns your head into a giant pink, glazed donut. In addition to the lens, they made custom geo-filters that were unlocked when someone visited their store.
Coordinate brand takeovers on your account
If you’re working with influencers, you can incorporate a Snapchat takeover into your content agreement. Letting influencers take over your Snapchat account for a day will encourage their audience to follow along on your account. The influencer will also likely promote that takeover on their account, helping drive traffic to your page.
When doing a Snapchat takeover, try to make it exclusive to the platform. It might seem like a good idea to repost stories from an Instagram takeover to Snapchat, but you want to encourage people to follow you on Snapchat as well as Instagram to get the full impact of the platform. Create takeovers that are specific to Snapchat and work with influencers who are already active on the app.
Set specific goals for the platform that contribute to your overall marketing goals
Setting specific social media marketing goals can help you understand how Snapchat can help you meet those goals.
If your goal is to increase traffic, then Snapchat can help drive users to your website. The platform recently added the ability to add links to your Snaps, which works very well when promoting products or offers on your website.
Every Snapchat business account has access to their account analytics through the platform’s native analytics tool, Snapchat Insights. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
These metrics include the demographics of your stories’ views, including their age, gender, location and general interests. You’ll also see who watched your Snapchat story until the end and the number of people who saw your story.
Invest in paid advertising
If you have an advertising budget and a large audience on Snapchat, then Snapchat ads can be a lucrative part of your social media marketing strategy.
Here are the main types of ads you can use in Snapchat.
Collection ads
Collection ads use tappable tiles to link to products that users can shop directly from the app. These shoppable ads are ideal for ecommerce businesses. When testing this type of ad against standard Snap ads, eBay saw five times more engagement when using Collection ads on the same products. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
Filters and Lenses
We already mentioned how filters and lenses could increase engagement and brand awareness on the app. These Snapchat features also fall within its advertising platform. In addition to the fee for creating a filter or lens, you can also pay for sponsored filters or lenses that Snapchat will distribute to your target audience. The higher your distribution budget, the more people you’ll reach with your filters or lenses.
Story ads
Story ads appear in Snapchat’s Discover section and as branded advertisements. With story ads, you can create 3 to 20 images or video ads. These are usually straightforward, full-screen ads that contain a call to action. Most of these ads contain an attachment allowing users to swipe up and go to another website.
Hopper worked with Snapchat to create static story ads that targeted geographically specific users with flight deals in their area. The ads were straightforward and had a clear call to action, which was to install the app.
With these ads, Hopper found that Snapchat users were 37% more likely to download the app and watch a specific flight than their other acquisition channels. Using Snapchat ads, they were also able to reduce their cost per install by 50%.
Commercials
These ads are non-skippable for at least 6 seconds and appear within Snapchat’s curated content. Commercial ads are great for building brand awareness on the app and reaching new audiences.
If you have a large enough budget, and your target audience fits into Snapchat’s target demographic, it’s worth experimenting with running commercial ads on the platform. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
10 Ways Snapchat Can Influence Business
Here are 10 ways your business can take advantage of Snapchat and its engaged user base.
If you think you missed the opportunity to join the Snapchat craze, it’s not too late.
As of Q1 2019, the social media app has over 190 million daily active users with 80 million of those users in North America.
So while others might not be talking about the photo and video messaging app as much as they used to, Snapchat is still a “big deal”, especially if your target audience is aged 13 to 24 years old.
On average, Snapchatters use the app over 20 times a day, and spend a daily average of 30 minutes on the app, resulting in 3 billion Snaps created daily. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
With all the noise on social media, we’ve narrowed it down to 10 ways your business can take advantage of Snapchat and its engaged user base.
Snapchat Terminology
Before getting started with some easy Snapchat strategies, it’s important to understand the platform terms.
Snap
Taking a photo or creating a video with the capture button. Snaps can be viewed up to 10 seconds depending on the amount of time chosen by the Snapchatter and the snap will disappear once it’s been viewed.
Stories
A compilation of Snaps from the last 24 hours. Snaps appear in chronological order and create a narrative when viewed.
Discover
The Discover screen shows friends’ Snapchat Stories as well as content from top publishers who add content daily. Users can watch Live Stories from events and check out local or curated Stories they may be interested in. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
Snapcode
QR code generated by Snapchat, each code is unique to each user.
Memories
Personal saved collection of past Snaps and Stories, backed up by Snapchat.
1. Stay Top of Mind
Just like any other social media platform, it’s important to remain consistent when it comes to publishing content.
With Snapchat, it’s critical.
Not only because Snaps disappear after 24 hours, but the newer your Snaps are, the closer they appear at the beginning of the Friends feed in the Discover tab. How To Use Snapchat For Business
2. Build Engaging Followers
This is where Snapchat is different from other social media platforms.
The user’s story feed is highly curated to what the user wants to see.
Why?
Because Snapchat makes users go out of the way to find friends and businesses to follow.
There are no hashtags to browse for new users to follow, nor are there typical newsfeeds that other platforms have.
Besides plainly telling people that your business is on Snapchat and mentioning your username, make it easy for them to find and follow you.
To start, create and save your Snapchat account’s Snapcode.
It will look similar to this:
With this Snapcode, users can now scan it with their phones to add your Snapchat account to their following list.
An easy way to build a Snapchat following is to promote your Snapchat on your social media channels and bring followers from other platforms to your Snapchat account.
It can be as simple as posting your Snapcode or Snaplink and by getting creative and sounding a bit mysterious or exclusive about what content is being shared on Snapchat.
The key is to make followers curious and have FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) so they want to follow your business’ Snapchat account.
Get creative with where and how you can integrate the Snapcode within your physical location or even on client-facing assets.
3. Go Behind the Scenes, Make It Exclusive
Believe it or not, your customers ARE interested in seeing what happens behind the scenes at your business.
Whether you share office culture or Snaps of your team preparing for an event, this is great storytelling content and allows your fans to feel like they’re part of your brand. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
4. Share User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) includes any type of media or text where the user is actually promoting a brand rather than the brand promoting itself.
Some popular examples of UGC include social media users sharing photos of their morning Starbucks, sharing photos of their meals and tagging the restaurant, tagging a brand that they are wearing, etc.
Sharing UGC is considered one of the more authentic ways businesses can use social media.
It not only makes customers feel included and apart of the brand but prompts others to create content as they want to be featured on the business’ social media as well.
5. Host Takeovers
A “takeover” is when someone else, other than the regular social media/marketing person handles your business’ Snapchat account for a specified length of time.
Making sure you’re working with a responsible and vetted person/influencer will help your Snapchat account attain some of the influencer’s followers, have a wider reach to different audiences and allow you to align yourself with an influencer for credibility.
Important note: Because you’re essentially handing the “keys” over to someone else, whether they’re part of your company or not, it’s important to have a set of guidelines to be followed.
6. Sneak Peek Product Launch
Make followers feel important by including them in early previews of upcoming product releases.
Use Snapchat to build anticipation, excitement, and demand for these products and followers will thank you by engaging with the content, possibly sharing it to their social media accounts and much more. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
7. Exclusive Deals & Coupons
Take advantage of the 24-hour lifespan of a Snap by sharing exclusive deals and coupons for your business.
This relatively short time span puts the pressure on, not wanting to miss out on the exclusive sale or coupon, followers are more inclined to act fast before the Snap disappears.
8. Custom Snapchat On-Demand Geofilters
Geofilters are graphic designed “overlays” or “frames” which appear to users depending on their specific location.
For example, restaurants, conferences, and events can outline a geofence of their desired location and any Snapchat users within that geofence will be able to use the geofilter.
On-Demand Geofilters can be custom created by businesses to showcase their brand.
They are so affordable (starting at around $5 for 20,000 square feet) that some users even create On-Demand Geofilters for private events such as weddings and birthday parties. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
9. Make Use of Snap Ads
Snap Ads are portrait full-screen images or videos. They drive traffic to your website, video, or app using the Swipe Up feature.
Snapchat’s Ads Manager is similar to Facebook’s and will walk you through the process, step by step.
It’s important to note that while Snapchat’s interest targeting is nowhere as near in-depth as Facebook’s there’s still the opportunity to target users based on their long term lifestyle interests.
For example, “Makeup” isn’t a target you can select, but “Beauty Mavens” is.
You may have to get creative with the interests targeted or if you’re not familiar with “Lifestyle” interests, it’s recommended you scroll through the entire list to make sure none that are applicable have been missed.
Even though Snapchat’s active user base isn’t as large as the major social media players like
Facebook or Instagram, if your audience is active on Snapchat, you might find success on it. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
Peak, a UK based training app, was able to drive 1.7 million downloads in the first two months of advertising on Snapchat and it cost them 50% lower per install than other platforms.
Test out Snapchat Ads with a smaller spend budget to see if they’re for your company before jumping in with a large budget.
10. Get Creative & Have Fun
Snapchat can be a lot of fun to use on a personal level: users play games, create short videos, and use funny face lenses.
Your business on Snapchat should be no different and each Snap should be tailored specifically for your Snapchat audience, (that means no crossposting LinkedIn content to Snapchat!).
Remembering the majority of users are younger, and there is a lot of noise, and competition to set yourself apart on the Stories feed.
Boring or average content won’t perform well, get creative!
Inject some fun and playfulness into your Snapchat strategy and you’ll build loyal customers and fans of your business. How To Use Snapchat For Business.
Final Thoughts
Even though it attracts a particular audience, there are still ways that using Snapchat for business can help grow your brand. When you use Snapchat as an intentional and strategic marketing channel, it can help you drive traffic and increase sales among millennials and Gen Z more effectively than other platforms.
To learn more about prioritizing the right social media platforms, check out our article on how to choose which social media channels are right for your brand.