Most businesses have incorporated major social networks such as Facebook and Twitter in their digital marketing strategies. However, they seem to hold off when it comes to adding any new platform unless it gains significant traction among the target audience.
Snapchat has done just that and has become popular enough to be considered a major marketing channel.
Snapchat is a social video sharing app. It gained attention as a marketing tool during the past few years and has become the most popular social network among millennials. Snapchat is currently worth $19 billion.
Snapchat is unique because users can control what they are sharing. Though there are curated content channels on its Discover feature, but most of the content is highly personalized. Its popularity can be judged by the fact that over 10 billion videos are viewed every day on the app.
What is Snapchat?
Snapchat is a photo sharing app which allows users to interact in lots of fun ways by sharing photos and videos. Sharing your moments and thoughts is easy and you have control over what gets shared and with whom.
The app allows users to:
- Take photos
- Record videos
- Add text messages of drawings
- Create “Snaps” and send them to specified recipients
- Set the duration of the snap’s existence on the recipient’s phone (ranging from 1-10 seconds)
- Create a set of ordered snaps called “Stories”
- Stories last for 24 hours
Benefits of Adding Snapchat to Your Mobile Marketing Mix
Businesses have used Facebook, Twitter and websites to promote products and services. These channels have helped with brand awareness, customer connectivity and traffic generation. Snapchat has not garnered that level of attention although it seems to be ubiquitous with the Gen Y demographic. Plus, most businesses tend to consider Snapchat a purely social app. It is high time businesses learn the versatility of Snapchat and connect with their customers.
Having a dedicated Snapchat-focused marketing strategy has the following benefits:
1. The Convenience Factor
One of the benefits that will be clear from the outset is the convenience. You can quickly string together different “snaps”—images, videos and text—into a “story”. This story can be viewed or “read” by your followers. This gives you limitless ways to engage with prospective customers. You can tell (or show) them what products or services you offer.
2. Get as Creative as You Want
Since Snapchat stories expire after24 hours, business owners can feel free to update as much as they want. This lets you get creative with your content since you aren’t restricted to a set number of posts per day. Share visual content such as charts about your most popular products, pictures of any new products you are launching, any new additions which were requested by customers, any content which gives the followers a sense of being involved with the business will be well-liked.
3. Send Rich Visual Messages to Customers
Traditional text-based statuses reign supreme on Twitter and Facebook; Snapchat is a different story (no pun intended) altogether. Snapchat is a primarily visual platform, the snaps and stories (series of snaps) are pictures or videos. They might contain a short caption or some doodling but the visual element is the most prominent. People pay way more attention to images than text, use creative visuals to pull in clients.
4. Present Information in Small Memorable Blurbs
As technology advances, our attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. Potential customers do not have the patience to sit through a wall of text. Using real-time photos is a good idea for getting attention and presenting information in small blurbs is the best way of retaining it. Another reason blurbs are better than detailed messages is that customers will keep checking the site for more information.
5. The Content is Ephemeral—And it’s a Good Thing
Your content is not permanent; it disappears after 24 hours by default. Users cannot view your stories after 24 hours. This feature is a big part of the appeal of Snapchat; individual snaps can be set to expire in a few seconds if desired. This might sound like an unorthodox idea because businesses are traditionally used to the permanence of anything you post on digital media. There are some useful benefits to having disappearing content. Along with the information, irrelevant content and mistakes also disappear forever. You won’t have to weed through a jungle of outdated content looking to update information and make changes. Moreover, the intrigue of the information getting lost forever keeps fans hooked to your page so they don’t miss out on anything important.
6. There is Less Competition
Almost every brand that exists has a powerful presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. Not only is it difficult to engage users on these platforms, it is even more difficult to stand out from the crowd. Snapchat is growing but there is still considerably less competition as compared to other over-crowded networks.
7. A New and Unique Platform
It is popular for this reason. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it feels personal but can be scaled up if needed. Snapchat allows you to engage target audiences in a unique way with a new type of content. This platform is definitely a challenge to use as a marketing channel but provides higher rewards.
8. Build More Authentic Connections
Build rapport with your target audience by giving a behind-the-scenes view of your company. Snapchat amplifies the authentic feel of interaction, it focuses on what is happening here and now. There is no retouching or editing of the images. A few of the effects such as filters and doodles are only there to enhance the fun factor. Your customers will get a more realistic and honest view of your brand’s personality.
9. Reach a New Audience
If your product or services happen to be targeted towards the younger demographic, Snapchat can become an invaluable tool. For example, CNN usually targets older audience, they used Snapchat to engage the younger generation and ended up connecting to more millennials on the platform as compared to their main website.
Advice for Using Snapchat as a Marketing Channel
If you want to use Snapchat to generate marketing leads, the same way we do by being the best SEO company Toronto has, then you need to come up with a coherent strategy. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating your marketing plans:
- Try to think beyond the service/ product—That is; don’t make all your posts about selling, try to be more creative with your content. Make it informative and fun.
- Ask leading questions—Snapchat’s captioning feature is great for this. Questions will help engage followers and responses can give you useful insights into customer behavior.
- Encourage users to interact—Offer discount codes for funny doodles or creative captions. Try to set up some sort of reward opportunity at least twice a month
- Lift the curtain—Show your users how the business runs, show behind-the-scenes footage, sneak previews of products, in-progress products, etc.
- Last but not least make sure you stick to the official Snapchat Community Guidelines, Promotion Rules and Brand Guidelines.
Who Uses Snapchat?
To use the platform effectively, you first need to understand its user base, let’s take a look at some basic information about the demographics of Snapchat. The statistics on the official Snapchat Ads page show the following demographic breakdown:
- The official Snapchat website claims that the app is the best way to communicate your message to the 13-34 years old demographic.
- Over 60% of 13-34 year-old Americans who are smartphone users also use Snapchat
- 23% of Snapchatters are aged between 13-17 years
- 37% of Snapchatters are aged between 18-24 years
- 26%of Snapchatters are aged between 25-34 years
- 12% of Snapchatters are aged between 35-54 years
- 70% of the users are women
Useful Snapchat Statistics for Digital Marketers
Snapchat is the third most popular social networking app. In terms of popularity, it only trails behind Facebook and Instagram. This is quite surprising because Snapchat rose to significance very quickly and is now more popular than Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google+. Its popularity among the college-aged demographic is high, 70% of college students say that they are active on Snapchat at least once in a day. The same survey reported that on 11% of college students post on Facebook with the same frequency.
Here are the statistics which marketers might want to focus on:
- The quarterly Global Web Index report says that Snapchat is growing at the rate of 45%
- Users send 700 million “snaps” (images and videos) each day
- 500 million snaps are viewed per day
- It has a larger user base than Twitter
- Snapchat has 100 million daily active users
- A typical user spends 30 minutes per day using Snapchat
- 76% of Snapchat users also make online purchases
- Snapchat reaches about 11% of the total online users in the US
Marketing Tactics for Creating Brand Awareness Using Snapchat
The use of video in content marketing increases your engagement rates and conversions. Customers today, prefer visual content over traditional text-based content. Snapchat is a fast, easy and cheap way to produce creative, highly engaging videos.
Here are a few tactics you should try out.
- People love to know what goes on behind the scenes, show them using Snapchat
- Showcase new products and promote them with Stories
- Create your own Snapchat filter
- Snap live events or special events
- Introduce new members of your team
- Run contests, giveaways, special promotions, etc.
- Build anticipation for product launches or live events
- Create fun Stories focused on specific themes or products.
- Keep your customers informed of new products, sales and special events
You should not hesitate to use Snapchat as a marketing channel. It is a little tricky to get used to but you should get used to the interface and the usage pretty quickly. It’s a quirky and fun app which gets quite addictive once you start using it.
Your digital marketing will get a breath of fresh air once Snapchat is added to the mix.
About The Author
