Have you ever wondered if there’s any way to harness Snapchat’s functionality to market your business to a younger demographic? This platform’s capabilities present an interesting option for marketers, as long as you’re familiar with the three ways to market your business with Snapchat.
If you’ve been chasing the Generation Z market, however, Snapchat has some tricks up its ghosty little sleeves. In addition to its built-in advertising tools, the platform is also offering analytics solutions for power users.
In this article, we’ll investigate Snapchat’s user statistics and data analysis options. We’ll also outline three ways you can start implementing Snapchat as a part of your business’ marketing strategy. If you’re ready, let’s pick a good filter and get started!
Why You Should Consider Using Snapchat as a Marketing Tool
Snapchat can be an enigmatic social media channel for users of certain generations. Its reach, however, holds plenty of promise for marketers. Snapchat users are extremely active, creating 3.5 billion snaps per day. When you combine that with the six different advertising formats and a lower cost of conversions compared to other social media platforms, there’s a lot of potential on offer.
Additionally, when it comes to demographics, 71% of Generation Z uses Snapchat as a part of their daily routines. Plus, 51% of this group uses Snapchat roughly 11 times each day. Those are big numbers for younger demographics, a market that’s notoriously hard to capture.
3 Ways to Market Your Business With Snapchat
There’s a lot more to Snapchat than the disappearing ‘snaps’ you can send. This camera-centric app has plenty of other features such as games and quizzes to contribute to a robust marketing strategy.
1. Use the My Story Feature to Create Experiences
Outside of the basic ‘snap’ that disappears once it’s viewed, Snapchat also has a My Story feature. This is an excellent option for developing engaging customer experiences. Unlike snaps, stories remain viewable for 24 hours.
Creative business owners can take advantage of Stories on Snapchat for free. Posting frequently (but not too frequently) is a fruitful way to boost customer engagement, according to a Snaplytics study. It also found that recommendations and CTAs can be much more effective on this platform than on Facebook or Instagram.
Snapchat also offers paid advertising options, which can be worth your time as well. To illustrate the point, the company Wish invested in Story Ads and found an 80% lower Cost Per Install for its Wish App when it fed ads directly from its product catalog:
However, there are some downsides to advertising with Snapchat to be aware of. For instance, Stories are not shareable, which is a big benchmark for other forms of social media marketing.
With the My Story feature, you can create a collection of snaps that either tell a narrative or create an opportunity for customers to participate in a sale, download an app, or use a coupon for a specified amount of time. My Story also has some built-in features for seeing how many people have viewed your story.
2. Create Dynamic Geofilters for In-Store Incentives
One of the most dynamic and engaging ways to use Snapchat for marketing might be its on-demand geofilters. Geofilters are custom overlays you can create that Snapchat users can only access if they are in a certain location. For instance, you might restrict a filter so it can only be used by those inside your physical store or business:
There is an approval process for both personal and business geofilters. You’ll want to plan ahead and give yourself a couple of days for approval time before using the filter. For example, you could create a filter ahead of time for a store grand opening or a sales event.
Plenty of businesses have used geofilters to great effect. Kentucky Fried Chicken is just one of many big brands that have used geofilters to market on Snapchat. When KFC decided to launch one of its sandwiches into space, it created a geofilter. This filter was available only at the company’s chain restaurants, and had 180,000 uses and 4.5 million views, all while boosting awareness of the sandwich and the space launch event:
Another benefit is that geofilters are cost-effective to set up. Geofilters cost approximately $5 per 20,000 square feet of coverage per day. The process for setting one up is fairly involved, however, especially if you are creating it for your business. If you make sure you’re following all appropriate copyright rules, though, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting started.
3. Use the Insights Tool to Track Your Results
One of the downsides to marketing on Snapchat is a lack of the more robust analytics that you might get with other social platforms. Recently, however, Snapchat has made an Insights tool available to users with large audiences, or those who are verified as ‘Official Stories’:
Snapchat Insights offers quite a few kinds of data that are useful in tracking interactions, including:
- Story Views: This piece of tracking tells you the total number of views (which is most closely equated to ‘clicks’) by all users since January 1, 2019, and also breaks the information down into views over the last week and month.
- Time Spent Viewing: This is similar to Story Views, only this analytic tracks the total time users have spent with their eyes on your Story for the same time periods.
- Reach: Daily, this piece of data will tell you how many unique users have viewed your Story.
- Average View Time: Another daily piece of information, Average View Time tracks how long each unique visitor spends with your Story.
- Story View Percentage: To get a sense of how much of your Story is being consumed, this data looks at how many of the available Snaps in your Story were viewed in a single session, on average, each day.
- Audience Lifestyle: Demographic information available with Insights includes over 100 different interest categories, and shows you the top four lifestyle categories for your viewers, based on how they compare to the average on Snapchat.
- Popular Regions: Geographically, Popular Regions will show you the top three regions where your viewers are located, and break that number down by the percentage of your audience in each region.
As we mentioned, Insights are only available to verified users. However, when you use paid advertising models through a Snapchat business account, you’ll get access to some measurement tools as well. To get started, you’ll need to submit some information about your company, and then you can log in via your Snapchat business account and create your first campaign.
Conclusion
As a marketing opportunity, getting more comfortable with Snapchat should be on your list of things to do. With six different options in its pay-to-play advertising platform, and free features that are limited only by your creativity, Snapchat can play a crucial role in your marketing plan.
Are you excited to try out some of these Snapchat marketing tips? Share your favorite with us in the comments section below!
Image credit: www_slon_pics.