With more than 260 million daily active users, Snapchat has become a potentially valuable tool for businesses. It’s important to note that the social medium’s audience tends to be younger, with the majority of users aged 13-34. If this demographic aligns with your target audience, then Snapchat may be a good fit for your business.
Create a Business account Snapchat
To use the medium for marketing, you need to open a Snapchat Business account. It doesn’t matter what size your company is. This account will provide access to more features to ensure a successful outcome of your marketing strategy.
You can use your account to create a Public Profile, which will give you a permanent landing page on Snapchat for your brand.
You can reach your desired target group via age-targeting and advertising via the Ads Manager feature. This is not the only way to target users, of course. You can create custom content to reach potential clients in a certain place.
To find someone on Snapchat, enter the username in the search bar and choose from the list of usernames that match or are associated with the person.
Snap Ads are full-screen video ads that appear between users’ stories. They can be up to 10 seconds long, and businesses can target specific audiences based on factors such as age, gender, and location.
Sponsored geo-filters
Geo-filters are location-based filters that users can apply to their snaps. Businesses can create their own geo-filters to promote events or special promotions. For example, Gatorade created a geo-filter that lets users dunk a virtual cooler on themselves. The brand placement was minimal on this interactive filter, and users felt like they were part of the Super Bowl. The filter was hugely successful, with more people seeing it than the Super Bowl itself (160 million vs. 112 million.)
Sponsored Lenses
Sponsored Lenses are augmented reality filters that users can apply to their snaps. Businesses can create their own lenses to promote their products or services. An example is The Peanuts Movie, which was actually the first brand in history to stand behind a Snapchat Lens. It features a rainbow throw-up while the theme song plays. A stream of candy corn came out of the user’s mouth simultaneously.
Snap Map
Businesses can use the Snap Map feature to engage with users in specific locations. For example, they can create custom filters for events or promotions in certain areas. You can use the interactive map to share your location as well, and friends can share their location with you. Bitmoji characters will appear on the map if they have integrated their Snapchat and their Bitmoji accounts.
Influencer Marketing
Businesses can partner with influencers on Snapchat to promote their products or services. Influencers can create sponsored content, such as snap stories, to reach their followers. You can pay for a social media takeover or use a vanity URL for your campaigns.
A social takeover is when a brand gives an influencer their Snapchat channel. For example, Logan Paul got Sour Patch Kids’ account for five days. His fans followed him on the channel, and Sour Patch got 120,000 new followers on the social medium.
You can create a vanity URL to promote your products. You’re giving potential customers a memorable site to type into their browsers. An example is “birch.ly/steals,” the URL of the beauty brand Birchbox, which they created for a Black Friday marketing campaign.
Other helpful features
- Collect multiple Snaps to tell a narrative
- Draw over a Snap
- Write captions over Snaps
- Incorporate polling
- Add information like the date, location, etc.
- Add background music to Snaps.
