Ask any millennial, Gen Z, and even many Gen X social media users, and they would know what Snapchat is.
With 280 million daily active users globally in 2021, this social media platform has changed the social media landscape since its launch in 2011. Offering a unique visual approach, Snapchat’s stories were such a resounding success that they inspired Facebook and Instagram to create their versions later.
A hit with the youth, this photo and video sharing app gives businesses a huge opportunity to uniquely reach their followers and be creative with its various tools and filters.
Read ahead to see how you can use Snapchat marketing strategies to build your brand’s awareness and reach creatively.
Table of Contents
Benefits Of Using Snapchat Marketing Strategies
With the high popularity of Snapchat, there are several benefits of using this social media platform as part of your business marketing strategies:
1. Higher Reach
While Facebook posts are pushed down on customer feeds as more content shows up over time, Snapchat is an excellent platform for organic reach. If your company has an active Snapchat account that people follow willing by seeing your public Snaps, you can be sure it will reach them if they open chat within those 24 hours.
Since millennials and Gen Z is your biggest Snapchat market, it gives you a huge opportunity to reach your target audience. This is because they also have a direct spending ability of about US$ 3 trillion, enabling them to spend over thirty minutes on the app.
2. Geofilters Increase Local Reach
While targeting a large audience is necessary, you have to start from home. So before you spread your efforts elsewhere, narrow your reach by targeting those in the right region, and Snapchat is one of the best apps to do so.
Snapchat has several ways to target the local audience, like allowing custom Geofilters, also known as Community Filters. This will enable people to use your filters when using Snapchat within the Geofence (your specific location) and apply them to their posts.
Furthermore, the “Our Story” feature, which compiles the public content from community users, can help you get local exposure. Since these stories are generally categorized or themed, you can show your brand’s support or perspective for a local event or trending topic.
Snapchat users, whether your followers or not, can also view your location-specific content with the Snap Map.
3. Better Content Creation
As popular and easy as content creation might seem, it requires a lot of thinking and effort to produce original content which is out of the box to stand out to your target audience.
Even if you have been in the business for long or have a small firm, your creativity can quickly deplete, and you’ll be struggling to find ideas.
One of the best things about Snapchat is that with its ever-changing exciting features, it motivates you to think outside the box and push those creative boundaries to keep producing something different.
Snapchat stands out among the various social media platforms since it’s mainly about pictures and videos and less text. While Facebook and Instagram require you to put captivating captions, demanding more time and thought, the focus is totally different in Snapchat.
If you want to stand out from your competition and increase brand awareness, you’ll have to do it through the Gen Z way. Then, you can push your social strategy boundaries and uniquely promote your brand message to appeal to the masses.
How you use Snapchat, and the successful techniques allow you to try new things on Instagram stories. Once you have a loyal audience that craves your content, you can expand it by shifting to a YouTube series.
Setting Up Your Brand’s Snapchat Account
Here’s how you can create your Snapchat business account to use its tools and features to improve your social media marketing efforts:
1. App Download
The Snapchat app can be downloaded for free from the App Store or the Google Play Store, depending on the device you use.
2. Account Setup
If you don’t already have an account, create it first:
- Use the signup button to begin and fill in the required information, including your name, email, username, password, birthday, and phone number
- Pick a username that is either your brand name or something that aligns with all your social media accounts to maintain consistency and increase brand recognition
3. Create Your Business Profile
Enter your business name in the Ads Manager and enter your phone number, currency, and country. Once your login details are ready, you can pick your Snapchat advertising goal that serves as the best metric for your Snapchat ads.
This can act as a guide for your Snapchat business account handling. For example, you can have the following goals:
- Local place promotion
- Website visits
- App visits
- App installs
- Texts and calls
Enhance Online Business With Clever Snapchat Marketing Strategies
You have a Snapchat business account. Great! But so does most of your competition. How you optimally use Snapchat for business with Snapchat Ads Manager will set you to help you better your game. Here are a few strategies no how you can successfully use Snapchat for your brand’s marketing:
1. Influencer Marketing
One of the best Snapchat marketing strategies to enhance product or business legitimacy and reach is through this technique, and there are two ways to do so:
Snapchat Takeover
This method allows an influencer to take over your account for some hours or a day and post snaps from it. You will have limited reach of your current Snapchat network unless you market the takeover beforehand and ask the influencer to bring their networks to your business. In such a case, this technique can help you get more followers.
The best practice for a takeover is to carry it out during some event. For instance, if a famous fashion blogger takes over your account and gives a sneak peek into the Met Gala’s behind the scenes, your followers will get unique value from it and attract even more people to your account.
A takeover is supposed to draw more attention towards your brand and follow the best Snapchat strategies to feature your business or product in detail. You can further this approach through discount codes for those who join the live feature to create urgency amongst the followers and encourage them to take some action.
Furthermore, it is up to you to make takeovers a key strategy because when different people run your account from time to time, your Snapchat stories remain fresh and lets you draw in customers from various social circles.
Sponsored Posts
Big-time influencers from your niche have dedicated followers who can target you through sponsored posts and increase your brand awareness.
First, determine the significant Snapchat players relevant to your business with followers from your target market. Then, contact them and discuss a possible partnership for sponsored content. Of course, be prepared to spend some money or give away product samples.
However, these won’t be as costly as Facebook or Instagram posts because Snaps last for only 24 hours.
Follow these best practices to get optimal results from sponsored posts:
- Include the influencer in the snaps to establish the brand connection with them and strengthen the sponsored content.
- Ensure the promotion looks natural to some extent. Send the influencer any product you want them to promote for pictures and any details you want them to include in its caption or photo.
- Permit the influencers to use their discount codes to encourage followers to buy your products.
While an influencer marketing strategy does not guarantee immediate sales, it does increase your brand’s credibility. Particularly when it is associated with a prominent figure and motivated people to consider your products.
2. Snapchat Exclusive Promotions
This is a no-brainer to improve your e-commerce sales. However, such exclusive promotions need you first to have a good Snapchat following because these will be the potential customers you can reach through your business account.
You can include some coupon codes and discounts in your regular content posts to convert more followers into sales. This can also help you to advertise your Snapchat discount on other social media profiles and increase your Snapchat follower’s list and directly reach them in the future.
Simply:
- Post a story with some video or photo of your product to promote it with a discount code and website link.
- Motivate your audience to take Snap screenshots and share them with their friends to increase your audience.
- Make a deal with your followers. Give them a code when they share your Snap to create user-generated content that you can utilize in the future for your marketing strategies
3. Daily Snaps
Even though daily snaps impact your business in a limited way, they can work wonders if you are new in the field or offer a unique product.
Daily snaps are essential for various reasons:
- They provide more value to your Snapchat followers by giving more than just detailed pictures of your products and discount codes.
- They create long-lasting brand awareness among your followers.
Your daily Snapchat content can include small videos showing your work or business culture, behind-the-scenes pictures, and snaps that guide followers on how to use your products and their features. Use Snapchat’s filters and drawing tools to create engaging and creative snaps.
Frequent posting informs followers of the various products you offer and increases brand awareness, increasing their chances of becoming loyal and long-lasting customers.
Use Snapchat to show off your brand and connect with your audience. Don’t strive for perfection. Instead, think outside the box, use humor, and be creative with your stories to create an army of loyal followers.
Conclusion
Snapchat is wildly popular, and like other digital marketing strategies, it will be pretty unwise not to use it for your brand’s promotion. However, with so many active Snapchatters, especially among the Millennials and Gen Z, you can easily create a loyal following if you use the platform strategically.
Whether it is the local community or a widespread audience, Snapchat allows you to reach out to your followers through snaps and videos and grab their attention without spending too much time on witty captions or explanatory texts.
Tim holds expertise in building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.
When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
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