The days of Snapchat being used solely for sending pictures between friends are over.
This social media platform has evolved. Your company can’t afford to ignore the impact this marketing channel can have on your business.
It’s an absolute necessity if you’re focusing on Generation Z as your target market. That’s because 71% of Gen Z (teens, college students) use Snapchat as part of their daily routines. Plus, 51% of this group use Snapchat roughly 11 times each day.
While Snapchat is known for its popularity with teens, its market penetration is starting to hit young adults and older generations as well.
Snapchat is a viable marketing channel if your current target market falls anywhere between the ages of 12 and 34. But keep an eye on these trends as older generations may continue adapting to this platform.
In Q4 of 2017, Snapchat hit 187 million active daily users. The platform has seen more than an 18% growth rate in terms of daily users in the last year.
There is no sign of a slow down, and we expect these marketing trends to continue in the future.
What exactly does this mean for your business?
It’s great news. You now have another viable marketing channel to engage with your customers.
But this may be intimidating or confusing if you’ve never used Snapchat before and don’t know how to apply it to your business.
Fortunately, you’re in luck. We’ll show some ways to use Snapchat for your business.
Post to your story often
Once you’ve created a Snapchat account, you need to make sure it’s active. The best way to approach this is by adding content to your story on a daily basis.
Anything you post on Snapchat will disappear after 24 hours. Posting content often will keep your brand fresh in the minds of your followers.
Just don’t go overboard. Posting 20 times in one day isn’t effective.
Promote your Snapchat account on other marketing channels
For your Snapchat strategy to be successful, you need followers.
Rather than trying to conjure up followers out of thin air, try to target users following your business accounts on other platforms.
Look at how People Magazine uses this strategy in their Instagram bio:
This is really important for you, especially if you just created a Snapchat account for your company. Nobody’ll know you have an account unless you tell them.
In addition to Instagram, you can promote it on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. You can even work this promotion into your YouTube videos.
Tell your email subscribers to follow you on Snapchat and pitch it on your website too.
The more channels you promote it on, the greater the chance of getting more followers you’ll have.
Save your Snapchat ideas in one place across all the document apps you use.
Create a sponsored lens
People love to use Snapchat filters and lenses.
It’s estimated that sponsored filters are seen by 16 million users each day. These filters are a way for people to take creative photos.
Snapchat has plenty of them built directly into their platform. Instead of posting a basic selfie, users can make the image black and white, apply a filter to make their eyes abnormally large, or make their nose disappear.
Some filters for video snaps can even change the pitch of your voice.
All of these were created to make users have more fun. They’ll send a snap to their friends with one of these filters because it’s entertaining and often humorous.
But now businesses can create a sponsored filter as well. Gatorade used this strategy during Super Bowl 50, and it turned into one of the most successful Snapchat campaigns on record.
If you’ve ever watched the Super Bowl, you know it’s a tradition for the winning coach to get Gatorade dumped on his head by the players. So Gatorade created a sponsored filter during the game that would simulate Gatorade getting dumped on the user’s head.
The filter had more than 165 million views and increased their purchase intent by 8%.
Here’s another example from Taco Bell to show you what these filters look like:
As you can see, the filters themselves are silly, but they create brand awareness and help you create engagement.
The only problem with this strategy is that it’s expensive. If you want to create a filter during a holiday or special event, such as the Super Bowl, you have to be ready…
Let social influencers take over your account
Another great way to get more followers and increase engagement is through social proof.
Celebrities and other influencers already have a steady following on social media. Take advantage of that.
Offer discounts and promo codes
Not sure what to post on your story?
When in doubt, give your followers something they can actually use. Send out discounts and other promotional offers via Snapchat.
When you’re posting on Snapchat, keep the overall goal of your company in mind. Don’t get distracted with all the other bells and whistles.
You want sales.
Offering discounts is a great way to accomplish this.
Promote a new product
Keep your followers up to date with any exciting news from your brand. A new product launch is definitely worth mentioning.
Even if your product hasn’t launched yet, you can build hype and anticipation—consumers will be ready for it when your product finally gets released.
Reply to your followers
The majority of your Snapchat strategy should be focused on uploading content to your story. However, that’s not the only way to engage with your audience.
Followers may reply to your story and send you direct messages as well.
On other social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, everyone can see whether you’re responding to followers or not.
But on Snapchat, only you and the person sending the message know whether you’re responding. So it’s easy for companies to ignore comments on Snapchat.
But you should still make an effort to reply to your followers.
Getting a personal response from a brand will make the user feel special. Ignoring their message shows them you don’t care about what they have to say.
Post relevant content
Your snaps shouldn’t be mindless images of your products. You can use this platform to show your audience your brand is aware of various topics.
You could talk about charities or any other type of social involvement in your business.
Promote an upcoming event
If your company is hosting or attending some kind of meeting or event, tell your audience about it.
Depending on what kind of event it is, you could even try to get your followers to come and show their support.
Inform your followers about an important milestone
Keep your Snapchat audience informed about important dates for your company.
Is it your 10th anniversary? Is it your CEO’s birthday?
You can even talk about other milestones, like getting your 10,000th follower on a certain social media platform.
All of these are great excuses to post on Snapchat. It’s a nice break from the same boring posts that get shared on a daily basis.
15. Mix it up
This piggybacks on my last point. You don’t want your content to be boring.
Lots of the tips we’ve discussed so far are definitely useful and should be applied to your Snapchat marketing strategy. But with that said, don’t just pick one or two and use the same ones every day.
You’ve got to keep things interesting.
If your followers aren’t entertained, they’ll stop following you. Once that happens, it won’t be easy for you to market to those people again.
You can avoid this by keeping your content fresh.
Conclusion
Snapchat is growing in popularity. If your company doesn’t have a Snapchat account, you need to create one ASAP.
But once your account is active, you need to get followers and keep them engaged.
Overall, you want to make sure your Snapchat marketing strategy makes your business better. In addition to creating brand awareness, you want to drive sales as well.
Whether Snapchat is new for you or you’re looking for a fresh insight to spice up your existing Snapchat marketing campaign, the tips I’ve outlined above are a great place to start.
Use this guide as a reference for increasing engagement on Snapchat.
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