How to market your business on Snapchat

How to market your business on Snapchat

There are over a 100 million active users on Snapchat and over 400 million shared snaps per day. Snapchat is one of the fastest growing socialnetworks. Most of its users are from the United States and fall under the age bracket of 18-34 years. But Snapchat is considering global marketing strategies in order to attract businesses to market themselves, whose target audience is not similar to Snapchat’s. This includes people beyond the younger  age bracket of 18 to 34 years.

Snapchat is now being used by brands to engage with their audience and try to grab their attention towards their product or service. The stories that are shared on Snapchat lasts for almost 24 hours. It is a string of snaps that is narrated through a video. Snapchat made headlines when they announced an additional feature for Chat, which allows the users to text and video message in real time. As Snapchat continues to grow, so does its user base and brands that are creatively making use of the app to the fullest of its potential.

Some of the creative examples where companies made use of Snapchat are:

World Wildlife Fund’s #LastSelfie Snapchat campaign that raises awareness about endangered species

This campaign was launched in Turkey and Denmark and was created by Grey group ad agencies in Turkey and Uncle Grey in Denmark. The campaign symbolized the diminishing population of the various endangered species. The emphasis was on the promotion of the social message, “If we as humans do not take any action in real life, these species will disappear for real.”

GrubHub made use of Snapchat app to find a summer intern for them

GrubHub is an online food ordering company that took the usage of Snapchat to another level. By making use of the Snapchat stories feature, they posted a six-snap slideshow to demonstrate how candidates who are interested can apply with a snap of their best doodle.

These examples provide insights on how Snapchat’s Chat feature can be used to communicate your brand to your target audience. But the challenge and the opportunity for these brands is to determine what are these real-time moments.

So, how can you as a brand take the plunge and use Snapchat as a creative tool to market your brand? Before starting your campaign on Snapchat, it is important to understand that Snapchat is different from other social media platforms.

Start with the giveaways

Snapchat has a unique time-limit feature that makes it a great platform for giveaways as you can connect and engage with your audience. Snapchat is an application that directly interacts with the audience. You can directly ask the potential customers to participate by sending in some entries and then replying them to have a one-to-one conversation.

GrubHub’s free giveaway campaign is the best example. The company hosted a weeklong scavenger hunt last year. They named their giveaway campaign as “SnapHunt”. They posted a daily challenge for their followers and a chance for them to win $50 in free takeout from GrubHub. The participants used to send a Snapchat message back to GrubHub, and the company would pick ten lucky winners every day.

By this contest, GrubHub witnessed a 30percent of their Snapchat followers participating in the giveaway contest and their followers increased by 20percent because of this contest.

Find influencers to promote your brand on Snapchat

There are many influencers available on Snapchat. By partnering with them you can expand your brand presence and market your product or service to a larger audience. You can discover these superstars by checking the number of followers on their account. Partner with them to promote your product to your target group in a more organic manner.

The choice of influencers is also important. According to Buzzoole, the endorsement by bloggers were more influential than the ones by the celebrities. The referrals by influencers add to the brand’s value as you become the most reliable brand and connect well with the audience. This helps in growing your followers and your brand reaches out to a bigger audience.

The best example would be of Wet Seal, a teen accessory and clothing retailer, who gave access to a 16-year old teen influencer Meghan Hughes to its new Snapchat account. She had a large number of followers on all the social media platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. She posted stories of Wet Seal clothing that led to an increase in the number of followers on Wet Seal’s Snapchat account.

Make use of the Q/A to interact with followers

Snapchat is the most interactive platform compared to other social media networks. You can engage with your followers by asking questions and interacting with them as they answer your questions. The disappearing nature of the content encourages quick replies from the audience and provides you to interact with the young fan base in a unique way.

You can also ask some random questions to your followers, like, what are their weekend plans.  Formal questions have their own place on Snapchat, but keeping a more casual tone to interact with the audience is always better, even if your brand resembles a B2B market. You can also make your audience ask questions to understand what your target group wants. It is a one-to-one interactive platform after all.

You can use captions for snaps or make use of the special text feature that can overlay on the snap with an emoji and big font text. The idea is to educate and engage with the audience in a fun way.

Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff did a question & answer session with his fans. The users were asked to tweet questions and Jack would answer them via his Snapchat account. This diverted all his Twitter followers to his Snapchat account.

Make use of Snapchat’s exclusivity to your own benefit

Snapchat is still new in the minds of the consumers. Moreover, Snapchat is not used by businesses to its fullest potential when it comes to engaging with the audience. This is a great opportunity for the businesses to make use of Snapchat to make their brand presence felt.

Brand loyalty is one of the major factors when it comes to increasing your audience. Snapchat offers you to share a sneak-peak of your new products or early-bird specials to directly connect with your consumers. This will not only increase your followers but also improve the engagement with your fans. Giving out to your consumers you are actually encouraging them to follow you on Snapchat.

Taco Bell introduced their first ever coloring book on Snapchat that would let the audiences draw on the pre-designed Taco Bell images.

Final thoughts

Snapchat is seriously considering competitive marketing solutions. The new improved features and technological advancements are providing the brands an opportunity to test new ways to engage with their audience.

It is a dynamic platform to distribute content. There is a lot of potential for the brands to attract more followers and build an active community without facing much competition due to a lack of businesses on Snapchat. If you haven’t considered Snapchat to market your business or brand, then it is a good opportunity to grab it right now.