You’ve been told over and over again that what you put on social media can haunt you forever. Unless you use Snapchat.
Snapchat, a popular picture-sharing app, shares videos, pictures and drawings with your friends for a pre-determined amount of time before it deletes the content. What started as a service to use among friends is now being leveraged by brands who are looking to target a younger audience. There are 400 million “snaps” sent each day, and 26 million active US users, so of course businesses are looking for ways in. But is Snapchat an application that brands can successfully use to reach their target audiences? And if so, what are some best practices for using it in a social marketing capacity?
While Snapchat’s user base has been growing by the millions, only a small fraction of its active users are brands. This is because Snapchat presents a few unique challenges for brands looking to leverage the app as a marketing tool to reach the coveted teen demographic.
The Challenges
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Lacks editing capabilities. Marketers cannot edit the images they send out to improve photo quality.
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Discoverability on the app is limited. Your audience isn’t likely to find you on Snapchat unless they make the choice to add you as a friend. This means that your brand will need to work on heavy promotion in other places to draw in users.
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Basically no metrics. With a lack of in-app metrics, Snapchat does not allow you to track the success of your campaign.
With these massive obstacles standing in your way, is Snapchat really worth it? Depending on your brand’s audience, it may not be. But for brands looking to catch the eye of the teen demographic, it could be a fun, new way to expand your audience reach.
Your Snapchat Strategy
Having trouble coming up with ideas for your Snapchat marketing campaign? Try taking advantage of someone else’s. Recently, Tongal ran a contest that drew 584 ideas for how top brands can up their Snapchat marketing game. Some ideas included a city naming contest for free airfare through Southwest Airlines and cheat codes for EA Games’ most popular video games.
Will your brand add Snapchat to its social media basket?
Check out this infographic by Marketo to find out more about Snapchat’s user demographics, a few of the brands who are using it successfully, and some best practices for brand communication on Snapchat.
