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How to use Snapchat Marketing for Business

Snapchat marketing

Snapchat marketing tops the priority list of every marketer in 2017. This is why we decided to write a blog on the same to provide our readers with a clearer insight on the know-hows of Snapchat Marketing. In this blog, we will read about:

  • The social networking app: Snapchat
  • Why should you choose Snapchat for Business Marketing?
  • The functioning of Snapchat Marketing Campaigns
  • Snapchat’s Discover
  • Snapchat Ads
  • Customize your own filters (on Snapchat)
  • Snapchat Marketing Case Study

Snapchat

The picture exchanging app that hit the Indian markets in the year 2011-12. The aforementioned years marked the conceptualization and initial launch all over the world. The app saw a spark of popularity in the Indian market but it didn’t last for long. With a two-year long (December 2012- November 2014) development and fundraising, Snapchat hit the markets again with a wider user base. The major revolution was faced by the app in the year 2014-2016 when it captured a major market share with aggressive snapchat marketing, fundraising, and user acquisition in the global market. The year 2016 marked the most successful year in the Snapchat’s progress timeline. As a promotional Snapchat tool, the Snapchat Marketing team made use of the Video Marketing technique to capture the mass attention.

Snapchat marketing
Snapchat’s logo

At present, Snapchat has positioned itself so well in the market that it has become a trend. You can find this app in every youngster’s smartphone. The aggressive Snapchat marketing earned it such a wide market share that today other companies and brands extend hands for running their marketing campaigns on the app. Snapchat has earned this reputation and market share over a period of 5 years. Today, Snapchat is counted as one of the most popular social media platforms and is highly preferred for running business marketing campaigns.

Why should you choose Snapchat for Business Marketing?

You must have come across the featured section in your Snapchat app, those are the informative news snaps featured on Snapchat for user engagement purpose. Many people confuse them to be the marketed content but that is not the case. Brands or individuals can market their products or services only through their personal or business accounts or they can now place ads on the app.

Since many businesses have now included Snapchat in their marketing mix. The strong inclination of marketers towards Snapchat is built because of its innovative marketing platform with over 100 million daily active users who share about 400 million snaps each day. The numbers are getting bigger each day.

 

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Let’s take a list of reasons why Social Media Marketers are finding solace in Snapchat Marketing:-

A good platform for Video Marketing

The content creators and marketers are drooling over the video story format of Snapchat. A series of customized videos are being marketed on Snapchat to promote the brand in local networks and spread awareness. Many big brands have already included Snapchat in their Social Media Marketing platforms.

Access to live events

the multiple video upload option of Snapchat enables a user to give a live feed of any event to the people connected to their account. There’s absolutely no limit as to how many people one can add or many videos can be added to the story. This is a great way of communicating with the live video concept. Same is with pictures. You click a picture and can straight away upload it.

Filters that fit just right

In an attempt to copy Snapchat’s filter, Facebook and Instagram too have introduced face filters but original is always better. Snapchat’s filters are just amazing how they fit just accurately on the face. These filters are updated on a daily basis. That is the reason why people haven’t got bored of it yet. In fact, the users are looking forward to the new filters with the rise of new sun each morning.

Snapchat marketing
Various snapchat filters

Thus, these filters are also a great scope for marketing a product/ service. Relevant filters can be made available to the users thereby promoting the product through the medium of entertainment.

Show your mates the inside story

Let’s say the marketing team of an event using Snapchat. The team can simply upload the videos of the preparation of the event on the Snapchat story to create excitement among the viewers for the events. If a photographer is at an exotic shoot location, he can too create excitement amongst his local community to look forward to his latest work. Also, he may upload a behind the scenes video to further double the excitement.

Similarly, the marketers can upload influencing videos and pictures in their own story as well as Snapchat’s story. So, this is a free way of communicating with a large audience.

Connect with influencers

Well, the social media has given an opportunity to a lot of individuals to build their fan following and influence them. There are such local influencers in every community and the brands with smart marketers know that connecting with influencers is a clever move.  Reaching out to the target audience through the local influencers is an effective way of communicating with the target audience.

Snapchat influencer marketing
Snapchat personalities with massive followers

The marketers can conduct a small survey to find a local influencer relevant to their brand and thereby collaborate with them to associate with their brand and do the promotions for them on a local level.

Build a personal touch

The snap-stories are an interpersonal form of communication and can help the brands and companies build a personal touch with their target audience. By sharing pictures and videos of daily life, it is like the viewer is present at the location itself. Thus, building a powerful personal communication.

From the consumer point of view, the marketers are well aware of the fact that a consumer is more likely to buy a product they can relate to and a product that uses the personal appeal in its promotion.

 

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Attract them with giveaways

Who doesn’t want free gifts? Being a part of the social media revolution we are well aware of the impact of the giveaways. We all want that super-awesome gift pack we have been lured by, on some famous chic’s profile on the social media. Isn’t it even more attractive when it’s for free? The marketers carrying out social media campaigns for brands and companies can extensively exploit the popularity and massive user base of the social snap exchanging app.

GrubHub has been actively using Snapchat for various kind of promotions to build user engagement. It is one of the first brands to make use of Snapchat in such an intriguing way. The 5-day campaign called out to everyone to send in pictures as per the decided theme to be eligible to win the giveaways. They picked themes that revolved around their business thereby increasing their brand value.

Snapchat marketing
Grubhub’s snapchat campaign

With this campaign, Grubhub exhibited their creativity and out of the box thinking. The campaign was successful, indeed. This is was something new for the users as well and as a result, they actively participated in it.

The functioning of Snapchat Marketing Campaigns

The Snapchat marketing campaigns function differently than the other social media channels. Here, you either directly target your friend list or get your story featured in the feature section of the app. Also, there is a new feature introduced by them wherein you can upload your videos in the Snapchat’s story. When you upload a picture or story in the Snapchat’s story, it is visible to every user on Snapchat.

Snapchat discover

Snapchat’s Discover

The Discover section of Snapchat features news updates from the selected tie-up. These news stories are available for exact 24  hours and are further updated. Snapchat has tied-up with CNN, Vice, Yahoo News, Comedy Central, National Geographic, Daily Mail, ESPN, Food Network, and Cosmopolitan. The Snapchat’s Discover feature is available in the new update of Snapchat. The idea behind Snapchat’s Discover is to give people access to news in short video formats. Take a look at  how Discover works:

https://youtu.be/guGvV8LCx7o

Discover being quite an interesting feature of Snapchat has a massive user engagement in the Snapchat. But the feature of Snapchat that attracts the marketer’s attention is Snapchat ads which can be created and run by the marketer in few easy steps with the help of Snapchat’s ad support and further customize it on Snapchat Business Manager. There are various ways one can promote their business on Snapchat.

Snapchat marketing
Business manager of snapchat

Snapchat Ads

Snapchat claims that their ads are absolutely designed for mobiles phones and are capable of leaving a lasting impact on the users. With full-screen videos that come with various viewing and call to action options.

Snapchat marketing
How to make snapchat ads

Snapchat launched its self-serve ads manager where an advertiser can log in with their business account and access the ads manager themselves. Since the ads will be displayed on the mobile app which is extensively AMP optimized the ads dashboard can be easily accessed and managed through the mobile phone.

Snapchat Inc. introduced this feature to make it easy for the local businesses to run their ad campaigns without putting in many efforts. Previously, a business faced many hurdles before they could finally run their ad campaigns on the Snapchat app. It was only possible through a third-party ad tool or snap’s sales team. With the new mobile dashboard, it has got so much easier to create, customize and run an ad campaign.

The introduction of Snapchat’s ad Dashboard is their initiative of venturing with not only the big giants but also the small businesses. This initiative is extremely helpful to the small businesses who intend to communicate with the local audiences in the area. The smart features of the app enable you to select the geographical area where you want to run the Snapchat marketing campaign.

The ads feature was launched in the first week of May. However, it was made available to the companies in June only. A testing campaign was been run with 20 businesses. A business can volunteer itself for being a part of the testing campaign.

 

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Customize your own Filters

Despite tough competition from the Instagram’s, Skype’s, and Facebook’s story, Snapchat still holds A 100 million user base. The ads Manager Dashboard provides various creative options to the advertiser reaching out to the app for running an ad campaign. The results will be seen when the marketers exploit the vertical video format of ads in their Snapchat marketing campaigns. Additionally, a business marketer using Snapchat for marketing can create custom filters to promote their brand. We have all used the creative filters available on the Snapchat app. Imagine, what can be better than able to design your own customized filter.

Well, Snapchat now not only allows you to create a filter but also make it available to your target audience which you have specified while creating your campaign on Snapchat.

Much like any other Social media site today, Snapchat now offers its users to GeoFilters are another attractive feature which is a must use by the marketers to create customized GeoFilter for an event, a specific location, a restaurant, a hotel, etc. As the name suggests, Geofilters are the geographical filters that are available to the user on sliding right and choose the perfect one by continuing to slide right till you find the perfect one according to the snap.

Snapchat Marketing Case Study of GrubHub

About GrubHub

GrubHub is a popular online food delivering company which connects the users to the local diners and restaurants. It operates in approx 1100 cities across the United States and the United Kingdom connecting over 8.75 active Diners and 50,000 plus restaurants with the users. This company based in Chicago is extremely popular in the west.

About the Snapchat Marketing Campaign

The marketing team of GrubHub used Snapchat stories to increase their sales during the SuperBowl game of 2015. The Snapchat stories were used to leverage the number of orders placed during the game. They used Snapchat’s used Snapchat’s brush tool to draw images of food in order to promote their business. With a blend of creativity and persuasion, they lured their audience with food images drawn over black background.

Snapchat marketing
Grubhub’s creative snaps

GrubHub ventured with the famous Snapchat artist Michael Platco to get the creative ready for the Snapchat Marketing campaign. In the Super Bowl game of 2016, they presented the previous year’s facts to the audience.

Snapchat marketing
Who wants pizza?

Results achieved

  • The year 2015 received the maximum number of orders for Pizza on the Super Bowl Sunday. The influence can be measured by the fact that a majority of the total orders, ordered the pizza with same toppings as on the Snapchat image- Pepperoni, sausage, and Mushroom. The percentage of pizza orders were 72% higher than any other day.
  • The chicken wings widely ordered by the youth watching the game.
  • the overall sales were increased many folds.

Learnings

  • The Snapchat marketing campaign of GrubHub shows how good representation, art, creativity and the use of the right media at the right time can influence the audience to a great level.
  • To be persuasive you must know how to present your idea.
  • Use your own facts to show your worth.
  • The campaign initiated by them was exemplary of the results that are exhibited when you combine art and influence.

To Conclude

In this blog, we discussed the details of Snapchat Marketing. By the end of this blog, we are expected to be able to explain to an individual who has no knowledge about Snapchat Marketing regarding what is it and how it functions. Also, why must a business include Snapchat marketing in their marketing mix?

This blog should be able to equip you with the knowledge required to understand how effective is Snapchat as a platform for promotion and building brands. Clearly, a user base of 100 million leaves no stone unturned to declare a social networking app a popular medium for promotions, brand awareness, brand building, etc.

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Mahima Sood

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