Published on November 16th, 2015 | by Guest

4 Tips to Making the Most of Snapchat for Marketing

Snapchat for marketing? Yup, we’re serious. Believe it or not, but some of the most popular social media tools work just as good as any advertisement, campaign, or any another marketing strategy you can come up with. The reason why is quite simple: You are where you customers are at. And when it comes to Snapchat, the network isn’t dominated by just teen customers anymore. According to Business Insider, over 55% of the population that uses Snapchat comprises of users aged 25 or above.

It should be noted that using this application for marketing is not a simple task. The time limit introduces a challenge for marketers to ensure that a promotional photo or video has been seen. But some of the best brands have managed to use this feature to their advantage and make the most of it. Here’s how you can do that too.

Be with the users: Every social media network has a unique audience. While Instagrammers may be comprised of photography enthusiasts, Pinterest might be the go-to app for women searching for DIY, tutorials, and beauty tips. Similarly, Snapchat promotes casual communication, spontaneity, and personal behavior. To hang around with the “Snapchat crowd” and get their attention, you’re going to have to be just the users: casual, spontaneous, and personal.

Be quick: Snapchat is all about being quick and making it memorable! This very feature of the application is what makes is so much fun—and quite unique. Instead of viewing the self-destruct feature as a challenge, the best of brands use it to their advantage and view it as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. For example, you could use Snapchat to offer perks, promotions, or attend contest that have a time limit. A great example of this is the way H&M, a fashion retailer, hid tickets to a party in stores for fans to find. Snapchat users were given hints on the location of the tickets with pictures, cryptic messages, and pencil-drawn arrows. They gained 943 followers through the marketing stunt!

Connect on a personal level: Always aim to add a personal touch to your promotions on Snapchat. Keep in mind that this network is not used for “professional” reasons. So, content that should going on your LinkedIn account is unfitting on Snapchat. Tell your business’s story, take your customers “behind-the-scenes”, or show them products that are still yet to released. There are plenty of ways you can “humanize” your brand andlet a little bit of personality show.

Keep measuring: Lastly, making the most of social network means knowing the results. The examples of ”best brands” mentioned above not only designed wonderful campaigns, but also measured the results to know how well they worked. Try out a service such as Snaplytics or the method introduced by Andrew Macarthy on his blog. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many analytical tools for Snapchat to choose from. However, the ones listed above should help!

Lastly, try to make the most of this robust social network by embracing its features. What I’ve noticed in every smart Snapchat successful campaign is that a certain unique feature (specific to Snapchat) was used to promote an event, product, or campaign (i.e. time limit, special text, emojis, doodles, fun filters, stories, etc).

That being said, it’s not enough to simply create a Snapchat account and post the same pictures or carry out the same activity you would or Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media account. To be truly Snapchat-worthy you need create content that uses the tricky features of the network and brings them into play to attract and engage the Snapchat audience.

Author Bio:

Rachelle Scott is a writer, blogger, social media marketing and trend analyst at Dissertation Corp. Monitoring trends and extracting what works best for the industry and what doesn’t is what ticks her interest. When not working, she loves reading and watching Soaps.

Tags: branding, business, engagement, making, marketing, media, most, Snapchat, social media, tips