How to market your brand through Snapchat? [A Marketing Guide]

By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on December 23rd, 2021 7:26 am | 4-min read

Snapchat has emerged as a dominant social media platform with over 200 million active users, most of whom are younger than 24 years.

If you are trying to excel at digital marketing, you can’t afford to ignore Snapchat.

It has the highest reach among adolescents, teens, and young adults, in comparison to other similar social media channels. It is, of course, smaller in user-base than its rival Instagram but still not something to be sneezed at.

Introduction to Snapchat

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

Snapchat is an app that allows sending images and videos to your contacts. These shares are known as Snaps; they can be a maximum of 10 seconds long, and disappear once they’ve been seen by all your friends. Also, if you add your Snaps to a Story, then they remain visible for 24 hours, after which they disappear.  Snaps shared to your feed make up what is known as a ‘Story’, which can be viewed by those on your Friend list.

Using a simple drawing tool, users can scribble a message on top of the Snap. It is possible to add numerous special effects to any image using exciting filter effects.

You can also use the app for voice and video calls.

All these features make Snapchat a social media platform that allows young people to share whatever they are doing with their friends in real-time. The shares made using Snapchat are temporary, and this ephemeral nature adds to the appeal of the platform.

Why is Snapchat So Effective for Marketing?

Why promote your brand on another social media platform after Facebook, Instagram, YouTube? – a valid question.

That is because Snapchat has some unique characteristics which make it invaluable as a part of your digital marketing strategy.

• There are at least 190 million daily users.
• According to a study done by Pew Research Centre, at least 78% of young adults in the US aged 18-24 use Snapchat. For the age group of 25-29, this drops to a little over 50%, but even that is a considerable number of users.
• Among teen users, Snapchat has an edge over
• Every minute, 2 million Snaps are sent.
• It is the second most popular social media platform among mobile users.
• Snapchat users are heavily engaged, spending hours daily on the platform.

Besides, other superb advantages what make Snapchat a highly lucrative avenue for digital marketers.

1. Relatively Unknown

   While most businesses are focused on Facebook and Instagram, not many have turned their attention to Snapchat in the mistaken belief that it does not have sufficient users to justify spending marketing dollars. However, as the stats above prove, Snapchat enjoys massive popularity among the younger generation of post-Millenials who make up a quarter of the population in some countries.

2. It is different

   Snapchat Stories disappear after a day. This means that you have to share brand new content suitable for such a short duration. Of course, because you cannot create a new video daily, the most popular form of content here is, an image with a witty caption. And of course, you can later share the content on Instagram. An Instagram Story is a feature taken from Snapchat, and now Facebook has jumped on the 24-hour content expiry bandwagon too. What’s more, WhatsApp status updates do the same!

3. Reach a younger generation of consumers

   (Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

   Facebook and YouTube are great platforms for brands to reach out to users from the 30+ age group. But as the statistics show, Snapchat enjoys greater engagement among young consumers, who form a highly profitable market segment for most brands. Hence, if you want to capture this demographic, adopt Snapchat as one of your primary digital advertising channels.

How to Start Marketing on Snapchat?

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)
First of all, you need to open a business account. After you set up a profile, plan a marketing campaign. It is important that you understand how you can tailor your current digital marketing strategy to fit Snapchat? Read on to find more.

1. Research the audience

   As a marketing buzzword, ‘customer segmentation’ is thrown around quite often. The success mantra, however, is micro segmentation. Brands that can define their micro segments for highly targeted Snapchat content marketing campaigns are sure to enjoy higher ROIs.

   Today’s youngsters have very short attention spans. It does not take much time for them to switch from your business profile to a Snap sent by a friend.

   Hence, your Snapchat content has to be simple and should create an impression immediately. Avoid complicated and lengthy explainer videos lasting several minutes, they are not suited for your audience on Snapchat.

   (Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

   Your promotion has to be catchy and share-worthy.

2. Understand the platform

   It is hard to create a Story when you know your content will disappear in 24 hours. This could be good or bad. The disadvantage is that your content has to be truly memorable to make an impact. The good part is that the 24-hour clock allows you to experiment with content as well as adventurous promos and offers.

   Another advantage – if a particular image or caption wasn’t so great, its impact will be limited because the content will disappear after 24 hours. If the Story is not saved, your mistake isn’t preserved either.

3. Market in bursts

   For most brands, it is enough to post on Facebook once a week. On Instagram, the post frequency rises to twice a week. The massive frequency of Snapchat engagement means that you’ll need to plan well ahead to always have ideas and finished content ready to be posted.

   There is no consensus about how many times to use Snapchat every week. In a way, it would be great to produce a set of ten images and captions and release them each at midnight for ten consecutive days.

   After you use your visual content on Snapchat, you could repurpose it and use on Instagram and Facebook.

   On the other hand, you could broadcast a single Snap every 2-3 days. This allows you to reach followers who might be busy and have not been able to check their Snapchat for a few days.

   Try out both and find which one suits your marketing campaign best.

4. Use edited YouTube content

   If you have plenty of stock footage from YouTube, you can repurpose it for Snapchat. Our recommendation – create Stories that last no more than 20 seconds to a minute.

   Snapchat filters or lenses let you use effects that make any video or image funny and elevate its viral-potential.

5. Use paid ads

   Snapchat allows you to host paid ads on the platform. They can be only 15 seconds long and no more than 1 GB in size.

   Take care to create ads that have a 16:9 aspect ratio to make full use of a smart device screen.  Snapchat allows you to target a demographic in as granular a manner as possible. You can choose the location, gender, age, and interests to reach out to a highly targeted audience.

   Advertising on Snapchat is quite affordable, and costs lesser than Instagram.

Conclusion

Every marketer wishes for guaranteed returns on effort and investments, but that is just not possible in an era when technology is expanding so fast.

Take advantage of the young users of Snapchat and create advertisements and content that would help drive your revenues.

Be consistent in your approach, and do not ignore all the fan messages you get from followers, respond to all of them with a polite thanks, and make them feel valued.

If you want to learn more about Snapchat marketing, Appy Pie offers an excellent course that teaches you the nitty-gritty of the topic and will make you an expert in no time at all.