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22 June 2017

Can You Still Ignore Snapchat?

Snapchat has often been touted around as being the next social media platform that marketers need to get to grips with. With Facebook now replicating Snapchat features on it’s own platforms (e.g. Instagram Stories), it only adds credence to the fact that Snapchat has got something.

Can You Still Ignore Snapchat

So who is on Snapchat?

The demographic of snapchat users is heavily weighted towards Millennials. To go into more detail, 60% of 13-34-year-old in the US with smartphones use Snapchat, with 37% of that user base being within the 8-24-year-old cohort with a total user base split of 70% women to 30% men. Despite their young audience, their new user acquisition age is over 25.

What features are available on the platform?

  • Stories

Stories are made up of either images or videos or both. They are typically distributed among your followers or everyone if your privacy settings allow. This makes them ideal for large scale distribution of your content.

  • Images and Videos

Images and videos can be edited and shared on the platform directly from your phone. Keep in mind that images are viewed in portrait so best to take them this way for best experience. Also, be sure to keep your videos to max 10 seconds.

  • Snaps

One of the staples of the features available on Snapchat is the Snap. Sent privately and only to selected users, these images or videos can be viewed only for a specific time, after which they disappear.

Marketing Strategies on Snapchat

Influencers

A popular strategy for many marketers is to leverage the large audiences built up by certain users. These users are called “Influencers” and have real potential to market your product or service to their audience affectively. Key to this strategy being affective is to find an influencer that has acquired and audience that matches your target audience. One you have found the perfect partner, you can reach out and try to form a working relationship that will benefit both parties.

Promotions

Like all platforms, promotions work well on Snapchat too. Offering coupon codes is a very effective way of doing this. Users can send snaps using your product or service and in return receive a coupon that can be redeemed instore or online. Mixing promotions with an urgency requirement whereby the offer will expire at a certain time can really drive sales. An additional advantage to this way of marketing is that the codes can be tracked and the campaign can be reviewed for it’s effectiveness.

Conclusion

If your target audience is Millennials then you should be taking advantage of this relatively unsaturated market. If you are unable to afford beautiful photography or crafted videos then Snapchat is an ideal platform. It lends itself far better to unpolished, authentic imagery. With clever use of promotions, urgency and influencer appeal this platform can a great channel for distributing content and driving sales.