What’s it all about? Snapchat is a social app that allows you and your friends to send photos and short videos to each other. The kicker is you have to keep your finger on the screen to view and the photos or videos disappear between 1 and 10 seconds after the message is opened.
So Snapchat is all about urgency!
Who uses it?
Teenagers, duh. Well, not just teenagers, but like all social and mobile apps, the audience is a younger and more responsive one. They can’t get enough of Snapchat and although it hasn’t been around for long, on Snapchat there’s already about 50 million shares a day.
Why should my brand use it?
Twitter and Facebook, and more recently Instagram, have become where brands of all sizes now do most of their marketing.
Even more so than Instagram, Snapchat gives you a direct line to a younger audience.
How?
You can set up automatic replies when someone sends you a message on Snapchat, so you don’t have to comb through all their responses to run your promotion, but you can still make an instant connection when someone wants to interact with your brand.
Let’s look at some of the top ways to use Snapchat for marketing:
1. Sneak preview your new content
This could be a glimpse of a new track or from a new music video, or as we’ve seen food retailers like Taco Bell do it, a quick look at the new arrivals on the menu.
2. Competitions/Contests
Snapchat can be used to deliver clues, questions, or puzzles your customers need to solve. You can promote your competition on Facebook and Twitter, or even ask them to submit their answers using these platforms, so that their friends will get in on the act.
3. Coupons for limited time offers
Ice cream retailer 16 Handles sent random discounts to different customers – the customers had to get to a store to take advantage of the offer (remember the messages disappear after 10 seconds); a great way to boost footfall to venues.
4. Gamification
An increasing trend is to mix online and real-world content for competitions; for example, you might run a treasure hunt where customers have to track down the hidden VIP tickets.
5. At your event
Suggest to your customers that they take snaps or video at your event and share it with you and their friends, so everyone can see what a good time they are having. You can encourage this by… you guessed it, running a competition!
That’s all, for now.
The great thing about Snapchat is you get immediate, exciting engagement with a young and responsive audience, the downside is it’s hard to track results and R.O.I. as you don’t gain likes or followers in the same way you do on other platforms.
We’re going to talk to some people about how they’ve using Snapchat for marketing on the move. See you soon, and don’t forget to like, comment et cetera!
This blog post was written by Natalie Grout evvnt Communications Manager.
January 20th, 2016