Article by Katina Beveridge, Digital Advisor, Western Sydney Business Centre
How to Use Snapchat For Your Business
Snapchat has evolved from being a platform used solely for sharing pictures to become a marketing tool for businesses. The influence of Snapchat can no longer be ignored, especially if your target audience is the Generation Z (mid-1990s to the early 2000s). 71% of Gen Z people are on Snapchat, and 51% of these people use the platform at least 11 times a day. Although Snapchat is known to appeal more to teens and younger generation, it has slowly expanded its influence over the years to attract young adults and through Generation X.
In 2018, Snapchat has more than 191 million active users every day and the number of users keep growing every day. This is great news for your business because this means another viable marketing platform to communicate with your customers. If you’ve never used Snapchat before, here’s a cheat sheet of how you can use this social media platform to promote your business.
Post a Story Every Day
The first thing you need to remember when maintaining a Snapchat account is that it should stay active. You can do that by posting content regularly, as much as 3x a day to keep your brand fresh in the minds of your followers. Take note that all Snapchat posts will only be around for 24 hours, so make sure to maximise your exposure.
Create a Sponsored Lens.
Sponsored filters and lenses are a way to make your posts more creative, more eye-catching, and more engaging. Instead of posting a bare picture, you can play around with it, add filters, enlarge the eyes or make some parts of the face disappear. This will make your posts entertaining and fun. Gatorade used this strategy during the Super Bowl 50 and their sponsored filter had more than165 million views. On average, sponsored filters are viewed by 16 million users per day. The only downside is the cost. Creating a filter during a special event costs around $100,000 and $750,000. But if you can afford it and you use it right, the ROI can be huge. On a smaller scale you can create a lens for an event you are hosting.
Allow Social Influencers to Take Over your Snapchat account.
Social influencers and celebrities have large followings on social media so allowing them to take over your account will expose your brand or business to a much bigger audience. However, you may need to pay the influencer unless you have some mutual agreement.
Post User-Generated Content.
Followers love it when their posts get featured by their favourite brands. You can repost pictures, videos and reviews from your followers on your Snapchat story. You can even run contests or pills to encourage user-generated content.
Offer discounts and other promos.
Followers always love discounts and promo codes because they’re something they can use. This will help drive sales and increase conversions for your business. This is also a great strategy if you’re promoting a new product or holding an event.
Snapchat is a growing social media platform, so it is best to take advantage of it now. Once you’ve created an account, keep your followers engaged with a creative Snapchat marketing strategy. If you don’t know where to start, you can use the guide above to help you out.
