There’s no denying the important role social media plays in the lives of today’s consumers. With nearly 70% of the United States population active on at least one social media platform, it’s more important than ever for businesses to use social networking to their advantage. Specifically, the Snapchat app is one social media platform that can be extremely effective when it comes to digital marketing. At the same time, it remains one of the most commonly overlooked outlets by businesses because of how difficult it is to measure success.
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Reasons to Use Snapchat for Business
If your business isn’t already on Snapchat, there are a few compelling reasons to consider creating an account and developing a marketing strategy today! Look into a Snapchat for business account.
Reach a Millennial Audience
First of all, consider the fact that many younger consumers are now using Snapchat instead of more “traditional” social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, if you have a product or service that you’re trying to sell to a younger audience (such as those in the Millennial generation), Snapchat is going to be one of the best ways to reach them in large numbers.
Connect With Influencers
If you’re looking to incorporate influencer marketing into your social media strategy, Snapchat is also one of the easiest platforms on which to connect with these influencers. This is a great way to potentially generate more brand awareness in a short period of time. You can look into gaining Snapchat followers by having influencers encourage their followers to follow your account.
Build Customer Loyalty and Brand Recognition
Finally, because Snapchat is one of just a few platforms that allows you to deliver new messages (known as “snaps”) directly into your followers’ inboxes, this is by far one of the best ways to reach an audience directly and boost both brand recognition and loyalty. With other social media platforms, unfortunately, you can’t always be sure that people are seeing your message unless they respond to it directly. Snapchat allows for easy one-on-one dialogue that today’s consumers truly value.
How to Leverage Snapchat for Marketing
If you’re new to Snapchat, it may seem a little intimidating. A social media network focused primarily on images and videos? Fortunately, there are some wonderfully simple and effective strategies for leveraging Snapchat to your company’s benefit.
Add a Link Directly to Your Webpage with a Visual CTA
Snapchat now allows anyone to add links directly to their Snapchat Stories which drives all the traffic from your story to your website. A story appears for 24 hours to everyone who follows you on Snapchat. This makes marketing a product or service much easier and personal. Simply add a photo or video mentioning the link and a CTA, the consumer swipes up and is redirected to your webpage.
Hold a Contest or Giveaway
Snapchat is a great platform for holding contests and giveaways! These contests can serve a dual purpose of helping you gain more followers as well. Consider, for example, holding a giveaway for a certain in-demand product or service. In order to enter, ask users to post with a certain hash tag or to invite other friends to add your business account on Snapchat. From there, you can choose one lucky winner for the giveaway and enjoy the new followers and brand recognition that comes along with it!
Go Behind-the-Scenes
Another great way to use Snapchat for your business is to provide your followers with behind-the-scenes footage and sneak peeks of new products. Snapchat‘s video and photo features make this simple to do, and this will also give your followers an incentive to keep following you or even invite others to follow your account. Today’s consumers enjoy feeling like they’re a member of an exclusive club or gaining access to information that the general public doesn’t have, so this is a perfect way to accomplish that.
In between contests and behind-the-scenes content, you can always use your business Snapchat account to promote special sales, provide information on your company’s goods/services, and simply connect with your audience in a way that is is meaningful.
Measuring Success
A huge factor to consider when testing Snapchat for your business is how you can measure success. You don’t want to keep putting your efforts into a marketing strategy that just does not work for your business. You need to consider the demographics on Snapchat along with the demographics of your business. Do they line up? If so, you should give Snapchat a try and use your story views to measure success in the beginning. Simply calculate completion rate by dividing total views in your last snap by total views of your first snap. You will want to wait until your first story is about to expire to be most accurate. If you don’t understand the Snapchat lingo, the easiest way to understand is to download the Snapchat app and explore it for yourself.
If your business isn’t already on Snapchat, now is the time to get started. By doing so, you can:
- reach a broader audience
- boost brand awareness
- improve customer loyalty
- connect with industry influencers
For more guidance with your social media strategy, contact our team at Ballantine!
I'm the Director of Digital Services and Partner at Ballantine, a family-owned and operated direct mail & digital marketing company based in New Jersey. and started in 1966 by my great uncle!
