5 Reasons Why You Need to Use Snapchat for Your Next Marketing Campaign

Your social-media marketing campaigns help you engage directly with your audience and build viral traffic for your business. Does your approach focus on sticking with older social networks such as Facebook and Twitter rather than branching out into additional channels? If so, ask yourself why. Don’t make it more difficult for yourself to leverage breakout websites. Take Snapchat, for example. Its core functionality revolves around time-limited photos or videos called “snaps,” which are private or semi-public. You might not think all that much about the platform at first, but five compelling reasons will earn it a spot in your next advertising campaign.

Fastest-Growing Social Network

Snapchat launched in 2012 and quickly gained ground among the 18 to 34-year-old demographic. Every day, 150 million members use Snapchat. Out of these, 41 percent of them fall in the millennial demographic. The app gets 10 billion video views and continues to expand its reach. Snapchat isn’t a fad; it’s the fastest-growing social network today.

Fun and Interactive

Users enjoy the playful and responsive features in Snapchat. Since content only lasts from one second to 24 hours, your audience has an actively engaged mindset on this platform. The natural urgency, as well as an environment encouraging real-time contributions, makes it perfect for live events and behind-the-scenes marketing. For example, when you go to a trade show, you can share a quick video featuring your custom tent going up in the exhibit hall. Your audience builds an emotional connection with your company when they can put a face on the business and get a sense of your personality. You can also push for interaction by creating humorous content designed for user engagement. Taco Bell produced a successful interactive Snapchat campaign featuring Valentine’s Day cards filled with puns that its followers could customize and send out.

Partnership Opportunities

Celebrities and big companies position themselves as influencers on Snapchat. They have millions of followers looking forward to their snaps, which creates a natural partnership opportunity if your products or services fit their style. A collaboration between your company and an influencer can take many forms from multi-part videos to pictures with funny captions. Some influencers work with you directly while others go through an advertising platform designed to streamline the entire process. Grubhub reached out to Michael Platco, a popular artist on Snapchat, to assist with the company’s Superbowl marketing. This collaboration produced snaps featuring fun facts about chicken wing consumption during the big game.

Spark Curiosity

Millennials hate missing out on events so much that they’ve coined a term for it: fear of missing out, typically shortened to “FOMO.” Approximately 70 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds suffer from this feeling. Use Snapchat to spark this demographic’s curiosity in your company by showing sneak peeks of your upcoming products, which look all the more attractive while on display under your custom tent. Offer an exclusive coupon for your followers and build buzz for your latest items. NARS, a cosmetics company, previews some of its highly anticipating makeup lines exclusively for the company’s Snapchat followers. The viewers can’t screenshot and rehost this content, which allows NARS to increase the hype.

Quick Sharing

Snapchat lets you get your message out quickly. Promotions related to current events get to your audience at the right time rather than hours later. You capture content designed for instant sharing, which adds to the authenticity of your campaign. The snaps don’t need an expensive production studio, just your smartphone at the right place. React in the moment to unexpected events, such as creating a customized promotion based on an underdog winner at an award show. At the MTV Video Music Awards, the company encouraged Snapchat followers to create a Snapchat Live Story about the show. These snaps featured back stage encounters, candid moments around the show floor and many other experiences not seen on TV.

Your company shouldn’t stretch its marketing campaigns too thin by chasing after every social-media channel available. However, Snapchat’s unique features, millennial audience and increasing user base make the platform a valuable part of your strategy. Spend some time mastering its ephemeral framework and get the brand awareness that your business needs to win a long-lasting customer base.

 



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