Snapchat for Business: Everything You Need to Know
Snapchat for Business is a useful and user-friendly marketing tool that companies shouldn’t ignore, with close to 400 million monthly active users.
2011 saw the release of Snapchat, which enables users to share brief, seconds-long photographs or videos to other users. Once they are opened, the platform’s brief messages are no longer usable. Even though Snapchat is one of the most widely used mobile social media applications, since it is a mobile-only platform, its website doesn’t get as much traffic.
While Snapchat is an excellent tool, not every company should use it. Make sure your target audience is present before investing your time and resources on the platform. More than 70% of Snapchat users, according to Omnicore, are younger than 34. If you have an older audience, you may want to concentrate your marketing efforts on other websites like Facebook.
Consider your target demographic before using Snapchat; millennials are more likely to utilize it than other age groups. You must fully comprehend the app if you want to master Snapchat marketing.
What is Snapchat?
Snapchat is a social networking software that was introduced in 2011 that enables users to exchange brief, momentary images, videos, and conversations that vanish after a little period of time, usually only a few seconds. Additionally, Snapchat has interactive features like Snap Maps, which lets you see where your friends are, Stories, which remain on your profile for a day, Bitmoji avatars, and a Discovery tab for discovering fresh material.
How to set up Snapchat for business
To use Snapchat, you must first establish an account. The only way to register is through a mobile device.
Download the app first. The on-screen instructions will then ask you to enter your email address, choose a username, input your birthdate, and begin adding friends from your phone’s contacts list. The same procedures must be followed in order to create a Snapchat Business account. Next, create an account with Ads Manager here. To establish your business account, complete these steps:
- Enter your company name and choose the nation where you will do business.
- Make your first campaign so that your Ad Accounts are configured.
- For your first ad account, provide a payment method.
How to use Snapchat for business
The anatomy of a Snap
You should now access the initial screen after creating an account. The screen defaults to the back-facing camera configuration when you initially start the app.
You may access your profile, switch to “night mode,” turn on and off the flash, flip the camera around, and search for nearby pictures on this screen.
Press the bottom circular button to snap a picture. When taking a video, press and hold. When you snap a photograph, you may choose the duration of the image that will be emailed to a buddy (from one to 10 seconds). You may customize your Snap before sending it by applying emoji stickers, filters, links, or text.
You may also save the snapshot to your memory before sending the picture. When you’re ready to share the image or video, you may choose who sees it and if you want to include it in your Snap story, which is covered in more detail later in this book.
Customizing your profile
Snapchat is a unique social media platform since it doesn’t provide consumers a lot of customization options. It does, however, provide users a place to put a bitmoji and a username in addition to some personal information.
The ghost or bitmoji in the lower left corner of the default screen takes you to your profile. Your Snapchat score—the total number of Snaps you’ve sent and received—can be seen here.
According to TechCrunch, there is a yellow square on your profile that gets created into a QR code. A user may concentrate their Snapchat camera on another user’s code to add them without inputting their name, saving time over manually looking for them. Now, the software allows you to create a QR code that links to any web page on the internet.
Interacting with other Snapchat users
You may communicate with other Snapchat users in a variety of ways. With the exception of the tales feature, all conversations are completely private, unlike other social networks.
Adding users:
You’ll need to look up people’ usernames in order to add them to your friends list. You may also access the contacts list on your phone. You may also add users by scanning their unique QR code, as was already described.
Viewing stories:
You may see and comment on the Snap stories of other users. Both will be communicated to them.
Sending snaps:
Sending and receiving picture and video files from other users is a simpler procedure. The whole platform was developed and created via these exchanges. The sender of the Snap will be alerted if you screenshot one.
Instant messaging:
You may have private conversations with people using the instant messaging tool. Your response will be transmitted as an instant message when you respond to a user’s individual Snap that they sent you or a section of their Snap narrative. The sender of the instant message will be alerted if you take a screenshot of it.
Sending Snapcash:
According to Business Insider, you may examine your transaction history and set a security code to display before each purchase if you enable this function in your Settings and connect it with a credit or debit card. When sending money through an instant message, you may specify how much you wish to send. Sending money to users you don’t directly know is not advised, according to the firm.
Snapchat stories
Add a quick video or picture. No narrative is too lengthy, but you need at least one image or video to put one together. Any time may be used to erase portions of the narrative.
You can check which users and how many people have seen your article. It follows that other users will be able to see when you browse their tales. While you are free to examine a user’s narrative as many times as you want, the user will not be made aware of this fact.
A tale is a fantastic method to demonstrate your audience how your firm operates on a daily basis. It provides prospective clients with a glimpse into a typical day at your place of business. Additionally, it allows your staff members a chance to showcase their own characteristics.
Additionally, there are Live Stories, which, according to the business, “enable users who are at the same event or a particular place to contribute Snaps to the same community story.” To donate, location services should be enabled. For instance, prominent cities like New York City and Los Angeles have their own Live Stories that are constantly being updated. They may also centre on a particular occasion, like the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards.
On Snapchat, there are many different methods to promote. There are three major strategies, according to the company’s website: Snap advertising, sponsored geofilters, and sponsored lenses. Major companies have utilized Snapchat for marketing initiatives, including Vans, Coca-Cola, and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
How to advertise with Snapchat
Snap commercials are 10-second, full-screen, vertical videos that may include an interactive element, such as a request for the viewer to click on a certain website. The audio in two-thirds of all advertisements automatically plays with the sound on. The little video clip need to include information about your business, its offerings, and/or its services.
For instance, Gatorade previously promoted an 8-bit tennis game honouring Serena Williams’ 23rd Grand Slam triumph. Visit the business’s guide to snap ad attachments for more creative direction and development. There are many options.
Sponsored geofilters
Users may transmit Snaps from certain areas thanks to sponsored geofilters. The lenses may be used to cover a particular area, such as a coffee shop or a retail store. You may, for instance, adjust the geofilters to the locations of the various branches of your company. If you are acquainted with the site, you will note that large cities and their boroughs, such as Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City, have various filters.
Additionally, a geofilter may be used nationally in conjunction with a particular theme or occasion, such as National Sunglasses Day from Michael Kors and Cheerios.
Geofilters are often used by businesses to advertise events. Snapchat made it simpler for all users to create a unique geofilter in June 2017. There are several templates available by going to settings and choosing On-Demand Geofilters. It may be personalized with phrases and colours. This is an economical marketing choice for any small company, with prices beginning at $5.99.
Sponsored lenses
Geofilters are less interactive than sponsored lenses. Before sharing a video or photo to a friend or adding it to a Snapstory, filters are added after the media has been captured. Through the app, users may transform into dogs, Santa Claus impersonators, devils, wear flower crowns, and even vomit rainbows thanks to the lenses’ unique face recognition technology. Three processes are involved: the pretrigger of recognizing the user’s face, the trigger of responding to the user’s emotion (such as sticking out the tongue or playing music), and the post trigger of producing the finished item.
For instance, your sponsored lens may include a user driving a brand-new vehicle with a Little Trees air freshener if your business sells automobiles. According to the corporation, this product is the most well-liked of all of them, increasing purchase intent by two times and brand awareness by an average of three times compared to mobile norms.
Snapchat Discover
The platform debuted Discover in January 2016. It’s a whole distinct section of the programme. Users may access material produced by well-known media companies like Vice, Cosmopolitan, and ESPN via it.
With a Pinterest-like dashboard, Discover tales, like the Stories feature, assemble audio-video and picture material with connections to articles and graphics. According to TechCrunch, you can choose your favourites and email certain individuals selected portions of Discover articles.
According to TechCrunch, Snapchat opened its own retail location within Snapchat Discover in 2018. Users may purchase products like a dancing hot dog plush toy and a streak cap at the Snap Store. The shop now exclusively sells things from Snapchat, but in the future it may serve as an in-app commerce platform for other companies, which would be quite beneficial for small businesses.
Although businesses may include advertisements inside Discover articles, many small company owners cannot afford the price. According to Strike Social These advertisements start at $50,000 per day.
A note about influencers
If you are familiar with DJ Khaled and his success with Snapchat, you are aware of how the platform can reach users outside of the smartphone app. The Snapchat account of the music producer and radio host attracted interest in 2015. Since then, his followers have referred to his legacy as a “living meme” and a “meme in human form.”
A prime illustration of the power one influencer may have on Snapchat is DJ Khaled. If you decide to develop a collaboration with these influencers, you may be able to promote to their enormous audiences. For example, it’s a fantastic chance for product placement. For a charge, many influencers market businesses and goods (though it often exceeds its return on investment for companies). Of course, this is a substitute advertising method that isn’t carried out via Snapchat.
Snapchat implemented a function that allows users to tag other users in 2018. Influencers and famous people may utilize this to tag a business they are endorsing. In order to connect to a particular product when an influencer is promoting a company, users may also add links to their snaps.
Snapchat tips and tricks
Now that you understand the basics of Snapchat, here are a few tips and tricks to use the app to your brand’s advantage.
Document your company’s day-to-day operations.
Use the app’s narrative function to take users on a tour of your workplace’s activities. Give them a sneak preview that is only available to them on social media. You may organize Q&A sessions or present brand-new goods using your narrative.
Upload content regularly.
Keep your supporters aware of your existence. Use the app often to post information frequently and every day. This is where snap tales come in handy, particularly for capturing what it’s like to work for your company.
Interact with other users.
The messaging function of the app is widely used, so be sure to respond to any messages that you get. The same holds true for sending back photographs.
Sponsor a Snap Ad.
Although 10-second audio-visual snippets are more conventional, they provide you the creative latitude to use video material to drive an advertising, much as you would on Twitter, Instagram, or any comparable website.
Sponsor a lens.
Bring your brand to life by encouraging consumers to interact with it. Find a lens that reflects how the typical client would interact with the goods or services offered by your company. If you sell coffee, it may be as simple as providing the consumer with a filter so they can drink coffee. The most effective lenses on the whole platform, as was already indicated, are sponsored lenses.
Design a sponsored geofilter.
When using Snapchat at any McDonald’s throughout the nation and turning on location settings, a geofilter with a McDonald’s theme will show when you scroll through your selection of filters before sending a photo. The same applies to your company.
