How to Use Snapchat for Business

Snapchat offers several paid marketing options to meet the specific goals of your business. You can create a Smart Snap Ad, build a Sponsored Geofilter, or give your potential clients an opportunity to interact with your Sponsored Lens. Do these terms make you want to rip out your hair? Don’t worry; we explain everything below. Here’s the scoop of Snapchat marketing options to meet each of your business goals.

Build brand awareness

Snap Ads are a unique way to catch the attention of your perfect audience. A Snap Ad is a 10-second, full-screen vertical video that appears in between Stories. Advertisers can offer users the choice to swipe up to view more in-depth content like a long form article, video, app install ad, or mobile website. According to Snapchat, the average swipe-up rate for Snap Ads is 5 times higher than the average click-through rate on similar social media platforms.

Case Study

Popular app Spotify purchased Snapchat Ads to promote their annual year as an app in the music industry, created a campaign where its app users can review all the songs which they listened to on Spotify over that year. Spotify’s Ads popped up on Snapchat’s Discover channel, highlighting a distinct music genre every day. As a result, Spotify earned over 26 million total views and a 30 percent increase in subscriber intent. That is no small potatoes.

Promote engagement with Geofilters

Snapchat has two types of Geofilters that businesses can take advantage of: On-Demand Geofilters, which start at as low as $5, and the much pricier option of Sponsored Geofilters, which can cost thousands of dollars. Geofilters have shown to be a highly efficient method of bringing in new business. They are small graphics that show up over a Snap. When users in the location of your preferred choice take a Snap, they will be able to pick your Geofilter and use it to explain when, where, and why they took the Snap. Example, if your business is having a Hyderabad special event, users can take Snaps of themselves at your event and add your fun filter to let their followers know where they are and who’s the event they are enjoying. In this case, a relatively cheap On-Demand Geofilter will suffice. If your campaign is less location-specific, say you sell books and decide to start a National Book Appreciation Day, then Snapchat users around the country can take Snaps of themselves appreciating their favorite book and add your filter to it. This is a highly useful strategy. According to Snapchat, just a single National Sponsored Geofilter typically reaches 40 to 60% of daily Snapchatters which is why they can cost thousands of dollars.

Geofilter Case Study

When NGO RED wanted to spread the word about World AIDS Day, they teamed up with Snapchat to create three Geofilters people could use to confer their support. Each time a Snapchatter sent one of the Geofilters, Foundation Bill & Melinda Gates granted $3 to RED fight against AIDS campaign, up to $3 million. The campaign reached over 14 million users, 97% of whom were between the ages of 13 and 34. Over two-thirds of users who saw the Geofilter remembered RED’s message and those who saw the filter were 90% more likely to donate to the RED’s campaign.

Drive increase in purchase intent

Sponsored Lenses offer users the chance to play with the interactive ad you have created. As Snapchat explains on their website, To activate Lenses, users need press and hold on their faces. Few Lenses include prompts like raise your eyebrows or open your mouth to trigger an animation, adding a fun twist to the experience. Moreover, when you are completed playing, it’s easy to send this Lenses to a follower or post one to your Storyboard. On an average, Snapchatters play with a Sponsored Lens for least 20 seconds. If you sell pugs and have always wondered what your face would look like in pug form, Sponsored Lenses is a chance to find it out.

The bottom line

Snapchat now offers the possibility to work with one of their Creative Partners to create a campaign for your business. The extra investment might be worth it to design something more efficient than what you can dream up in-house. Snapchat video ads have so far been priced on a CPM base in the range of $40 to $60, per week. Marketers can expect both videos and Snap Ads Between Stories to be less pricey, though specific events like national holidays will likely increase the price due to the supply-and-demand forces based on the auction-based system.

Snapchat and its API partners have not said what the new ads platform is meant for the app’s branded Lenses and Geofilters. For now, their primary focus is on video ads, but it is easy to predict Geofilters and sponsored Lenses being added to the Snapchat Partners mix. There is an enormous amount of money to be made by Snapchat. Adweek has reported that Snapchat lenses cost $400,000 and can total $700,000 for high-ticket days like events and holidays. Big brands with huge budgets to spend find it to be a worthy investment.

Join our Full Time Digital Marketing Course with Placement Assurance.