How to Use Snapchat for Business: A Complete Guide

Snapchat may have started as a way for teenagers to share silly filter pictures with their friends, but since then, it’s become one of the most effective engagement tools online. With over 300 million active users a day, it offers a wide variety of marketing and e-commerce opportunities for people under the age of 35.

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Snapchat isn’t oblivious to its massive user base. These past few years, they’ve added features designed to help businesses engage with customers. This article will discuss the strategies you can use to maximize your potential online and why you should use Snapchat for business and fun.

You may read this: Top 10 Snapchat Features You Didn’t Know About

Benefits of Snapchat for Business

Youth

Facebook and Instagram are no longer the teen havens they used to be, but Snapchat has retained its popularity amongst millennials and Gen-Z users. Research shows that the spending power for teens and users under the age of 25 has increased dramatically, making them an extremely important demographic for your business. Not only do they spend more money, but they also spend more time online which can disproportionately boost your engagement and visibility.

Authenticity

The nature of ‘snaps’, short clips you can usually only view once, encourages users to be more authentic and natural in their correspondence – that’s why influencers do so well on the platform. Businesses can break through the corporate wall and joke around with their consumers. This ability to create genuine connections with their audience, and foster a sense of community, makes Snapchat an extremely useful tool for businesses.

Brand Awareness

Consumers see hundreds of ads as they scroll every day, and forget 99% of them. If you want the consumer to remember your brand, you must use all the interactive elements available on Snapchat for business. First and foremost, the platform nature helps consumers build a visual association with your brand. You can improve this association with polls, quizzes, influencer marketing, and the amazing storytelling opportunities you get with Snapchats’ AR lenses (you can even create your own!).

Analytics

Like all serious marketing platforms, Snapchat keeps a detailed record of user activity and gives businesses access to that data. Statistics like age, gender, demographic, location, and more can help you understand your audience better. However, you need to have a business profile to access those benefits.

Snapchat for Business Profiles

If you want to run ads on Snapchat, you need to create a ‘Business for Snapchat’ profile. It’s extremely easy to set up, just like the Ads Manager account, and you’re ready to begin marketing in less than 10 minutes. Newcomers usually just create an instant ad and throw it up, which is fine, but you have many options.

Collection Ads may be the most genius thing Snapchat has done for businesses. They’re a collection of up to four pictures showcasing your products. If a consumer sees something they like, all they need to do is tap on the item and be transported, within Snapchat, to your sellers’ page. This is an unprecedented leap forward in top-funnel marketing that all other platforms try to emulate.

Story Ads only appear on a user’s Discovery page, but you can add up to 20 slides to tell your brand’s story. If users want more details, you can add attachments that they can access by simply swiping up. If you create an effective daily posting strategy, you can ensure fans visit your page daily.

Commercials are unskippable ads for the first 6 seconds, so they’re a surefire way to get more impressions and drive engagement. However, adding unskippable ads too often can annoy users and hurt the brand’s reputation.

Key Performance Metrics in Snapchat for Business Success.

Optimizing your Ad strategy, content, and marketing approach depends entirely on analytics. Previously you could only see records of views and screenshots, but that’s changed dramatically over the years. The most effective metrics you should analyze on Snapchat for business success are:

Unique Views: How many people opened your story for at least one second or one frame? You can use this experiment with eye-catching thumbnails or the most popular topics.

View Time: This is how long users watch your story. It greatly indicates how interesting users find your content and can also tell when you need to improve production quality.

Fallout Rate: Calculate when people stopped watching your story (if it’s multiple snaps) by dividing the difference in views from the first snap by 100. This information is great for setting time limits for your content.

Screenshots: On Snapchat, this is the equivalent of liking and sharing an ad in the same click. It lets you know what users find memorable enough to save and share with friends.

Boosting Engagement on Snapchat

Influencer Marketing

Snapchat users feel a much more intimate connection with their favourite influencers compared to other social media platforms, which creates an amazing opportunity for increasing brand visibility. Features like collection ads create unique, user-friendly e-commerce opportunities. If people see their favorite influencer wearing a piece of clothing, they can simply tap the item and be taken directly to the marketplace.

Branding

Consumers want a personal connection with the brands they support, and your best chance of creating that connection is by using Snapchat for business visibility. You can create personalized geotags – filters that appear for a limited time and in specific places – to encourage user-generated content. You can also create personalized AR filters and project a friendly and interactive image to your customer base.

Targeted Advertisement

You can spend thousands on Snapchat for business ads and see a weak ROI if the ads aren’t reaching the right consumer. Snapchat lets you segment the population by various factors beyond age, location, or gender.

Snapchat lets you find a ‘lookalike’ audience for your ads based on information on pre-existing customers. You can find people with interests similar to those of other users who visit your profile or people with a search history similar to your customers. These people are likelier to interact with your brand, resulting in a higher ROI.

You’re missing out if you haven’t started using Snapchat for business operations! Capture a younger, more engaging, and more fun audience from the nearly 400 million people who use Snapchat daily.