
When it comes to social media marketing, most brands generally go for Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for product promotion and lead generation. Since these networks provide classic digital marketing features, they help them increase their reach more easily.
Snapchat works slightly differently than other social networks. It shows only short-lived content and mainly focuses on capturing current moments.
The expiry period might have made it challenging for advertising previously, but over the years, Snapchat has significantly evolved, introducing cutting-edge features to boost engagement.
These features, which were previously found as an inconvenience, are now turning out to be great marketing tools. Today, you can advertise your products on Snapchat in four different ways, leverage tons of filters to attract more traffic, and choose from over a dozen goals to convert leads.
Here, I have put together the 12 best Snapchat marketing strategies to help you understand how you can use its feature to grow your business.
1. Leverage Snap Ads to Create Brand Awareness
Snapchat offers you both image and video paid advertising options to attract a large volume of traffic to your profile—or site.
These ads provide full coverage, lots of visual, and unskippable feature, which indivertibly increase view time and makes your ad highly memorable. That is the reason an average sponsored post on Snapchat receives two times more attention and five times higher click-through rate.
Since these ads usually appear on your news feed, they give maximum exposure, making them excellent for brand awareness and lead generation campaigns.
View Real-Time Example →
Cosmetic brand E.L.F aimed to gain more market share and was looking for options that offer high product visibility. It found Snapchat the best for its objective and launched a 60-second video that was designed to grab instant attention.
The ad featuring bold colors and loud music drove traffic to the E.L.F site and boosted its visitation rate by 20%.
2. Use Goal-Based Bidding to Convert Leads
Snapchat’s campaign manager has a feature called goal-based bidding that allows you to drive specific responses from your audience. You can set goals to get more clicks, increase signups, direct traffic to your site, or encourage impulse shopping.
It offers you sixteen different objectives to choose from for your campaign to help you generate the maximum results from each ad.
This feature not provides you with measurable data to calculate your success rate, but gives you a clear idea of what exactly you want to achieve from your marketing efforts.
View Real-Time Example →
Wish is a third-party eCommerce site that hosts discounted products from various brands.
The company wanted to grow its app installations at a low-cost and picked Snapchat Dynamic ad to achieve the desired results.
By combining Snap story and product catalog ad, Wish saw an increase in new users and a 57% decrease in cost per installation.
3. Design Campaigns Around Your Target Market
Snapchat typically attracts the younger generation between the age of 13 to 34. It makes it an ideal platform for those whose target market comprises Generation Z and millennials.
But Snapchat also provides you tools to fine-tune your marketing strategy.
You can make your ads even more targeted with its buyer persona and Snap Pixel. The first is an advanced targeting feature that lets you create your ad based on your audience behavior, while the second tracks and measures your ad’s performance.
They will help you know your audience better and design optimized campaigns.
Take advantage of both functions to launch super-targeted campaigns and get data-driven insights The more you’re familiar with your potential customers, the better you can persuade them to buy your products.
View Real-Time Example →
Pit Viper is a sunglasses brand that aimed to capture the Gen Z market on Snapchat and chose sponsored advertising to get started.
It used a combination of its unique style and Snap Pixel to create a targeted campaign and generated a massive response that earned Pit Viper 30x more ROAS.
4. Advertise your Business with Snap Codes
Snap Code is a scannable QR code that allows you to promote your brand profile and campaigns outside the platform. It acts as a URL that directs your audience to your specified destination from anywhere you want.
You can use it to cross-promote your brand, put it on blog posts, add it to the packaging, and paste it on magazines to give instant access to your website.
If you dig deep, you’ll find tons of ways to capitalize on this feature to advertise your product and services.
View Real-Time Example →
American fast-food restaurant Wendy’s found a creative use of snap codes to boost its brand image and earn more orders at the same time.
It launched a social campaign, adding snap codes on the beverage cups and urging people to use them to show their support for the foster care program.
Through this campaign, Wendy’s sent $5 on every purchase to Dave Thomas Foundation and gained brand visibility.
5. Generate A Buzz Using Contests
If you ever wanted to create viral content, contests almost always generate the desired results. They offer irresistible incentives to your target market that incite them to take action.
With contests, you can create a high volume of traffic in a short time and increase your engagement rate.
A great way to arrange a contest on Snapchat is to ask participants to send screenshots or videos specified under the challenge against a reward. Since the social network is essentially popular for its visual interface, it makes sense to leverage those features for maximum results.
The below case study gives you insight into the effective use of visual contests on Snapchat.
View Real-Time Example →
Amusement Park Cedar Point organized an event during the Halloween season and wanted to increase the foot traffic.
To generate a buzz about its event, Cedar Point launched a “Catch-a-Ghost” campaign, where it created a story featuring a fleeting ghost and asked fans to take a screenshot as evidence.
The challenge not only increased the video views but boosted its engagement by 233%.
6. Promote Events with Geo Filter
Snapchat Geofilters are overlays that let you add the area you’re currently visiting over your image or video. Since they appear when someone is around the specified location, they offer you an affordable and efficient way to increase brand awareness or promote local events.
You can use it to spread the word about your store launch, promote events your brand is sponsoring, or highlight your product.
Since 50% of people generally learn about the latest happenings on Snapchat, the Geo filter brings tons of opportunities to create location-specified campaigns and gain brand exposure.
View Real-Time Example →
Gary Vaynerchuk, chairman of media company VaynerX, took full advantage of Geo filters when it was initially launched and generated massive publicity.
In one of the tours, he did with another bestselling author Andy Frisella, Gary spent only $63 on a five-hour Geo filter ad and received 229,713 views.
7. Share Raw Stories to Show Transparency
Snapchat takes a different perspective on storytelling.
Unlike professional videos and images you see on other networks, Snapchat stories are raw, casual, and playful.
This, surprisingly, add more appeal to the content because the unrefined theme makes your post look genuine and comfortable. It creates a certain level of transparency that boost your business credibility and help you gain a loyal customer.
It’s why the trend of “behind the scene” videos has boomed in recent years and every brand has tried this transparency tactic at least once.
Take advantage of the Story feature and go wild with your imagination.
View Real-Time Example →
Taco Bell is one of the early adopters of Snapchat that still leverage story features to connect with its audience emotionally.
If you look at its stories, most involve just quick images and graffiti scribbling. Yet, it has successfully built its brand on Snapchat using the same playful images and interactive stories.
8. Create Custom Snap Chat Filter to Engage Fans
Snapchat’s custom filter creates personalized overlays that your audience can access via a code. It’s an interactive feature that allows your fans to add it to their selfies and share them with friends.
You can use sponsored links for multiple promotional activities.
For example. You can design a filter around current events or seasonal festivities to attract a local audience. The geolocation that comes with this feature makes it easy to target sports events and lure in sports fans.
It’s a cost-effective way to increase brand visibility and engage your fans.
View Real-time Example →
Netflix, in 2016, relaunched Gilmore Girls and created an interactive campaign on Snapchat to re-capture the series fan. It shared 1000 free cups with a Snapchat code that gave people access to its custom filters.
The publicity campaign went extremely successful, and the word of Gilmore Girls spread to, 500k people within a day.
9. Use Snapchat AR to Create Viral Content
Snapchat’s augmented reality technology is one of its most promising features that has opened a new venue for Brands to attract their target market. It has made it possible for you to improve the user experience with 3D animation and interactive elements.
Almost 200 million people use AR every day. It provides such a memorable experience, it practically provokes people to take action, ultimately turning your simple campaign into viral content.
Explore Snap lens/AR for lead nurturing.
View Real-Time Example →
A confectionery store, Chupa Chups, earned almost 50k shares with Snapchat’s lenses filter.
The multinational brand wanted to re-target its existing customers and thought friendship day to be the best time to accomplish it. It launched an interactive AR ad featuring virtual lollypops and urged people to catch them and share the results.
The 15-day campaign attracted tons of teenagers and generated a huge response.
10. Pursue Influencing Marketing to Improve Credibility
Snapchat influencer marketing is a lucrative option to get brand endorsement and long-term customers.
With “fun” tools like filters and stories, influencers have versatile options to entertain their fans, making sure your brand gets maximum exposure.
What’s more, the unusual culture of Snap Takeover—a practice that allows influencers to temporarily take over brand profiles—also helps you capitalize on your influencer’s image.
Nearly 4 out of 10 people learn about a new brand on Snapchat because of influencer marketing. It’s an amazing strategy to increase your reach and improve business credibility.
View Real-Time Example →
Samsung, in 2016, released its new Galaxy Note7 and employed several digital media channels for publicity. One of its marketing strategies included partnering with Snapchat influencer CyreneQ for the unpacking to generate more buzz about its product feature.
CyreneQ visited the unveiling event and recorded the entire journey in a series of Snaps, sharing her narrative along. It created a lot of engagement and achieved the result Samsung expected.
11. Offer Coupons as A Promotion Strategy
Early Bird Discounts are a common promotional strategy Brands employ on Snapchat to attract customers. It not only attracts a large audience, but nurtures your loyal customers.
You can use coupon codes for both product launches and seasonal sales. Ask your audience to send a snap of themselves with your item and offer discount coupons in return. It would earn your customers without having to invest much in advertising.
It’s a proven trick that never fails to give you more exposure.
View Real-Time Example →
Popular beverage chain 16 Handle’s coupon discount campaign is a good example of how you can leverage codes to drive sales and boost your brand reach.
In 2014, 16 Handle launched a campaign, offering followers a discount if they visited the store with their friends and snapped a photo of their favorite drink.
It generated quite a buzz, and 16 Handles earned 1400 orders from it.
12. Boost your Business with Snap Games
In 2019, Snapchat introduced a Gaming section that allowed users to play in-house and third-party games like “Bitmoji Party” without leaving the app. The idea was to create a seamless experience for its users by letting them play and interact with friends simultaneously on messages.
While the initiative made a lot of money for Snapchat, it also offered a promotion opportunity to Brands.
You can now create your custom Snap game to engage your customers.
Over 30 million users play snap games in a month, and it’s a great opportunity to nurture your fans.
Let me give you an example.
View Real-Time Example →
Athlete brand Under Armor, during the 2016 football season, launched a game featuring football star Cam Newton running through the jungle fighting obstacles and dangers ahead.
Under Armor aimed to attract the younger generation by engaging them with interactive campaigns, and their strategy proved successful. With this campaign, Under Armor captured 20% of users on the first day alone.
Conclusion
Snapchat has come a long way to become a marketing hub for brands.
Its diverse range of features now allows you to not only increase your reach, but also generate specific outcomes out of each advertising tactic.
But do remember, Snapchat promotes itself as a camera company whose unique value proposition is to live at the moment. If you keep that in mind while planning your marketing strategy, you can successfully grow your business with Snapchat.
Good luck!