Snapchat isn’t just for kids anymore
Snapchat has been competing for a relevant foothold in the social media realm, ever since its release four years ago. And although they have close to 200 million monthly users, they’re up against some heavy hitters, especially Facebook, who is constantly evolving, improving, and finding ways to further demand advertiser’s money. In an effort to keep up, Snapchat has worked aggressively to become more visible as a content platform, and decided just last month, to restructure their marketing plan.
Sponsored lenses, QR codes, and product partnerships are just a few of these content efforts, however, advertisers are still skeptical, and aren’t exactly confident Snapchat can stay afloat; especially in such a continuously developing and competitive market. And though the concerns are valid, advertisers and companies alike are overlooking user trends that may very well help Snapchat, reemerge as the competitive content platform they desire.
Huge success with Snapchat stories
According to these trends, 37% of users are creating and/or viewing a story: which is around 55.5 million people. In order to understand the magnitude of that, let’s first discuss Sprite, and the huge success they’ve had with Snapchat stories.
For the first time in Snapchat history, they partnered with Sprite to print 15 different codes on various cans in Brazil; the codes gave consumers the chance to connect and watch celebrities’ stories, and in just a few days, received over 2 million views. What better way to increase visibility for a company, than to expose your brand to the 55.5 million people who like to watch stories every single day?
A pool of millions of people to tap into
Additionally, 60% use it as a messaging app, 51% to send photos, and 39% to send a video. That’s a possible 90 million people to target with a well crafted messaging campaign, 76.5 million for a captivating photo campaign and 58.5 million for brand heavy videos; all amazing sample sizes to target.
However, what do these numbers mean to entrepreneurs and small businesses everywhere? Because unfortunately, not many of us can afford to invest the same amount of money for a Snapchat campaign, that a $56.1-billion-dollar company like Coca Cola did. But, have no fear, the answers are in those amazing, aforementioned numbers.
As we all know, a fraction of a very large number, is still a large number. So, receiving a small fraction of total users (a quarter of almost 200 million, is at least 37,000 people) to watch a short video, or photo, with your brand in it; can catapult your business from a local, word-of-mouth type of business, to an easily recognizable, marketing savvy company.
How to take advantage of the platform
Put together a short video, that’s either really funny, evokes emotion, or is just flat out obnoxious, whichever is consistent with your brand’s culture, as long as it’s captivating. Once you have a cool video, you can then experience the magic that can happen when Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram has a love child with Snapchat.
After you have your video or photo made, you can actually save it from the Snapchat app directly to your device. From there you can post it on your Instagram along with hashtags, user tags, and other brand increasing features; you can do the same on twitter and Facebook, to increase visibility. The magic is endless!
