Using Snapchat for business: Does it really help?

Well if you have landed up here to read this, I’m sure you are already using popular site like Facebook, LinkedIn for your business. These sites help small sellers gain a large exposure for their brands.

With the rapid growth of online usage, especially among millennials, social media sites are helping sellers to connect and encourage users to engage with their products and brands.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram may be ideal platforms for business promotion. Today, more and more marketing experts are currently buzzing Snapchat.

Snapchat?

Released in the year 2011, this app allows its users to take photos, record videos, add text, images, and then share it in their list of recipients. Such activity on Snapchat is known as “Snaps.”

Facts about Snapchat usage

1- In May 2015 the app saw a sharing of 2 billion photos and videos per day.

2- Snapchat Stories content was being viewed 500 million times per day. In November, it reached 6 billion videos per day.

3- The company is estimated with a valuation of $10-$20 billion.

How is Snapchat different from other social media sites?

Time-constraint posts

Firstly, Snapchat updates(snaps) does not stick around for long, this forces interested customers to take action on-the-go. To explain, snap that you send your followers(called “friends” on Snapchat) disappears at once they are viewed.

Engaging piece of content

Snapchat allows sellers to create a series of snaps forming a longer, valuable piece of content. This is known as “Snap Stories.” However, this nap stories does not disappear once viewed instead, remains for 24 hours. Snap Stories can be viewed by all Snapchatters, friends, or even customize group.

Enhance marketing campaigns

Unlike any other social media sites, Snapchat allows tools to draw over your posts and videos allowing sellers to get out the best creativity and practice rich promotional campaigns. Sellers using Snapchat are gaining a competitive advantage by offering much more attractive posts and content compared to other social media platforms.

The best part, updates on Snapchat is showcased in an interesting way than Tweets, Pins, and Updates.

Why do I need Snapchat for my business?

This app is being rapidly increasing its customer base that records between 100-500 million users , reporting a large part of teen users in the first quarter of 2015. The Snapchat penetration rate among U.S. teen internet users was 38 percent.

Another reliable source comScore stated that Snapchat reports for the third largest user base(32.9%) between the age of 18-34.

Snapchat is increasing its value among millennials who are contributing the most towards the ecommerce industry. This is because, it allows them a flexibility and convenience in making purchases and online payments, saving time and money.

If your product offering matches this age group, it means a lot for your business. And, for small business owners who end up wasting hundreds and thousands of dollars to find the correct target audience, Snapchat can prove to be a cost effective promotional tool allowing marketers to target their offers in the right demographics.

Tips to get started with Snapchat:

Snapchat app is seriously proving to be the next big thing for ecommerce marketers, and following the below steps you can get started in minutes.

1- Provide email address: This will mainly used for Snapchat purpose. An ideal way, is to create an email like: snapchat@yourbusinessname.com.

2- Create a password: As you’ll be sharing visuals and content about your brand, ensure you create a secure password to keep hackers away who can interfere with your snaps.

3- Username: This will represent your brand in every snap, ensure you create one that represents your brand/business.

Winning tactics for marketers

Snapchat has millions of snaps posted every second by it’s users. So, how can you stand out?

1- Mix-match font and text

Snapchat offers users multiple fonts that users can add to their text. Instead of offering content in those old standard fonts, using this app marketers can mix-match different type of fonts and make content look informal and interesting.

2- Make content readable

Snapchat is a time-constraint app, therefore the content and information should be quick-to-view. Ensure you offer content and visuals that can attract 100% focus on the snap.

3- Use Snapchat Stories

As discussed above in the blog, Snapchat Stories are helping marketers to promote multiple products and events in one snap. This allows them to bring a life to the updates, making it even more engaging than those steady images and content.

4- Make use of draw feature

Many platforms allow marketers to add promotional images, however, using Snapchat they can now bring out their creativity and draw over those images via it’s “Draw feature” tool.

5- Manage your audience

Snapchat for business is different for snapchat for users. I would not worry about managing my snaps, as an individual user. However, as a marketer it’s important to have control on the snaps and snap stories posted.

There will times when you want to offer some content to your friends, while others to users across snapchat. Snapchat app helps marketers an ability to manage access of their snaps and snap stories, ensuring content is always targeted among the right audience.

Downside of using Snapchat for your business?

Visuals metrics are virtually nothing. Therefore, it becomes difficult to track returns on investments.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter, where shares and retweets are can be considered as measuring metrics- snaps are difficult to measure. However, Snapchat notifies its users when a user for every screenshot taken. This way, marketers gets an ability to track the most potential customers.

Source:

Snapchat Wikipedia

Snapchat

comScore

Statista