While TikTok may have taken the mantle of being the cool kid on the social media block, Snapchat has established itself as the connection platform for many users, thanks to its focus on privacy and its nous in content, which has helped it carve a niche in the social media landscape, and succeeded in places where many others could not.
Snapchat especially succeeds at audience engagement and creates a platform that resonates well with modern approaches to community building. Users seeking smaller, more intimate environments where content won't stick around to haunt them have formed strong connections within the app, while younger audiences continue to download the app in big numbers, as they seek a space to share even more intimate engagement or catch up on the growing library of Discover shows.
In fact, says Snap, it now reaches 75 percent of Millennial and Gen Z users, while Snapchat users also spend more than 30 minutes per day in the app, on average.
Impressive numbers, to say the least, but it arguably has more resonance and influence over those engaging via Snap than Facebook does, even if it does not have the same reach.
Which also presents opportunity, and if you're looking to tap into Snapchat for your marketing efforts, and boost your brand among younger audiences, then these tips will help. We recently spoke to Luke Kallis, Snap's VP of US Advertiser Solutions, to get his insights on the latest trends that he's seeing, as well as examples of how marketers are generating results with the Snapchat audience.
Q: What ad/promotion elements are performing the best on Snapchat these days?
LK: Advertisers on Snapchat are performing well throughout the marketing funnel, and Snap offers a really broad set of goals, bidding options, and end-results for ad optimization-from awareness and shares to clicks, visits, purchases, and more.
Snap's measurement, reporting, and optimization capabilities have really been a core part of the ads platform, making marketers better able to optimize campaigns for delivering their best possible results. From Brand marketers looking to raise awareness at the top of the funnel to performance marketers seeking conversions, advertising on Snapchat is a compelling way to meet any objective.
We also believe that for advertisers of any size, seeking any objective, there is deep, long-term value in reaching our audience of 13-34 year-olds. This audience is passionate and engaged and many are at the ages when they're beginning to build brand loyalties as they go through major life milestones.
Our community opens the Snapchat app 30 times a day on average and globally, the Snapchat generation carries over $4.4 trillion in purchasing power. As a whole, these considerations are driving the best results in the app at present.
Q: What's the key to an effective marketing strategy on Snapchat?
LK: We see that marketing on Snapchat really works best when brands use multiple ad products connected to an established goal of advertising.
Let's say that a brand wants to increase its brand awareness. A good method to do this would be to run an AR Lens in combination with Snap Ads, and/or Commercials - video. In general, multi-product execution tends to achieve stronger overall results than any individual ad format in isolation.
Q: What's the most common mistake you see brands make with their Snapchat approach?
LK: While AR Lenses are often seen as a great short-term activation to boost brand awareness, some overlook the longer term brand value of AR tools.
Many brands are actually succeeding operating what we term 'always-on AR', where they just keep AR Lens campaigns going on past a single moment, and those campaigns are performing wonderfully.
We all know that AR stands for 'Augmented Reality', but at Snap, we also believe that AR stands for 'Additional Reach' and 'Accelerated Results'. When added on to a Snap Ad campaign, AR can reach an incremental 31% of our audience using the camera.
Like a Super Bowl commercial, Lenses are effective for both splashy, one-off moments and driving high-impact lower funnel results when run continuously as part of a brand's broader Snapchat multi-product advertising strategy.
Q: What's a good example of a brand that's achieving strong results with Snapchat marketing?
LK: Driving efficient, impactful results for our brand partners is a key part of Snapchat’s value proposition and we’ve seen many great examples of brands that are driving success on the platform.
A few of those include:
Smile Direct Club accessed our Goal-Based Bidding (GBB) Click optimization for AR, which accounted for 49% of Snap customer leads in Q2 and proved to be the most effective ad unit compared to other social channels for driving traffic for their business. The success of the Lens eventually made Smile Direct Club include AR Lenses in their long-term business strategy.
DAZN launched a multi-product campaign that leveraged AR Lenses, Snap Ads, Story Ads, and Commercials to drive awareness for its live sports channels, installs for its app, and subscriptions for its streaming service. DAZN leveraged our newly launched GBB App Install optimization for AR, not only driving incremental installs but also reaching millions of unique Snapchatters. The overall campaign pushed installs and subscriptions up and encouraged more Snapchatters to join its platform.
Booking.com used a strategy that relied on Dynamic Ads to reach new customers on Snapchat. Using our Dynamic Ad solution for travel, it was able to pull images directly from the product catalog on its relevant and visually appealing destination photos and features. It unlocked an incremental audience in the United States for Booking.com, which provided a positive lift in bookings on their website as well as their app, all while delivering a cost per incremental booking of about 36% lower than their target.
Q: What would be your top tip for someone just getting started with Snapchat marketing?
LK: Our self-serve ad platform makes it incredibly fast and easy to get started advertising on Snapchat. We offer a wide variety of tools to help any size business build compelling, creative ads-even for augmented reality Lenses that all deliver proven business results.