3 Tips For Using Snapchat With Your Marketing

While I am not totally sold on the long term survival of Snapchat as Instagram continues to eat away at it's rival, Ad revenue continues to look strong for the mobile app. Marketing your brand on Snapchat takes some creativity. It can be confusing, especially when you're starting out. Something to keep in mind is that a typical marketing funnel is broken down into three main stages:

1.    Awareness. Prospects learn about your business and what you have to offer.
2.    Interest. Prospects from the first phase take the first step toward becoming a customer by signing up for a webinar or company emails.
3.  Evaluation. Prospects from phase two take the final jump to buy from you, often as the result of a sales call or integrating email.

Snapchat is strongest during the second stage, when you're engaging your prospects and trying to create interest. In fact, research shows that Snapchat gets nearly a 4x higher engagement rate compared to similar platforms like Instagram but this is slowly changing as Instagram migrates many of Snapchat's features. Through Snapchat, you can deliver valuable content to your audience to let them see a different side of your business -- one that might not be as visible through another channel.

Here are three ways marketers can use Snapchat to grow their businesses:

1. Offer promo codes.
Brands have had success using promo codes on Snapchat because of how high the engagement rate is.
2. Launch products.

You can also use Snapchat to launch new products. One of the unique benefits of Snapchat is that it gives you permission to create low-budget, informal videos. Letting them see you “behind the scenes,” where you might be unpolished, will help build a deeper relationship over the long term.

3. Leverage influencer marketing.
By leveraging influencers, you can capture a much larger audience because your content will be viewed by both your followers and the followers of that influencer. It’s one of the quickest ways to build a massive audience of your own. Another way to use influencer marketing is by asking an influencer to do a takeover of your account. This basically means that they run your Snapchat account for a certain period of time, and post snaps on behalf of you.

Conclusion
Snapchat is still an up-and-coming platform. If it continues to hold on as a popular app then marketers will have something. Right now it is an app that has yet to become overcrowded. And, because of that, engagement levels are still significantly higher than many other platforms. Marketers who jump on it now will see significantly better engagement than those who get on board months -- or years later. 

Roy Garton
​FDMC Social & Digital Media LLC