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If you are looking to reach an audience under 35 years old to grow your business, Snapchat is your go-to social media solution. The key to success is knowing your audience and committing to knowing the app. Understanding you’re sending brief messages that only have a specific amount of time to make an impression is important when using this social media platform as a marketing tool.
With more than 300 million active monthly users and 10+ billion daily video views, it’s hard to turn your back on Snapchat. How can you find your niche? Let’s go through the steps to get you on your way to making this social media app work hard for your business.
Let’s Get Started
When you set up your Snapchat account, sign up as yourself instead of your business. Then, simply press the circular button to take a photo, or press and hold the button to take a video. It’s that simple.
Take some time to look at the fun, different things you can do to your photo before sharing it with others. There are emoji stickers, filters as well as text. You can even add links. Moreover, you have the ability to control how long the picture or video will last once you send it. You can choose from one to 10 seconds. If the photo is a keeper, you can save it to your memories.
Some key ways to get your message across on this superfast platform is to keep your Snaps short and to the point. Highlight sales and events happening at your store, preview new products and offer your Snapchat followers exclusive deals. When you have at least one photo or video, you can create a Snapchat Story. These stories are wonderful ways to show your daily business operation to customers and potential customers. You also can show them an exclusive sneak peek at what life is like at your company as well as show off your employees’ talents. It’s a great way to let customers know how skilled and knowledgeable your employees are and why shopping at your business is different.
Grow with Snapchat for Free
One of the easiest ways to grow your Snapchat following is to tell a great story. Fortunately, being in the imaging industry, this should come easy for us. You can create Snapchat Stories that are highly effective. These combinations of photos and videos can last for 24 hours. They give you the chance to tell the story of your business, products and promotions. Furthermore, if you create a compelling story, users will want to share it with their friends. This will increase your following and open up the potential for new customers.
Everyone enjoys incentives like coupons or special offers, so if you are looking to get the word out about new promotions, Snapchat is a great option. If your customers and potential customers know you offer incentives on Snapchat, they will follow you to make sure they don’t miss a great deal. Since Snaps disappear after you’ve watched them, and Stories only last 24 hours, people will follow you to ensure they don’t miss the latest discount or rebate on their favorite products.
Advertising Is an Option
If you want to advertise on Snapchat, you have some viable options. Snap Ads are 10-second full-screen videos that deliver an interactive element. That could be a call to action or even an outbound link. Audio will automatically play with your ad, so make sure that’s a consideration when developing the creative. Since we are in the creative imaging business, we should be leaders in developing content for Snap Ads.
The most popular advertising choice on Snapchat is Sponsored Lenses. Hey, lenses are right up our alley! We should be all over this one. Sponsored Lenses are filters that are applied to a photo or video. Snapchat Lenses have some pretty cool facial recognition technology. It allows you to turn people into characters like Santa, monsters, cats and dogs or simply wear sparkly crowns or decorations around their head.
A third option is Snapchat Geofilters. On-Demand Geofilters can start as low as $5 and go up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for Sponsored Geofilters. These small, artsy graphics appear over a Snap.
When Snapchatters in your location take a Snap, they can choose your Geofilter. They can then use it to show where they are and why they took the picture. For example, if your customers are out shooting photographs, they can add your Geofilter to let friends know where they got the amazing photo equipment they are using for the pictures they are taking. All this requires is a relatively inexpensive On-Demand Geofilter.
Keep It Going
As with all social media, using the app regularly so your customers always have you top of mind is critical to making it successful for your business. Staying on top of your messages is also a key to success.
Snapchat allows you to interact with users and answer any questions they have about your products and services. Since Snapchat leans toward the under 35 crowd, you can strengthen your reach to those customers while gaining traction with potential customers in this younger market.