Snapchat Advertising: Snappy Brand Promotion

Seriously, who walks away when a huge tech company offers them $3 billion for your 2-year-old startup?

Well, Snapchat did a couple of years ago when Facebook made them that offer. Smart move, apparently, the site is currently valued at close to $15 billion.

There’s been no shortage of coverage and growing interest in the brand before and especially after they rejected Facebook. But what is it exactly?

Is it something worth considering for your brand’s social media strategy?

Snapchat began as a way to text and share photos but with a twist. Photos, videos, and messages, or snaps as they are collectively called, are only visible to the viewer for a maximum of 10 seconds before they disappeared.

The social network’s audience is overwhelmingly young people, with nearly a third of its users under 25 years old.

Snapchat Stories: Marketing Fairytale or Nightmare

The introduction of Stories, a feature that allows snaps to last for 24 hours, Snapchat engagement has increased. Today nearly one billion Snapchat Stories are viewed every day.

Currently only about 1% of marketers use Snapchat.  That’s tiny when compared with stats showing 97% of marketers use Facebook and 89% use Twitter. This is perhaps because Snapchat, only recently began advertising. An additional reason might be the hefty $750,000 price tag.

In the meantime, brands like McDonalds, Taco Bell, and the New Orleans Saints already use Snapchat to announce new products launches and interact with fans.

The site also recently launched Discover a content service for media publishers.

Considering Snapchat for an upcoming campaign: Here are some of the pros and cons advertising on Snapchat offers brand marketers:

PROS:

CONS:

  • It’s very expensive, starting at about $750,000 a day. To compare, the large Youtube header positions called mastheads go for about $500,000 a day.
  • Very little analytics data is available to track campaign ROI.
  • It skews heavily younger and female, 70% of its users. Not the best fit for products with an older and/or male target audience.
  • A 10-second ad can impact brand recall.

Users must already be subscribed to the brand to receive snaps, which can be a challenging for reaching new customers. (This will likely change once the company begins selling advertising).

YOUR TURN: Has your brand done a promotion on SnapChat? If not, would you consider it? Why or why not?

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