Snapchat is HOT right now; we have celebrities, media moguls, and even brands using it to shamelessly promote themselves and connect with their audience—and it works!
If you have no idea what Snapchat is, allow me to explain it as quickly as I possibly can. It is a video messaging application that allows you to also take photos, do drawings, add text, and then instantly send it to a controlled list of recipients. Oh, and after you send it, the person has a certain amount of time to watch it until it gets completely deleted. Sounds awesome right?
So how on earth is this relevant to business, and why should I want to add this to my growing list of social tools, including Facebook, Twitter, etc?
Well, the answer is simple—Snapchat is the most personal social media tool in existence, for now. When Facebook and Twitter began opening up opportunities for businesses, they did so with one goal in mind—to get you to advertise and pay for outreach. This meant that the awesome opportunity for businesses to be on a more face-to-face level kind of got thrown out the window. Since we are paying for our outreach on the other social channels, we want to make sure it is looking and sounding perfect—this often gives the impression that it is marketed, and people don’t like that. Yes, that is right, believe it or not, people don’t actually like getting advertised to. So why do we do it so much? Because it still works—the subconscious mind is an amazing thing; we treat brands like our friends and create emotional connections to our items (ever felt sad when selling your car?) My point is, advertising is important, but it needs to be done in a non-intrusive, friendly, face-to-face manner.
Enter Snapchat.
You are probably wondering, how on earth am I going to get my message across to my audience within a 1-10 second video? Well, the same way we worked out how to deliver marketing messages with a 140 character limit (Twitter): we get creative and cut out the crap. No more fluff; just straight enjoyable content—oh, how refreshing it sounds!
For you to be successful in any form of marketing these days, you need to have three things on lockdown; however, I have tailored these for Snapchat marketing:
- Your target audience: know them like you know your product—where do they go on holidays, what they eat, how old they are, anything else they like, etc. Stalk them…not literally, just understand—from the basic demographics and psychographics—what exactly they do and love. Utilize the online space and check out forums, Facebook groups, competitors, etc. Create a profile of your audience so you know when to target them, how to target them, and when.
- What content works: everyone is different; what works for a restaurant may not work for a car detailer. Your audience may react better to some things than others. The method marketers use to find this out is called A/B split-testing. We basically take one advert and run it alongside another within a similar environment. Whichever gets the most response is deemed as the better advert. You can do this continually and then put two ‘winning’ ads together and optimise this even further. The best part about Snapchat is that you are limited, so you will not have to test too much instead just try out different ways of delivering your content and listen to the responses.
Try to create different videos and images using the following creative techniques:
Humour: puns, objective humour
Creativity: Adding drawing to images, use emoticons on videos, use depth-perception
Straight usable content: give away info, over-the-shoulder examples/training, Exclusive discounts
Day in the life of/video narratives: use Snapchat to follow you around the day and show how you work and what you do; your followers will appreciate what you do a lot more.
Provide exclusive access: if you regularly go to events in your field that have awesome speakers or cool presentations, why not show them off to your fan base?
Ask people to Snap back: ask people to ask YOU questions on Snapchat and give them a direct response. Limit it for only 20 minutes, as it can be never-ending if you already have a huge following. I have not included an example for this one so get creative and have some fun with it.
- A call-to-action: you would be amazed how many businesses spend thousands of dollars to create advertising campaigns and do not utilize a good call-to-action. How do you create this on Snapchat, you ask? Well, tell them when your new blog has launched, inform them of a Snapchat-only discount and include the discount code on the video; whatever you do, get creative. If you understand your product and your audience, you will have no problem coming up with something.
Okay, so you have the app, you have your content ideas, you have mustered up the courage to get on camera…but you have no followers.
Snapchat currently has over 100 million monthly users; it will not take you long to find them. Below is how I grew my personal Snapchat from 0 to over 100 within two days.
– add all of your existing Snapchat friends (option to do so at the beginning)
– make a Facebook post to your personal page announcing your Snapchat and Snapchat ID
– matter-of-fact announce it on every single social profile you have
– follow other Snappers; Snap relevant stuff to them, and they will follow back
– find groups within your niche (forums, Facebook groups, meet ups) and ask if you can add them to Snapchat
– create a quality Snap and use an app like Snap save to post it to social media with your user ID
After doing all of this, I can guarantee you will have at least 50 followers
Final Thoughts:
Snapchat is getting huge; as I mentioned earlier, it already has over 100 million monthly users; currently, it does not have an advertising platform, so everything is raw and personal.
A good business owner can see the potential here without much more explanation: if you can get your messages across in a smart ‘unadvertised’ way, you are going to see a large amount of benefits.
Embrace this technology to the best of your ability One of my favourite things to do is to follow as many relevant people as I can. It is also fun to see how celebrities use Snapchat. If you want to find out what celebrities and influencers I personally follow, check out my post here—and yes, they use all of the methods I pointed out above. Also, feel free to add me (martinschnitzel), and I will be more than happy to add you back.
Happy Snapping
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