Social media marketing platforms like Snapchat turn conventional marketing upside down. Instead of sharing gorgeous product photography, you’ve got to focus on the immediate and personal. It can take a little getting used to, but with some practice, you too can use Snapchat to grow your business and brand.
Snapchat is a great tool for creating deep connections with your followers. It can be used to help build an engaged following, increase customer loyalty and boost your visibility.
In this article, we suggest 6 ways you can use Snapchat to grow your business.
Go Behind the Business
Give your customers a look at what goes on behind the scenes at your business. Customers and potential customers like to feel they know the story behind your business. Snapchat has 300 million active monthly users if they begin to see your business more and more, in an informal format they begin to notice your company more. If you show exciting behind the scenes features, sneak peaks into what your businesses future endeavours are or even quizzes and giveaways. All of these create a bond between your company and snapchat users meaning they are more likely to look out for your account when they are browsing snapchat, because they are interested in your company.
Know Your Demographic.
71% of snapchat users are under the age 34, this is something that you need to be aware of when trying to use snapchat successfully.
Young people have a short attention span, only made shorter by the nature of social media platforms like snapchat which almost force you to want a lot of information in a short amount of time. This means that if you’re posting a video on your snapchat that is a minute long, it’s unlikely anyone is watching and instead they are incessantly pressing their screen hoping for your video to end and not taking in any of your valuable information.
Cut out everything that is unnecessary and just focus on the important information and the eye catching, remember if you get the young people on board you are going to be a successful user of snapchat. Equally featuring your following could be hugely beneficial for you, make your snapchat about your followers whether it be promoting them, identifying a winner in a competition or even just shouting them out for things such as birthdays or other celebrations, 18-24 year olds love features such as this which could be beneficial in the expansion of your companies online presence.
Share Promo Codes
Snapchat’s short-lived nature makes it the perfect to advertise limited-time-only events. Use it to share exclusive coupon codes or other exclusive promos. This creates a community surrounding your snapchat identity, if you do a lot of offers/ discount codes at the same time every week for example, this will begin to make social buzz surrounding your business.
People will recommend to their friends or post online the benefits of following you because of these promo codes or giveaways that will then cause your following to grow itself. If you can get the people who win to promote the win to their own social media people see the authenticity behind developing your companies online presence and the buzz that surrounds it. Most importantly as you are giving to the people who interact with you it makes you stand out from the over 1 million snapchat stories that have been shared publicly that might be more mundane.
Give VIP Access
Having previously mentioned that there has been over 1 million snapchat stories made public, there is millions more that are only shared to friends, this is where a VIP account could be very successful in developing your potential audience reach.
By adding people or getting them to add you then you aren’t relying on people browsing the public stories and coming across your own, instead you know because you are friends with them on snapchat that this is going to increase the chances of them looking at your story exponentially. 69% of snapchat users say that they would accept a friend request from a brand, if they recognise them from other social media platforms. This might mean that you want to grow you social media presence and then ask your followers politely to add you on snapchat for more exclusive features or for VIP treatment.
Treat your followers like VIPs, Share exclusive previews with them, for example, a look at events and promotions you are running. It’s an easy and fun way to engage your followers. By including fans in your content in encourages more people to get involved and also current members to keep on using your profile and promoting it on their own social media pages.
Keep it Real
Don’t be afraid to be real when you use Snapchat, authenticity is essential on this hyper-social network.
People are used to seeing the made up appearance that companies like to give over social media and if they see the same kind of things everyday, that they can tell aren’t a real representation of whats going on they will stop coming back to you.
Be aware of social trends at the time and what people of the younger demographic are interested in and interact with them on things, this could be social affairs or what is going on in the news. If you are aware as to what is a hot social topic at the time and you begin a discussion on it then it draws people in as it shows you are aware as to what your audience is interested in and what is popular.
Try to be original but most importantly show a human aspect to everything you do, if people know that things online are not computer programmed and instead human they are much more likely to interact.
When it comes to adverts the most successful ads on snapchat come from BuzzFeed, ComedyCentral and iHeartRadio these are obviously light hearted, comical brands that will use humour effectively to deliver their desired message. Of course this approach doesn’t work for all brands it depends what it is you are selling but if you use these kinds of companies as a template, you should be hoping for success with snapchat.
Consider Social Influencers
This doesn’t apply to only Snapchat but instead all social media platforms, influencers can be vital in promoting your brand and growing your brands following.
Influencers have gathered a huge number of followers through one avenue or another online, often through the likes of YouTube subscriptions. A lot of Social Influencers have gathered a huge number of loyal and easily influenced fans. By using these public figures to promote your brand through tweeting, Vlogging, Blogging or as focused on her Snapchat can cause for your following to rocket.
Get them onboard with your project and include them in your own stories as this identifies to those watching that their promotion for your company was authentic and they are actually involved in your company or at leat use the product, this connection to a social influencer can cause for your popularity and reach to grow and therefore develops your company.
Not sure if Snapchat is for you or want to see what we’d for your business to do on Snapchat? Head over to our social media contact form.