Content Creation

How to Improve Brand Awareness with Snapchat

CopyPress

August 9, 2016 (Updated: March 2, 2020)

Snapchat followed a similar path as its social network brethren; high school and college kids knew about it before everyone else, adults eventually caught on, and then marketers wanted a piece of the pie. Today, the social network boasts more than 100 million users, most of which are in the coveted 13-24 age demographic.

It took a few years of diligently studying the effects of rainbow vomit and pictures of Kylie Kardashian’s latest lip shades, but marketers are starting to understand the nuances of Snapchat. Some are even getting good at using the social network to communicate with their audiences. Here are a few of their secrets, so you can also crack the Snapchat code and improve brand awareness with Snapchat.

Why Do “Kids These Days” Like Snapchat So Much?

About 87 percent of Snapchat’s users are millennials, making it one of the highest concentrations of millennial users on the internet. The only other sites or apps that beat out Snapchat are BuzzFeed and Tinder.

Teens know that whatever they put they on the Internet stays on the Internet, and they prefer Snapchat because the photos disappear after a set amount of time. You might look dumb for a few seconds in a photo with a huge ice cream stain on your shirt, but that won’t be the photo employers look at before deciding to hire you.

Millennials are also a generation of photographers. The average young person takes nine selfies a week, and more than half have posted a selfie to a social media page. Some surveys claim millennials could take up to about 25,700 selfies in their lifetime. The instantly deleted snaps are an easy way to share daily selfies with your friends without appearing vain on longer-lasting social media feeds.

If brands are going to target millennials, they need to think like millennials.

Use Geofilters to Promote Events and Experiences

Geofilters for business allow followers of a specific companies to add special designs when they’re in a designated location. They can be bought by the hour or by the day, and stretch a minimum of 200,000 square feet to a maximum of 5,000,000 square feet. For reference, 200,000 square feet is about the size of four football fields, while 5,000,000 is almost two-tenths of a mile.

CopyPress is experimented with Geofilters at the  SMX Advanced Summit in Seattle on June 22-24. As you can see in the photo below, the filter raises brand awareness and creates shareable moments.

Businesses can utilize Geofilters to create events and promotions through Snapchat. For the new batch of high school graduates, a company could create a branded Geofilter and tell their fans to take a picture in their graduation caps to win a prize. They can also promote events to people in the surrounding area—like a bar that has air conditioning and drink specials close to the beach.

Geofilters align perfectly with millennial values and goals. More young people are skipping the mall and department store trips and saving their money for experiences instead of things. They would rather save up for VIP access to a Kanye concert instead of saving to buy one of his $120 T-shirts. Instead of encouraging millennials to come in and buy, Snapchat’s Geofilters invite them to be part of an event or party.

Make Your Snaps Last With Stories

Snapchat isn’t just for posting photos of your company Halloween party or videos of your CEO spilling his lunch all over the floor. Some brands are using the tool to create engaging Snapchat Stories and show what goes on behind the scenes of their brand.

Unlike regular snaps, where the image or video is deleted after opening, Stories can stay in your followers’ feeds for up to 24 hours. You can add to the Story throughout the day, letting your brand show off what happens during a long period of time. On the user side, people use this to share their day at theme parks, from waving excitedly in the parking lot, to boarding the Haunted Mansion ride, to eating cotton candy. Instead of sharing (and losing) 100 snaps from the day, users can share their whole experience in one video.

Brands can utilize Stories to show how their products are made or services are provided. A hair stylist can show a before photo, and then the illustrate the process of dying, cutting, and styling their client’s hair into a new ‘do. On the B2B side, companies can show the manufacturing process, or the steps a company takes to complete a service. Snapchat is an easy way to pull back the curtain and show transparency.

Study the Discover Section for What Brands to Well

If you don’t think your brand will do well on Snapchat, or are drawing a blank for what to do and what content will work, check out the Discover section. This is where Snapchat curates the best of the best, and highlights publishers that are creating unique content. The premise is simple: there’s too much boring and low-quality content on the Internet. They want to filter out all of the bad stuff, and only highlight what is worth watching. Yahoo should know — they were kicked off of Discover after Katie Couric failed to draw interest by only broadcasting an “old-school” news show, complete with a news desk and long intro.

Food Network is an example of a Snapchat company that’s doing content well, and what other brands should aspire to. They’re tapping existing YouTube celebrities to create four-minute food segments that are quick and easy for young people to execute. By choosing influencers that are already popular with millennials, they’re reducing the effort needed to attract them, while giving them a helpful and interesting tutorial.

Millennials aren’t the complex consumers that old-school marketing analysts make them out to be, and Snapchat isn’t just for young people. Attracting an audience takes creativity, but once you get into a groove and people start responding, you can really start spreading your wings on this social network and improve your brand’s visibility. Give it a try, and see what your fans have to say.

Featured image via Dean Drobot / Shutterstock.com

Amanda Dodge

CopyPress writer

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