Snapchat, the new brands’ mainstream digital marketing
tool?
Millennials are the new favourite target of many
brands in Western countries. Contrary to older generations, Millennials are
hard to attract as they are used of many marketing methods and some of them are
fed up of traditional advertising. Marketers have wondered how to seduce those
digital natives…
Social medias have been and are still redefining how
marketing can be used on nebulous forums. During the second half of the 2000’s,
Facebook and Twitter have brought new marketing methods, with sponsored banners
for instance. Instagram – very loved by the Millennials – has also become a
marketing tool for companies.
Snapchat may be an exception in the wide range of
social medias, because at first, the platform did not interested the marketers.
Indeed, they were a bit scared of this novelty characterised by its
fleetingness and its temporality. How can you build a campaign if it does not
last in time?
To answer this question, let’s talk a bit about
Snapchat to understand better this social network. Evan Spiegel launched
Snapchat in 2011. The aim of the application is to send pictures, videos or
texts for a very short time; and those elements cannot be recorded. At the very
beginning, Snapchat was seen like the perfect application to send “dirty”
pictures to your mistress. Actually, it is much more than this.
It is the social platform which has known a very fast
growth: between January 2015 and January 2016, Snapchat has gained more than 40
million daily users and the number of ephemeral videos viewed per day has been
multiplied by five. Most of the users are less than 35 year-old. Snapchat is
the favourite social network of the less than 24 year-old. In average, a user
goes on the app 25 times per day and stay on it 18 minutes per day. Nowadays,
Snapchat counts 300 million users, and 160 million daily users, and all of them
are potential consumers. Then, the scheme seems clear: Snapchat allows brands
to target the under 35 and young addicted audience who are the massive core
users.
As popular and mainstream Snapchat is, marketers still
seem hesitant about investing in the service. This feeling can be explained by
different factors.
Firstly, Snapchat’s community is too young for many
brands. Plus, the informal and fun side of the application may not be suitable
for everybody or meaningless for many. For instance, business-to-business
marketing is not possible for companies: professional presence is too low.
Secondly, executives might not realise how to
implement a real marketing campaign while the content can only last ten seconds
and would be available for one day. They might believe that their message would
not have any impact on the audience.
Thirdly, people think that doing marketing on Snapchat
is too expensive: the minimum spending for advertising on Snapchat is $40,000.
Higher-ups in organization are not sure about the amount of the return of
investment and many would not even understand the aim of the platform.
The main issue here might be the fact that many firms
marketing directors do not get the point of being present on Snapchat. Some
companies have been braver and have bet on the platform. The format of
disappearing videos can be an advantage: users quickly participate in and live
the moment right now. To be relevant, the brands have to be different thanks to
unique designs, or original communication methods. Imagination and expiration
date are the only limits. Today, how do brands play with Snapchat?
In 2014, for the first time a brand pay for an ad on
Snapchat, since it has been democratized. These ads appear between stories of
your friends or medias you follow, like a screen ad video. They pop up without
asking but they are very short which stick to Snapchat personality/format. For
instance, Neutrogena, Bouygues Telecom and Louis Vuitton Masters ads can appeared
in the middle of your friends’ stories.
Users love to play with
Snapchat geo-filters/filters and send some selfies to their friends. Brands can
be part of the game by proposing their own filters according to the place where
the user is or according a special event, such as the launch of Netflix’s show
Stranger Things new season, the matches of the European Football Cup sponsored
by Coca-Cola or the launch of new Assassin Creeds’ game.
Brands can also be present on the social network
without paying, just by holding an account, as an entity, that can provides to
users different contents:
·
Behind-the-scene
that shows how people work inside the company, what kind of event the company
takes part in, how is the production. American Apparel is used with that.
·
Inspirational
content that shows what does inspire the brand. This kind of content is often
for textile brands.
·
Keeping in touch
with users to collect feedbacks and answer to customers.
·
Working with
influencers in order to let them spread the brand personality and promotions to
their own followers.
Then, thanks to Snapchat attachment, users can swipe
to a link directing to a text, longer videos, etc… If you make your content
interested enough to capture the attention of your audience, it will be more
likely to swipe.
These strategies pay as more than 50% of the users
follow brands on Snachat and check their contents. More than 90% of campaigns
that use Snapchat report sales gains after advertising on the platform.
Even if it exists some successful stories of marketing
campaigns on Snapchat, the population targeted is essential and it is important
to communicate with a language understood by both stakeholders. Thanks to the
visuals the brand provides, it will create its identity: friendly or mysterious… whatever! The goal is
to have an impact on users minds.
However, brands that invest in marketing campaign on
Snapchat should also focus on Instagram that also propose snapshot contents but
also recorded ones. Besides, Instagram offer a more serious and formal
platform, which is more suitable for brands and older target. So, be careful
Snapchat and keep innovating in order to seduce marketing directors!
Written by Agathe Hoffmann
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