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The Ultimate Guide to Snapchat Marketing in 2019

Ana Gotter

Did you ever give Snapchat Marketing a try?

There’s a continually growing list of social media platforms that businesses should be using, and plenty of marketers agree that Snapchat is included on that list.

Though the interface can be a little clunky and hard to get used to, some businesses who are using Snapchat are having great results coming from their campaigns.

In this Snapchat guide, we’re going to break down everything you need to know about marketing on Snapchat and getting results for your business.

Did I mention all the latest updates?

Yes, we have those too, and with a tutorial to get you started in a blink of an eye!

Because Snapchat is so different from the other major popular social media sites most marketers are using, however, it can feel intimidating—marketers are unsure how to use the platform, how to connect with their audience, and what types of content they should be using.

In the first section of the guide, we’ll show you why you should market on the platform, great examples of success on Snapchat, the demographics of its users, recommended strategies and best practices, and an in-depth tutorial for using its features and tracking results.

In the 2019 update, we’ve added sections on whether or not Snapchat is still worth it (spoiler alert: yes!),

You can click here and go straight to the new content, or keep on reading and learn how to master the platform!

Ready? Let’s get started.

Why Should Businesses Market on Snapchat?

Snapchat can officially be considered yet another platform that businesses and marketers can include in their marketing line-up; it’s time, for some, to cue the collective sigh. While this can feel overwhelming for some businesses (there are already plenty of sites and platforms that we have to keep up with), it’s always a good thing to have a platform that provides new opportunities and ways to connect with our target audience.

Snapchat has shown that it can be really valuable to businesses who have the audience there and the right strategies in place. Because numbers can speak for themselves, here are some statistics that show the potential value of marketing on Snapchat:

Aside from the statistics, which can speak for the growth and engagement on the platform, there are some strong benefits to marketing on Snapchat. These include:

Snapchat has seen increases in growth in the past few years, with user engagement and activity being plenty high enough to capture business’s attention.

Before you jump onto the platform and start running campaigns, however, you’ll want to take a look at one thing: who is your audience on Snapchat?

Who’s on Snapchat?

It only makes sense to understand what demographics are most present on a platform before you start developing your marketing strategies, and Snapchat is no exception.

Let’s put it this way: if Millenials are included at all in your target audience, you should definitely be on Snapchat.

Snapchat currently has a younger audience, and though older audiences were increasing quickly several years ago when this guide was first written, that’s a trend that hasn’t continued so prevalently.

If teens and college students aren’t your target demographic, however, you could still get some use out of marketing on Snapchat—as long as your audience isn’t purely in the 55+ age group.

Are there Any Businesses that Shouldn’t Use Snapchat?

Since I’ve had some posts published about Snapchat (read: here and here), there’s one question I’ve been asked a lot: are there any businesses that shouldn’t use Snapchat?

So far their Snapchat activity has been better suited to the platform than their hashtag mishap was to Twitter.

While I’d never say that it would hurt a brand to use a social media platform unless some major marketing missteps are made (see my personal favorite– the McDonald’s example), there are probably a few brands out there that might not have much success on Snapchat and could do better to focus their attention elsewhere. If your target demographic is purely middle-aged to older adults, for example, and a younger audience would have zero interest in your product, Snapchat may not be for your business.

That being said, it never hurts to try; the demographics could always change and expand, and you might be surprised how your content fits in with the new audience, or how engaged your audience is on the platform.

It’s also important to note that you shouldn’t be relying exclusively on Snapchat as a medium for social media marketing; it should be used in addition to other platforms. Use Facebook as your central hub, which allows customers to leave reviews, share images, and create UGC, and make sure that you’re on Instagram too; both of these platforms have more features to help you better connect with your target audience in meaningful ways and they have larger and more diverse user bases.

The Elephant In the Room: Is Snapchat Still Worth It?

Here it is: the big question that everyone asks when I work on social strategies with them and we’re choosing which platforms they want to use. Is Snapchat still worth it?

In the original version of those post, I had a prediction: that Facebook and Instagram and their combined empire would likely take down Snapchat eventually, but that it would take a really long time. I was sort of right, but not entirely.

Snapchat has not quite kept up with the rapid growth of other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, which have all adapted and evolved a little more. The creation and popularity of Instagram Stories and then Facebook Stories didn’t help Snapchat any, either, basically copying their best features and maybe even improving them a little bit.

Then a few celebrities threw a few punches, and the effects were immediately visible. In March of last year, Rhianna called for her fans to delete Snapchat after the company ran an ad asking if users would rather punch Chris Brown or slap Rhianna, and boom, stock slid by 5%. This was following Kylie Jenner’s single tweetsaying she wasn’t really a fan of Snapchat anymore after its redesign, and the company’s value dropped by 1.5 billion immediately after.

Last year, Snapchat actually shrunk by 3 million users. They’ve since managed to claw their way up from 188 million daily active users to around 191, but that was a big hit. So the platform isn’t doing quite as well as others out there, BUT it’s so important to note that those numbers are still massive, and there’s a lot of potential here to reach your target audience. We’ve already looked at the statistics, we know that the engaged audience that’s stuck around is still loyal and enthusiastic. So yes, Snapchat is still definitely worth it if it’s a good fit for your business.

Now that we’ve got that covered, let’s take a look at how to actually market on this platform.

Snapchat Marketing: The Tutorial

Now that we’ve established who should market on Snapchat and why they should, we’ll focus in on the how of Snapchat marketing.

In case you missed it, we published an in-depth tutorial that goes over how to set up your profile and send snaps and stories, which you can see here.

Since we’ve already released a guide going over the basics, this tutorial is going to focus on the more advanced features of Snapchat marketing, including features available to use, developing a marketing strategy, connecting with your audience and QR codes, and tracking the results of your marketing efforts.

Features Available on Snapchat

There are several different features, types of posts, and settings that can you can use, all of which can impact the success of your Snapchat campaigns. These include image editing options, the settings you can choose on your profile, and additional features that can help you interact and engage with your audience.

Types of content you can share on Snapchat include:

Editing options for posts (both Snaps and Stories for images and videos) include:

Settings and features that you can use to enhance your success on Snapchat include:

Snapchat released an upgraded messaging system (Snapchat chat 2.0), which comes with additional features. You can use the messaging system to chat privately with specific users.

To chat with a user, swipe right to where you’ll see Snaps. Click on the text bubble in the left-hand corner.

From there you’ll be taken to a screen where you can choose who to chat with.

Features (new and old) of the chat system include:

 

Developing a Strategy to Market on Snapchat (with real examples)

While a lot of social media platforms offer something unique while still functioning in a similar way (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and even Pinterest allow you to share posts and “like” or comment on the posts of others), Snapchat is one that—to me—feels truly different; you share videos and images with specific people, and people can send videos and images to you. That’s it. The interaction between you and your users isn’t public, and there’s no real social proof. Going viral isn’t the objective; getting your content to those who will engage with it is the only goal here.

In order to have success on Snapchat, you’ll need to have a marketing strategy in place. And because Snapchat is such a different platform compared to what we’re used to as marketers, that marketing strategy is going to be at least a little different than what you’re likely using on other platforms.

Some tried-and-true strategies, tactics, and campaigns that have worked for other businesses who were marketing their brand (or products) on Snapchat include the following:

Connecting with Your Audience on Snapchat

We’ve already discussed the demographics that are currently on Snapchat. Just because they’re there, however, doesn’t mean you’re automatically guaranteed for them to follow you. You have to still find your followers and encourage them to connect with you, just as you would on any other platform.

Snapchat lacks other platforms’ “viral” nature; if one of your friends follows a brand on Snapchat, it makes absolute no impact on you whatsoever—you don’t see it and you’ll never hear about it. Because of this, it can be more difficult to connect with users on Snapchat.

Ben and Jerrys shared this post on Instagram, offering valuable content in exchange for new followers on Snapchat.

One of the best ways to do so is to promote your Snapchat off the platform as much as you possibly can. Share your Snapchat username on all of your social media sites, your site, and in an email to your email list, prompting users to follow you. You can offer some incentive up front, offering the chance to win a prize or get a shout out from your brand if they follow you. This can be surprisingly effective.

For a few days Elle Magazine had their Snapcode as their profile picture to help get as many eyes as possible on it.

If you can get an influencer on board who can encourage users to follow you, this can also help. As many people as possible who can let followers know about your Snapchat profile, the better.

Perhaps the most effective way to connect with new users is to use the QR code.

Snapchat’s QR Code: How to Use It

QR codes are machine-readable codes that can be read by the cameras on smartphones, similar to the scanning of a barcode. Snapchat has smartly made great use of QR codes, which users can now use to quickly follow specific users or brands that they want. Users are sharing their QR codes across social media, in emails, and even in print in person, making it fast and easy for other users to follow them. The easier it is, the more followers you’re likely to gain.

You can access and customize your Snapchat QR code by logging in here.
Each snap code is unique even before you customize it, so keep that in mind before trying to customize someone else’s.

The snapcode is made up of 3 different aspects; the ghost, the code, and the frame. None of these factors can be interfered with—you can’t invert the color of the code, for example, or disrupt either the ghost or the frame.

You can change the color of the body of the ghost, though Snapchat recommends you keep it white. Adding a logo or image inside the ghost can be a great way to customize the code, and you can change the background color (just not the code) as part of your branding.

Once you’re happy with your snapcode, share it everywhere you can. People just have to take a picture of your snapcode and click on it within the app from your camera roll to follow you.

You can put your brand name or logo inside the ghost.

How to Track Results on Snapchat

Snapchat doesn’t have the type of in-platform analytics tool like Facebook or Pinterest’s Analytics. Unlike Instagram, Snapchat also doesn’t have any third party analytics tools that can be used. At least for now, Snapchat is more user-friendly than it is marketer-friendly.

While this can be inconvenient for marketers, it’s still possible to track some results of your campaigns on Snapchat. The information won’t be condensed in easy-to-read graphs and charts on a marketer-friendly interface, but you can still get it.

There are a few metrics you can track on Snapchat. You can see:

You can determine the effectiveness of your campaigns (or at least how much the content is being viewed) by dividing the number of snaps opened by the amount of snaps you sent out, providing you with the Snap opening rate.

If you’re running a particular campaign, like GrubHub in the example above, you can see how many users open a private snap and/or interact with you to receive the coupon code.

Evaluating your open and engagement rate over time can be tedious and take a long time as it’s a manual process, but it can give you a strong idea of how your content is resonating with your audience, along with what content they were most receptive to.

You can also see the amount of views your story as gotten, as well as the amount of screen shots taken. When you click on your individual story, you can see how the number of views (which will be the number by the eye) and the number of screen shots (which is the tiny supposed-to-be-an-arrow).

This story, just shared, as 0 views and 0 screen shots, as seen in the bottom left hand corner.

Again, calculating both the views and the screen shots can help you evaluate whether or not your content is relevant—and is staying relevant—to your audience.

5 Best Practices for Marketing on Snapchat

In addition to developing a marketing strategy that works best for your brand and your particular audience, there are several different tactics and best practices you can employ with your Snapchat campaigns in order to boost engagement, sales, and followers.

Here are 5 of those best practices:

Snapchat Analytics: 2017 Update

We’ve established that Snapchat can be an extremely valuable marketing platform. The difficult part, however, is actually measuring those marketing efforts.

Snapchat is an extremely difficult platform to track data on. Similarly, tracking trends is just as difficult since our content—and their results—disappear.

Fortunately, there are a few metrics we can watch manually. And, even better, third-party platform Snaplytics released an incredible Snapchat analytics tool that all businesses can benefit from.

In this 2017 update, we’re going to take a look at which metrics you should look at, where to find them, and the amazing Snaplytics tool.

Which Snapchat Metrics Can Be Evaluated Manually?

When you’re using Snapchat, not a lot of metrics are available to us. That’s ok; we can get a lot of information out of the metrics we do have access to.

One of the biggest metrics to pay attention to is the number of views and screenshots on our stories. This can be found by clicking the story, and then clicking the white arrow on the bottom of the screen.

The number of views (and names of users who viewed the story) are represented by the eye symbol; screenshots are the symbol next to it. Knowing how many views our content is actually getting is essential. The number of views should be tracked over time and compared against your total number of followers. If your number of followers has stayed the same but increased, and your story views have decreased over time, your audience isn’t interested in your content.

Speaking of which, you should always keep an eye on the number of followers that you have. Just like with all other forms of marketing, increasing your followers can make your marketing efforts more powerful. This can be time-consuming to do manually, so either recruiting an intern to do the counting once every six months or using Snaplytics is a good way to go.

To determine an estimated completion rate, you’ll need a story with more than one picture or video. Divide the number of users who saw the last section of your story by the number of users who saw the first story to determine your completion rate. This also helps you gauge audience interest in your content; if you’re losing them, you may be able to see where and why.

You can also manually evaluate whether or not users are opening the private snaps you send to them, and how often they respond. Snaps that have been opened with have blue arrows, as seen in the image above. If you’ve received a message in return, you’ll have a blue message box. You can determine the engagement rate for private messages, and test out content in smaller groups of your audience via private chat.

Snaplytics’s Snapchat Analytics

So considering all the detailed tracking—and resulting excel spreadsheets—that Snapchat marketing requires to track data, I know I wasn’t the only one dying for a third party analytics tool to be released. Snaplytics is the only Snapchat analytics tool that I know of, but it’s an incredible resource, and it’s the only one I think we need.

They automatically track and calculate the following metrics (so you don’t have to do it manually and before your snaps delete):

These metrics are all incredibly important. Getting accurate data will give you valuable insight into how users are responding to your content. This data is actionable, and it’s necessary to have

You can click to individual live stories to see information about them, including views and completion rate; you can even play the story live from the dashboard where you’re viewing it.

Audience Tracking

Snaplytics also has the only audience analytics platform available for Snapchat. They’ll tell you your estimated number of followers and your daily follower growth rate. They’ll also tell you what sources of traffic are giving you the most followers.

This tool tells you if they’re searching for you by user name, snapcode, a deep link, or add-backs. You can amplify those sources of traffic with additional effort, advertising funds, and energy.

Competitor Tracking

You can compare all of this data to information about your competitors. You can see how they’re using the platform and how your content is measuring up. You’ll pay more for this feature, but it’s an extremely beneficial one—especially for brands just getting started. Insight like how often competitors post and the average duration of stories can help you find the Snapchat sweet spot.

Bonus: Snaplytics is also testing a feature that will let businesses schedule Snaps ahead of time through the dashboard. This isn’t an analytics feature, but it’s a cool one worth mentioning.

Snaplytics plans start at $179 a month.

Do I Need to Measure Snapchat Engagement?

Yes- you should carefully monitor and evaluate all aspects of your marketing campaigns. This includes Snapchat. It can be difficult to manually track all the metrics necessary to get a clear picture, but it’s possible. Snaplytics is a great resource, and more accurate than most of us tracking the data on our own. Either way, measuring engagement (and audience information) lets you know what’s working and what isn’t. This allows you to deliver more relevant content to your audience, improving your results long term.

Snapchat Ads: The 2019 Update

You might have noticed that we haven’t discussed Snapchat Ads yet on this guide. That’s partially because we have a full how-to over here, but it’s also because until recently, they haven’t been fully accessible for most businesses.

For multiple ad formats, that’s changed, and we want to give you a quick overview.

Originally, most Snapchat Ads were exorbitantly expensive, to the point where only major corporations would be able to afford them. Stories were costing around $40,000, and to have ads appear in the Discover section cost around $40,0000 minimum. Sponsored lenses were even more insane, jumping up to a potential $750,000 price tag. People weren’t paying for the most part, and Snapchat has reconfigured their pricing.

Now, Snapchat Ads cost a heck of a lot less, and actually can be even more affordable than other platforms.

According to an article from The Mobile Marketer, Snapchat Ads cost an average of $2.95 per thousand impressions, which is lower than Instagram’s average of $4.20 and Facebook’s $5.12.

You can choose from the following Snapchat ad formats:

which work a lot like Instagram’s Ads and will appear in between users’ organic Stories.

which work the same way but let you feature different products on the ad itself.

which appear on the Discover page next to popular content.

which are interactive and can be used for users to create their own Snaps. Costs start at around $10.

which allow you to create branded, sponsored filters people can add to their own content and give you UGC. Costs start at $5.

which are 6-second, non-skippable premium video content. There is no reliable, consistent data on the cost of these yet, but they’re likely one of the more expensive ads options.

The decreased costs can in response to Snapchat’s lowering stock value, marketer’s resistance to purchase, and the flourishing ad revenue of other ad platforms that didn’t give advertisers sticker shock (and nightmares). This is great news, because organic marketing doesn’t always hit home on Snapchat, and the ability to use affordable ad campaigns to boost your reach and visibility is a solid strategy.

How to Create Snapchat Sponsored Geofilters

Snapchat Geofilters are location-based filters that you can use if you’re nearby. Both businesses and users can create their own Geofilters, and they’re fantastic tools to build brand awareness and user-generated content on the platform. You can even use them to promote events, like a grand opening of your business or a conference you’re hosting. Capturing the interest of a local audience is a huge plus.

There are two main types of Geofilters: community Geofilters and on-demand Geofilters. Anyone can submit community Geofilters for free, but they can’t have any branding on them, including logos. With on-demand Geofilters, both businesses and individual people can purchase Geofilters for their location or event; branding (including logos and trademarks) are allowed.

Creating Snapchat Geofilters Tutorial

Creating Geofilters is relatively easy. Businesses should always use on-demand Geofilters so that they can include branding in them. You can get started here and click “Create Now.”

You’ll be asked to log in, and then you’ll have the choice of uploading a ready-made Geofilter that you’ve made through a platform of your choice (they have Photoshop templates available) or you can create one online. For this example, we’ll design our Geofilter online.

You’ll be asked to choose the occasion (or more accurately reason) for creating the filter. We’ll choose Business.

On the next screen, you’ll be able to choose a black screen to start with, or to work off one of the templates. Either way, you can upload images (I uploaded my company logo), and add & format the text of your choosing. These can be dragged to anywhere on the template.

When you want to get an idea how it will look, you can preview your Geofilter with the picture to the right hand side under the customization options.

Once you’re happy with your Geofilter, click to the next screen. Here, you can choose what dates and times you want your filter to be active. Keep in mind that Geofilters can get expensive very quickly. A really small range (about the size of a University gym) cost me $54 for one day.

On the next screen, you’ll determine where you want your Geofilter to appear. You’ll literally draw a fence around this area. This area must be under 5,000,000 square feet.

You can drag and drop corners of the fence as needed after they’re drawn on; as you do so, you’ll notice that the price of your Geofilter will change dramatically.

Once you’re happy with the price, dates, and range, you can submit your order on the next screen.

Conclusion

Snapchat has taken a few hits in recent years, between celebrities throwing a few punches that affect usage, and Instagram and Facebook Stories throwing a few more. In spite of this, the platform has continued to thrive all things considered, and still have an engaged (if slightly smaller) user base.

If your target audience is on this platform and you’re already using Facebook and Instagram Stories, go ahead and create a Snapchat account and make an effort here.

There’s a good chance that you’ll be able to reach those audience members, and the more they see your brand in their feeds (whatever those feeds may be!) the better.

What do you think? Do you use Snapchat for your business? How have you connected with your audience and increased engagement? Share your thoughts, comments, and experiences in the comments below!

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