Are your pets looking extra cute today? Snapchat them. Heading into town for a couple of drinks and your outfit is on point? Get the selfie-stick out, take about 27 photos, pick your favourite, save and add to story. Wherever you’re going and whatever you’re doing, Snapchat has become an essential tool amongst the under 35s for semi-permanently documenting your life and sharing it with your friends and, provided you’re not like me and record your drunken escapades, your family.
What is Snapchat?
A mobile social media platform built around photo sharing and short form video, Snapchat is quickly becoming a leader in the market with 10 billion video views a day(1).
Snapchat is all about the short term with the things we upload to the platform disappearing after a maximum of 24 hours, it’s where we share the things that might not be worthy enough for the likes of the more permanent Facebook or Instagram.
Finding your audience
The Snapchat Ad Platform is built around reaching the under 35s, with anyone older being grouped into the very broad 35+ bracket (our colleague James, an avid Snapchatter was extremely disappointed about this).
Even so, targeting only by age can be inefficient, which is why Snapchat have partnered with third party data suppliers to give you a range of targeting options. Only placing your ads in front of the people who matter to your business keeps your effectiveness high and your cost per acquisition low, which any marketeer will tell you, leads to extra brownie points in the yearly appraisal.
Here are the ways you’re able to target on Snapchat
Geography Country Region County Demographics Age Gender Language Parental status Lifestyles ‘What do they like?’ E.g. car enthusiasts, foodies Shoppers ‘What do they buy?’ E.g. luxury shoppers, beer buyers Viewers ‘What do they watch?’ E.g. TV comedy, home movie horror Visitors ‘Where do they go?’ E.g. gym goers, theme park visitors Snap Audience Match If you’ve got the usernames of your customers, you can target them directly with SAM using a: Lookalike Audience
Using a seed audience list uploaded to the SAM, you can reach users whose Snapchat behaviour matches that of your audience.
Creative options
Keep it short. If people are going to engage with your brand, they’re most likely to do it between the first 3-5 seconds(2) . Just like any user, you’re able to share either a still image or a short video with your audience, they also allow you to use slideshows or gif-like creatives.
Measuring success
Without a doubt, the most important part of any campaign. Whether you’re driving people to install your app or raising brand awareness, measuring metrics against your KPIs is essential to understand whether the platform is working for you. You’re able to report on the following metrics:
- Delivery – e.g. impressions, video views
- Spend – e.g. eCPM, eCPV
- Attachment – e.g. swipe up rate, avg. cost per swipe up
- App install – e.g. install rate, avg. cost per install
References
1: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/snapchat-user-content-fuels-jump-to-10-billion-daily-video-views
2: https://businesshelp.snapchat.com/en-US/article/snap-ads-practices
