When you think about which social media apps to advertise your products and services on, it’s likely you focus more on the big dogs like Facebook, Instagram, or (yawn) LinkedIn. Advertising on Snapchat, an app largely known for digitally superimposing cat whiskers on people’s faces, might not be front of mind when you’re trying to develop your brand’s reputation. You may even wonder “does Snapchat even have ads?” Short answer, yes.
Are Snapchat Ads Worth It?
So you’re wondering if Snapchat ads are worth it. We get it. You want your company to seem solid, dependable, and legit. Short little videos that disappear into the ether right after they’re viewed may not inspire confidence if your intended audience is the typical C-suite crowd. But you have to know your market and how to cater to it, and people who use Snapchat may not be your corporate enterprising types. That’s not a bad thing. Most Snapchat ad viewers are under 30 and so well-versed in social media that they probably think Facebook is exclusively for boomers. They’re looking for something fresh, something irreverent, something that tells them you don’t take yourself or your company so seriously that you can’t have a bit of fun.
There are currently 306 million daily Snapchat users across the globe, so you’d be wise to think twice before leaving them out of your advertising strategy. These Snapchat ad viewers are, after all, the corporate execs of tomorrow, and they already wield a great deal of influence across a wide variety of industries today, both as consumers, mid-level employees who have the ear of the decision-makers, and startup founders. With the shakeup happening in terms of how and where we work, due to the COVID pandemic, marketing strategies have had to adjust to a new normal where work life is increasingly entangled with, well, everything else. Our online lives are playing a bigger part than ever in our decision-making and interests.
Do Snapchat Ads Work?
Ok, so the Snapchat platform is popular. But your products and services are meant for specific demographics, so how can you make sure your ads are not just seen by a lot of people, but also foster the kind of engagement you want with the right people? Snapchat’s goal-based bidding feature enables you to implement specific kinds of customer engagement that are desirable for your bottom line. In other words, you can find out in real-time what kinds of ads and actions taken on those ads are working. In addition, Snapchat’s Discover ads, which are essentially bite-sized TV commercials, have been shown to have “increased efficiency in ad awareness by 65%.”
So the question is not whether Snapchat ads can work or whether an investment in Snapchat advertising is worth it, but how you can tailor your advertising and marketing content to your intended users and spur the type of engagement that drives success for your business. Snapchat already offers the tools to implement targeted campaigns and to measure their success, and the versatility of its advertising formats has the ability to increase brand awareness in ways that some of the bigger social media companies don’t. Once you’ve got a solid team in place to help you hone your message and what form that message should take, maybe the next step is just figuring out how to record a good video.
