Snapchat: A Diamond In The Rough

With better accessibility to the ad platform, reduced cost of entry, and the ability to reach a younger demographic, Snapchat is making businesses think twice about adopting the platform in to their ad buying mix.

Snapchat was often the platform that has business owners saying “that’s just not for me” and usually was for good reason. That said, though, Snapchat has made their platform more accessible over the last few years by reducing the price of entry and increasing the features available to marketers within the platform. On top of all this, Snapchat offers a good alternative for businesses looking to diversify their advertising dollars, especially in light of recent issues with surrounding Facebook and online privacy.

More Accessibility Through Self-Serve and Reduced Cost of Entry

When Snapchat opened up their platform for businesses to be able to purchase ads, there were some hurdles. Marketers were forced to work directly with Snapchat in order to place advertisements. This dissuaded most businesses and advertisers from even considering it as an option in their paid social marketing mix due to the ease and accessibility of other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others. Furthermore, businesses that wanted to advertise on Snapchat needed in invest a substantial amount of money per day, which all but eliminated a majority of businesses from being able to justify the return on ad spend.

In May of 2017, however, Snapchat became a self-serve ad platform, and opened up the possibility of more advertisers being able to spread their message using the platform. This could be accomplished by using a Snap Ad played between user Stories or a Sponsored Filter that acted as an overlay on a user-taken image. The costs associated in placing an ad were also significantly reduced, allowing for more small and medium sized businesses to warrant adding Snap Ads in to their annual planning.

The new found ease of being able to use Snapchat also empowers business owners to being able to reach another market segment that has a stereotype of being “unreachable”: Generation Z.

Reaching a Younger Generation

Businesses and advertisers are continually trying to reach the ever-elusive younger audiences and that dilemma is still relevant today. Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2012) holds a massive amount of potential spending power if only they could be reached in the growing digital ecosphere that’s available for them to consume.

This is where Snapchat comes in! With the majority of users being between 12-24 years old, an increased ease of entry on to the platform, and 187 million daily active users, Snapchat is a great option for businesses looking to diversify their digital ad placements while also having their message seen by a younger audience.

Conclusion

If you’ve ever seen Snapchat as a platform that wasn’t for you because it was confusing, too expensive, or didn’t reach a your potential audience well enough, now may be a good time to reconsider! Here at J Miller Marketing, we’ve seen great success in running Snapchat ads for our clients and are continually performing tests to get the best results out of our campaigns. We’re also very excited with all of the new features that Snapchat is coming out with that allow advanced targeting options and as well as a better ability to monitor offline conversion / in-store traffic, something that has been a problem for many other paid social platforms. Want to talk more about adding Snapchat to your campaigns? We want to help! As a Silver Level Snapchat Partner, we are equipped with the knowledge and resources to effectively handle your needs.