Gone are days when Snapchat was just a playful app for mobile-obsessed teenagers. Now, that the platform is amassing over 158  million daily users, marketers and brands are getting curious too. But because Snapchat is so drastically different from the other social media platforms most brands are using to market themselves online, curiosity over Snapchat marketing potential rarely translates into action.

The absence of conventional social media features – think hashtags, content feeds and suggested user lists – make marketers think twice before going on Snapchat.  They simply do not know how to use the platform to get their account discovered, followed and engaged with. 

Although it does require a slightly different approach to make up for the lack of the usual discovery features, marketing on Snapchat is not as hard as it may seem on the  first glance. In this post, we will share our top 7 tips to help you get started with Snapchat marketing.

1. Post regularly to your Snapchat Story.

Whatever your goal with Snapchat marketing – whether it is building brand awareness or driving traffic to your site – it is paramount that you keep your account active by regularly updating your story.  

Unlike with other feed-based platforms, anything you post on Snapchat disappears after 24 hours. Therefore, if you want to keep your brand fresh in the minds of your audience, aim to update your story at least once daily.

 And if you are after maximum engagement, we recommend posting 2-4 times a day, but no more – engagement falls by 36% as users tend to skip over updates once they reach the 4th snap of a story. 

2. Get discovered.

This is perhaps the trickiest part of Snapchat marketing, especially if you are a new business and haven’t yet established your presence on social media.  Unlike with other social networks, there are no hashtags, follow suggestions or other features that make it easy to get discovered and followed on Snapchat. Users will have to add your account like they would any other friend – by searching for your username or scanning your Snapcode.  

Therefore, the most effective way to get discovered on Snapchat is to promote your account to users who already follow you on other social media channels. To promote your Snapchat account on those profiles, simply take your Snapcode and turn it into a graphic, then share it with your followers. This is how it looks in practice: 

3. Sponsored posts.

Another great way to grow your Snapchat account is by getting some influencers on board. For this strategy to be successful, make sure to select influencers whose audience shares some common ground with your target market, and reach out to them with a request to create a sponsored post.  

For instance, they could take a photo of themselves using your product or create a series of unboxing videos and then share it to their Snapchat story. These come across best if they appear like genuine reviews as opposed to advertising. 

4. Get an influencer to take over your account.

Snapchat takeover is exactly what it sounds like – another account takes over your account and posts to your Snapchat story on your behalf. This strategy has been very popular recently with more and more brands hiring influencers to take over their account for a set amount of time to engage with their own (the brand’s) audience. 

Unlike with sponsored posts, this strategy relies heavily on your current Snapchat audience. Therefore, if you are looking to expand your reach by letting someone take over your account, you need to promote the takeover on your other social media channels (and ask the influencer to do so) in order to attract new audiences. 

5. Drive traffic to your website.

Recently Snapchat implemented a new ‘Swipe up” feature which allows you to link your snaps to websites. Adding links to snaps is a great way to turn your Snapchat followers into potential customers, and luckily, you do not need to have 10000 followers to take advantage of this feature (like on Instagram). 

You could, for example, post a photo or a short video as a teaser on Snapchat and invite the users to ‘Swipe Up’ to view a certain page or a content piece in its entirety. The key here is to feature a preview that is exciting and curiosity-evoking (but not clickbait!) without giving too much away – the aim here is to draw in your Snapchat audience with the end goal of turning them into leads. 

6. Run contests for giveaways.

As mentioned previously, Snapchat is not natively built-in for discovery. You really need to go extra mile to grow and curate your Snapchat community. One way to accomplish that is to give people an incentive to follow and engage with your Snapchat by running a giveaway contest. 

The simplest way to run a Snapchat contest is to challenge the participants to send you a snap fulfilling some sort of conditions. For example, you could ask them to send in photos of a creative use of your products (e.g., a clothing item in the context of an outfit) or draw a themed doodle for a chance to win a free sample or get a discount code to use on your website. 

With more than 158 million daily users, Snapchat is a fantastic platform for businesses looking to increase their brand awareness, generate leads and connect with their target audience through authentic and personal content.  So, whether you are a small business owner or SMM pro looking to conquer new marketing territories, Snapchat is the place to be!