Snapchat has established itself as a key connection platform for many users. While other mainstream social media platforms may seem more popular, with the app’s privacy focus and content ability, helping it carve a niche in the social media landscape, they have succeeded where many others have fallen short. In this blog, we look at how Snapchat has achieved their success and feature a recent interview with Snapchat’s VP Luke Kallis.

How Snapchat Achieved Success

According to Snap, it now reaches 75% of Millennial and Gen Z users. Snapchat users also spend over 30 minutes per day in the app, on average. These are impressive figures, and although it may not have the reach of Facebook, it arguably has more resonance and influence over those engaging via Snap.

Snapchat’s achieving particularly significant success in driving audience engagement, while building a platform that aligns with modern community-building approaches. Users looking for smaller, more private groups, where content won’t necessarily stick around to haunt them, have formed solid bonds in the app, while younger audiences continue to download the app in big numbers, as they seek a space to share more intimate engagement, or catch up on the platform’s growing library of Discover shows.

The Insights

Recently, Luke Kallis (Snap’s VP of US Advertiser Solutions) shared his insights on the latest trends that he’s seeing, as well as examples of how marketers are generating results with the Snapchat audience. Here are some of the common questions asked that Luke Kallis has answered.

• What ad/promotional elements are seeing the best response on Snapchat right now?

“Ads on Snapchat perform well across the entire marketing funnel and Snap offers a broad range of goals, bidding options, and end-results for ad optimisation – from awareness and shares to clicks, visits, purchases, and more. Snap’s advanced measurement, reporting, and optimisation capabilities have been a cornerstone of the ads platform, helping marketers optimise campaigns to deliver the best possible results. Our community opens the Snapchat app 30 times a day on average and globally, the Snapchat generation carries over $4.4 trillion in purchasing power. As a whole, these considerations are driving the best results in the app at present.”

• What’s the key to an effective marketing strategy on Snapchat?

“We find that marketing on Snapchat is most effective when brands leverage multiple ad products tied to a defined advertising goal. For example, for brands looking to raise brand awareness, a great way to achieve that goal is by combining an AR Lens with Snap Ads, and/or Commercials (video ads). This type of multi-product execution tends to achieve stronger overall results than any individual ad format in isolation.”

• What’s the most common mistake you see brands make with their Snapchat approach?

“While AR Lenses are often seen as a great short-term activation to boost brand awareness, some overlook the longer term brand value of AR tools. Many brands are actually finding success running what we refer to as ‘always-on AR’,  where they keep AR Lens campaigns running beyond a single moment, and these campaigns are seeing really positive results. We all know that AR stands for ‘Augmented Reality’, but at Snap, we believe it also stands for ‘Additional Reach’ and ‘Accelerated Results’. When added to a Snap Ad campaign, AR reaches an incremental 31% of our audience who are using the camera. Similar to a Super Bowl commercial, Lenses work well for both splashy, one-off moments, and for driving high-impact lower funnel results when run continuously as part of a brand’s broader Snapchat multi-product advertising strategy.”

• What’s a good example of a brand that’s achieving strong results with Snapchat marketing?

“Driving efficient, impactful results for our brand partners is a key part of Snapchat’s value proposition and we’ve seen many great examples of brands that are driving success on the platform. A few of those include; Smile Direct Club, DAZN, Booking.com“

• What would be your top tip for someone starting out with Snapchat marketing?

“Our self-serve ad platform makes it incredibly fast and easy to get started advertising on Snapchat. We offer a wide variety of tools to help any size business build compelling, creative ads – even for augmented reality Lenses that all deliver proven business results. You can learn more about Snapchat’s various ad tools and options here.”

Have you ever used Snapchat for your business? We’d love to hear your stories of successful snapchat marketing campaigns. 

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