The marketing budget for small businesses is comparatively low compared to the likes of international conglomerates – I always ask myself how on earth did Procter & Gamble spent $13.9 billion, yes – BILLION, on advertising and marketing in 2013? (Johnson, 2014) Hence, it makes perfect sense for small businesses to grapple with social media and enjoy the mostly free marketing it can bring. One of the new(ish) kids on the block is Snapchat, and when you look beyond all the scandalous nude selfies it is a good way to consistently and repeatedly remind your loyal customers how much they want to come back. I believe there is a technique to utilising Snapchat as a Marketing tool – given that you’ve built up a follower base on the app – and this can be broken down into 4 simple steps.
Step Number 1: Deliver Unique Content
Allow your Snapchat users to see things they wouldn’t ordinarily see on any other social media platform and give them a reason to want to view your Snapchats on a regular basis. Just like an unusual, out-there, funny advert, it will get people talking and others will want to see it for themselves, like the Doritos 2016 Super Bowl ad which you can see here. Unique content is a good way to grab attention to your service/product offering and spark interest – see Snapchat as a way to utilise the AIDA model. Strong (1925) suggests that effective marketing requires 4 sequential steps – Attention > Interest > Desire > Action – all of which can be achieved on Snapchat through this step alone or the other steps interchangeably.
Step Number 2: Offer Sales Promotions
This is a classic marketing strategy, but spruced up a bit for modern consumers. Traditionally defined as “short-term incentives to encourage the purchase of a product or service” by Kotler & Armstrong (2010: p426), sales promotions can be effective in this respect. However, Snapchat has this air of exclusivity (Pineiro, 2015) which can make these promotions even more effective by directly targeting customers through Snapchat to make them feel special and willing to listen to what you have to offer. This also splits off from the advertising role of Snapchat discussed previously, advertising says “buy” but sales promotions says “buy now” (Kotler & Armstrong, 2010: p499).
16 Handles utilised Snapchat through offering coupons which provided customers with a Russian Roulette style of promotion.
Step Number 3: Take People Behind The Scenes
This step ties in quite nicely with step one, people are curious, what makes your business unique and special. Victor Pineiro sums up this aspect of Snapchat perfectly in his article.
“While Snapchat has its share of challenges for marketers, it offers something unique in the world of mostly-broadcast, feed-centric social media — intimacy at scale.” – Victor Pineiro, AdAge
Snapchat does provide a certain intimacy that could only be replicated by actually being there, and this is what makes this platform different – it’s live and local. People can be involved with the content on different levels and this is what makes Snapchat so valuable.
This article by Issa Asad (2015) breaks this step down further into 3 sub-steps. These are:
- Make it fun
- Showcase Everyone
- Use Pictures and Videos For Different Reasons
There is also an example of an effective “Behind-the-scenes” Snapchat story.
Step Number 4: Partner With Influencers
Having influencers takeover your Snapchat is a great way to get people to add you and grow your audience (Cicero, 2016), even those that haven’t necessarily been to your establishment before. Nick Cicero (2016) provides a great guide on the advantages of this step, and even though the examples given (like Victoria’s Secret using their models to takeover their account) are of big companies, there is no reason that this cannot be done by smaller businesses too. Although it may be more difficult to recruit influencers as a small business, local bloggers and YouTubers will often help you out in order to give back to the community. Allow an influencer to take control of your Snapchat for the week or even just a day and this should entertain and encourage current and potential customers to give you a visit
CAUTION!!!!
Snapchat still comes with its drawbacks, such as the restricted ability to be discovered and added – it’s a much more lengthy process compared to the likes of “following” on Twitter or “liking” on Facebook. It also has an expiry on content, which once opened/timed out can never be seen again. However, it is these drawbacks which make it unlike any other platform and provide the marketing edge that this guide highlights. It is also very restricted in terms of demographics, the majority of users are 18-24 years old (Solomon, 2015), so any content will mainly be seen by them, but this can be used to your advantage by making any content targeted directly to this audience.
References
Asad, I. (2015) ‘Give customers a behind-the-scenes look’, Instant Profits with Snapchat, January 2015 [Online] <http://issaasadsnapchat.com/give-customers-a-behind-the-scenes-look/> [accessed 10 April 2016]
Cicero, N. (2016) ‘How to use Snapchat takeovers to grow your audience’, Social Media Today, 20th January 2016 [Online] <http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/how-use-snapchat-takeovers-grow-your-audience> [accessed 9 April 2016]
Johnson, B. (2014) ‘Blue-chip Advertisers’ Spending Hits Record $109B, Passing Pre-recession Peak’, Ad Age, 22nd June 2014 [Online] <http://adage.com/article/news/blue-chip-advertisers-spending-hits-record-109b/293819/> [accessed 8 April 2016]
Kotler, P. & Armstrong, G. (2010) Principles of Marketing, 13th ed. Pearson: Harlow
Pineiro, V. (2015) “It’s Not a Post — It’s a Gift. How to Embrace the Intimacy of Snapchat”, AdAge, 12th March 2015 [Online] <http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/ways-brands-embrace-intimacy-snapchat/297542/> [accessed 8 April 2016]
Solomon, B. (2015) ‘How to use Snapchat: A Small Business Guide’, Forbes, 25th August 2015 [Online] <http://www.forbes.com/sites/smallbusinessworkshop/2015/08/25/how-to-use-snapchat-a-small-business-guide/5/#6597c0de7d25> [accessed 10 April 2016]
Strong, E. K. (1925) ‘Theories of Selling’, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 1, p75-86
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