Snapchat for retailers
Snapchat is evil and should be banned!!
This is something we hear a lot about the infamous Snap Chat. I am sure some have read that title and thought, ‘What is Snap Chat?’ and don’t worry you are not alone. Some of you will have heard of it, are retailers and are thinking, what on earth would we use a platform like Snapchat for?
Well, let’s start at the beginning, Snapchat is a chat platform, it has distinguished itself from the others with a unique ‘temporary’ approach to your content. Basically, you can send, a picture, video or indeed plain old text to someone and you can set the amount of time the content is available for. Anywhere from 3-10 seconds. After that period of time, the content is gone – in theory. It is indeed gone from the SnapChat server, but once something is online, it’s online forever, or has the capacity to be. More on that later. You can also create ‘Stories’ which are available for 24 hours and then disappear.The platform has had quite a lot of negative publicity, especially in relation to anonymous chat issues and how it feeds in to potential cyberbullying cases. But it’s not all bad. As with most tools out there, some will choose to use them for good, some will choose evil.
More importantly, Snapchat is a visual platform – at the point of writing this post, there are over 750 million, yes million, snap chats sent DAILY! That’s a lot of images and video snapshots going around. In the UK, and it won’t take long to spread, there is a 98% penetration rate of users in the 12-17 year old bracket. So guess what retailers, if that age bracket happens to be your target demographic, here’s a clue as to where they are hanging out. It’s not on Facebook, it’s not so much on Twitter. Marketing today is about content creation and then content promotion. Online, that promotion element is no longer a free exercise, it’s a paid one, especially on channels like Facebook and Twitter, who now both have extremely powerful PPC advertising mechanisms. Having said that, for those brands thinking a little bit ahead of the game, can still take advantage of free promotion online if they start to think about using platforms like Snapchat and Instagram (another visual platform).
As you’d expect from us, there is a visual theme to the post. These visually based channels are becoming the hang outs of choice because you and your potential customers are tapping into your visual nature. As brands that are, we assume, looking to increase their bottom line and/or brand awareness, you should be now familiar with the fact that you need to visible to your target market when they want to see you, not when you think they should see you. With that in mind, we think you should start not only thinking about, but actually start using SnapChat and here’s a couple of ideas;
Establish that you have a market vertical that falls into the ‘teen’ demographic
Start creating content on the SnapChat channel. It’s really easy. Download the app, set it up by looking through your address book to see who else is on there. Don’t worry if there isn’t anyone, as you are going to start creating snap chats and promoting it through your other channels where you already have somewhat of a following (if you don’t have any following anywhere, then drop us a line!!)
Once you are set up, creating content is easy. Remember, your max time for the content is just 10 seconds! And you create the content with the front facing camera – much like taking a selfie. You can use it to deliver a positive message, with or without sound. And after recording you can touch the screen to add accompanying head line text to let people know what it’s about.
You can also over lay multiple 10 second videos, or images to create a much longer snap chat, usually one that you would then publish as a story – available for 24 hours. Don’t just talk about your products though, get creative with your message, think about what your customers actually will resonate with. And if you need help with that, you know who to talk to.
Check out www.snapchat.com to see how companies are using the channel to let customers discover more.