Use Snapchat in your Video Marketing Strategy: 4 Creative Ways Brands Are Using Snapchat in their Social Media Marketing Strategy!

Challenging the notions of ‘evergreen content’ this app has rightfully made its limitation as its strength. (Remember twitter and its 140 characters.) From its humble beginnings of starting out as a veiled Snapchat, it has gained momentum by ascribing to the adage of less is more. The app uses audio-visuals and snaps as a medium of exchange and is already rated above Instagram and foursquare.

However, the content’s ‘self-timed –destruction’ functionality, has been raising many an eyebrows right from its inception, for there have been formats boasting to counter that, nevertheless, the popularity remained unruffled. Owing to the content’s limited life i.e. being time –bound and seamless communication (i.e. sharing & watching) all content in real- time has made it seemingly popular amongst all and sundry especially amongst the younger age bracket.

With 350 million snaps being circulated per day overreaching 30 million users with 50% of them falling under the bracket of (18-24) years, Snapchat has been cited as the fastest –growing social media app for 2014. With such a significant traction pull in the young consumer circle, it has forced brands to churn out marketing strategies, capitalising on this chunk of consumers, giving a further boost to micro social media platforms.
Here, we organically break down how everything wrong with snapchat, seemed to work right and made it possible for brands to ascribe to this unconventional tool for marketing.

1. Impulsive Consumption of content

Unlike the traditional form of video ads which were so constructed as to add retention value to the memory of the consumers, of the product advertised, Snapchat is the polar opposite in practice. It creates a need or urge for the transitory nature of the content to be consumed instantly, without much ado. This, in a way, creates two-fold advantages for the brands. The heightened sense of urgency forces consumers to engage with the brand stories on impulse and secondly, owing to the blink-and-you –miss format, the consumers pay undivided attention when attempting to engage with brand stories #Discover. Thus with creativity, brands pool more followers on their respective handles. Heineken SnapWho? at Coachella 2014 was an interesting contest cum trivia asking its followers to guess the artists to perform in the festival. In turn, they were snapping clues.

2. Building Brand Loyalty

The respective followers on the handles could be offered exclusive perks, flash sales, promo code or other incentives like behind the scenes sneak peek into a movie, depending upon the brand’s verticals. This instils brand loyalty amongst the followers and infuses them to engage more pro-actively with the brand.

Taco Bells is a ringing example of how it asked its followers via twitter and other mediums to follow it on Snapchat about a new announcement suggestive of a new offering by the brand. (crunchy Beefy Burrito)

3. Using snapchat in sync with other mediums

One has to remember that, snapchat does not bear fruits independently but has to be used in sync with other social media engagements. Thus, the right mix offers wider reach and full circle engagement across demographics and geographies. The movie Pitch perfect turned out to be the first one to feature snap chat on its poster offering all behind –the scenes Sneak-peek.

4. Only as good or as bad as your last snap

Unlike the traditional marketing campaigns, there’s no permanent counter to keep account of all your goof ups or keeping track of all your successful campaigns in marketing. Since the brand stories keep on updating every day, every day is a new day to cover the losses by devising better strategies and keeping abreast with the competition. Thus, the recall value remains fresh which could always work in favour of the brand. The brand stories section keeps updated

Essentially, Snapchat ‘s success story is still in progress for it has freshly gone upscale but we’ll keep you updated till wherever it goes. Meanwhile, let us know how you used snapchat for your company?