Early in the morning, the alarm goes off. That familiar ringtone on your smartphone starts to play. You move your hand to look for your phone and turn it off instantly. And now that you have your phone in your hand, you click on the small yellow box with a cute ghost in the centre.
Now, chances are you may not relate to this routine nor identify the small yellow box. However, 144.35 million people in India do recognise it, making it one of the top 15 most-used social media platforms in the world, popularly known as Snapchat.
And with India having the highest number of users active on Snapchat, it becomes a significant platform for marketers to invest in and consequently opens the gate for Snapchat marketing. So here’s a refresher for you all by marketing experts at Flora Fountain, a digital marketing company in Ahmedabad.
Before we dive into details let’s break the ice with Snapchat.
WHAT IS SNAPCHAT?
Back in 2011, Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, three students at Stanford university launched an app called Picaboo. The name was a riff on the childhood game Peek-a-boo and the symbol was a ghost on a yellow background. In 2012, the name was changed to SNAPCHAT.
It was an app which allowed people to send and receive any picture, video or message a.k.a. SNAP that would disappear in a period of short time. The app originally focused on private, one-to-one photo sharing. The features to send videos, live video chatting, messaging, creating caricature-like Bitmoji avatars, and sharing a chronological ‘story’ were added later.
WHO IS ON SNAPCHAT?
A distribution of global Snapchat users by gender (as of April 2022), showed that over 50% users of this instant picture and video sharing app are women. Here’s one more interesting fact for Indian brands: The country with the most number of Snapchat users is India, followed by the United States and France. Most of these users are aged between 18 to 24 years old, forming an interesting 39% of the total user base.
This, because Snapchat is a mobile-first social media application and more and more youngsters prefer spending their time online on their mobile devices like tablets and smartphones.
WHICH MARKETS ARE MOST RELEVANT TO SNAPCHAT?
Snapchat has many interesting features which were a first for social media users. Remember, stories were introduced by Snapchat before Meta (then Facebook) blew it up on all their platforms. Media outlets and food brands continue to leverage the power of Snapchat stories to target their audiences. For instance, every time you open the stories Discover section in Snapchat, you will see at least one Zomato Ad and one Cosmopolitan or E! article in the sponsored stories.
Fashion brands have heavily leveraged the Bitmoji outfit features, with prominent players like Ralph Lauren, Converse, Crocs regularly featuring their new products for users to digitally try using their Bitmoji Avatar and show it off among their followers and friends.
WHY USE SNAPCHAT FOR MARKETING?
Now that we have a general grasp of what Snapchat is, let’s look into how Snapchat can benefit a business by being a part of their digital marketing strategy.
A NEW WAY TO ENGAGE!
Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube – these might be the usual social media platforms that you might have invested in for digital marketing. And your competitors are probably doing the same too. So, advancing your content and social media marketing strategy by investing in Snapchat marketing will not only set you apart from your competitors but will also bring engagement to your brand.
You can make your content stand out with features like drawing over Snaps and adding music and polls. For instance, National Geographic compiled snaps and promoted Snapchat users to visit the website by creating stories similar to what they share in their articles.
Continue reading Marketing on Snapchat! Yeah..we’re not kidding.
