Seriously, who walks away when a huge tech company offers them $3 billion for your 2-year-old startup?
Well, Snapchat did a couple of years ago when Facebook made them that offer. Smart move, apparently, the site is currently valued at close to $15 billion.
There’s been no shortage of coverage and growing interest in the brand before and especially after they rejected Facebook. But what is it exactly?
Is it something worth considering for your brand’s social media strategy?
Snapchat began as a way to text and share photos but with a twist. Photos, videos, and messages, or snaps as they are collectively called, are only visible to the viewer for a maximum of 10 seconds before they disappeared.
The social network’s audience is overwhelmingly young people, with nearly a third of its users under 25 years old.
Snapchat Stories: Marketing Fairytale or Nightmare
The introduction of Stories, a feature that allows snaps to last for 24 hours, Snapchat engagement has increased. Today nearly one billion Snapchat Stories are viewed every day.
Currently only about 1% of marketers use Snapchat. That’s tiny when compared with stats showing 97% of marketers use Facebook and 89% use Twitter. This is perhaps because Snapchat, only recently began advertising. An additional reason might be the hefty $750,000 price tag.
In the meantime, brands like McDonalds, Taco Bell, and the New Orleans Saints already use Snapchat to announce new products launches and interact with fans.
The site also recently launched Discover a content service for media publishers.
Considering Snapchat for an upcoming campaign: Here are some of the pros and cons advertising on Snapchat offers brand marketers:
PROS:
- It’s a mobile app in a time when mobile penetration is large, growing and conversion rates are high, so there is a lot of potential reach if added to your mobile or social media strategy.
- One-on-one messaging and promotion offer a more personal feel to customers.
- Short snaps have a higher completion rates than longer mobile or pre-roll ads.
- It is highly visual like Instagram and Pinterest, which are really popular right now and among the vital qualities for ads that get noticed.
- It is not charging for ads…yet. So it’s still an inexpensive promotion platform.
CONS:
- It’s very expensive, starting at about $750,000 a day. To compare, the large Youtube header positions called mastheads go for about $500,000 a day.
- Very little analytics data is available to track campaign ROI.
- It skews heavily younger and female, 70% of its users. Not the best fit for products with an older and/or male target audience.
- A 10-second ad can impact brand recall.
Users must already be subscribed to the brand to receive snaps, which can be a challenging for reaching new customers. (This will likely change once the company begins selling advertising).