Your Guide to PPC Triumph on Snapchat

Snapchat is one of the most popular photo and video sharing social media apps – especially among the younger demographic. As a matter of fact, almost 200 million active users engage with one another through this mobile app on a daily basis. Those figures aren’t Facebook, YouTube, or even Pinterest numbers, but they also aren’t insignificant. If your customer base consists of the young 18-34 demographic (who make up a whopping 85% of Snapchat users), then Snapchat needs to be a part of your PPC strategy.

1. Why Focus On Snapchat PPC?

Snapchat – or just Snap – has a ton of users. While most of their audience is in the younger age bracket, there’s an opportunity for your business if your customers come from that age group. What Pinterest is to women, Snapchat is to young consumers.

Snap users are highly engaged with the app. Users spend about 30 minutes per day on the app, engaging with it about 20 different times throughout the day sending messages, pictures, and videos colored with augmented reality features. Snap users also listen to video content with the sound on at a rate of about 60% of all video views. Compared to 85% of Facebook users who watch video content with the sound on mute, this can potentially be huge for businesses that have high quality video content with audio.

This high level of engagement suggests that if brands are able to find a way to captivate and engage this audience of impressionable and influential youngsters, they can elevate the awareness of their brands to elite levels. The unique features of Snap allow proactive brands to creatively engage with their customer base to create meaningful brand lift.

Via Snapchat

Furthermore, the price has never been more right. After starting out with exclusive rights to specific and large budget ad campaigns, the price of Snap’s stock and the realities of acquiring revenue have pushed its business development into a more mainstream approach with auctions and a fully automated programmatic platform. Their cost per impression is now about 70% of Instagram’s cost and about 57% of Facebook’s cost.

The good news for digital advertising publishers is that the low price can come in handy when getting the most bang for your buck. Efficiently spending your marketing budget is a foundational principle of PPC, and Snapchat’s relatively low competition levels among publishers make it an attractive source of cheap impressions. Getting web traffic – and even conversions – is simply more cost effective on Snap.

Finally, the lower costs and automated platform are recent changes that happened just this year – so by getting started now, you’ll be ahead of the pack, learning and becoming experienced at the ground level when Snap Ads are just starting to take off. This experience can be a valuable competitive edge in the long term.

Via Ad Espresso

2. Snap Ad Types

Snap Ads are as unique as the platform on which they’re served. From the use of augmented reality, to filters, to face swapping in selfies, brands can cater to users by taking advantage of Snap’s beloved creative tools to delight and engage its audience in order to drive brand awareness – and even sales.

To start with, ‘Snaps’ are a unique version of videos and pictures shared on the platform that disappear like a Mission Impossible description once viewed. This puts less pressure on the youngsters to provide a huge investment of time and thought into posting content. That’s the context of most of the content on Snapchat, to give you an idea of the unique offering of this social media platform.

One of the most common Snap ads comes in a full-screen video format. You can direct traffic to your website, direct users to install your app, or just show a long-form video. Video is huge on Snapchat, with approximately 10 billion video views per day! Snap users are really into videos, and if you can mimic some of what captures their attention, you can get valuable exposure – and even conversions for your brand.

Via Neil Patel

This ad format also has a lead generation option similar to that on LinkedIn and Facebook, which allows users to give the email address associated with their account with a simple swipe (a swipe is similar to a ‘click’ in other advertising formats, so a more apt phrase for advertising with Snap might be PPS, pay-per-swipe). This lead generation option allows businesses to acquire top-of-funnel micro conversions with little friction.

App installs are obviously a great option if you are advertising your app. There is an option to create a CTA (call-to-action) where they install your app from this ad type. The fact that users don’t have to go to an app store – or even leave the Snap app – reveals the frictionless ad environment that publishers crave. If you’re an app with a younger demographic, it is a no-brainer to advertise on Snap once you have a viable budget and some criteria on your buyer persona.

You can also just simply show a long-form video. This is obviously a top-of-funnel play meant to drive awareness to your product/service, brand, or industry. Basically, if you’re B2C and you’re seeking brand awareness and/or you have a younger demo, Snap needs to be on your radar.

3. Filters

Filters are one of the many unique and creative tools that Snapchat users apply to their pictures to bring joy to their audience. For example, you can make your face look like a dog or cat. These filters are like adding a make-believe augmented reality that is at the heart of what makes Snap so fun.

Advertisers have the option to sponsor certain filters. For example, a targeted filter that recognizes a user is at a hockey game will allow that user to use a team sponsored filter for their picture.

Via Neil Patel

These geofilters are a unique aspect of Snapchat advertising that allow businesses to sponsor certain filters based on the users’ location. This option works really well for brick and mortar locations, events, and other location-based promotions that are related to your business.

For big business brands, this geofilter-ing option can be a huge boon, especially since Snapchat allows you to market to a small radius around certain store areas applied across the nation or any other region(s). This particular type of geofilter is called an ‘on-demand’ geofilter, and you can control how long it is available, along with the location specifications.

Adding these branded filters can take advantage of users’ fear-of-missing-out, or FOMO. Users at the event will want to proudly show they’re at the event, and users not at the event will notice your filter associated with a cool event.

4. Lenses

Lenses are the final category of ad type that highlight the augmented reality capabilities of Snap to alter images – especially user faces – in an animated and dynamic fashion. The animated (or motion) aspect of the picture add-ons is the main difference between filters and lenses.

Via Neil Patel

Check out this Gatorade Snap Ad with lenses using a celebrity.

As you can see, Snapchat’s capabilities and camera-focused app makes its ads a similarly visual production that don’t really allow for words to further a more in-depth experience. Therefore, advertising on Snap is mostly a top-of-funnel and awareness endeavor, more so than even Instagram and Facebook offer.

5. Other Media Add-Ons And Adjustments

In addition to filters and lenses, you can still update photos with emojis, text add-ins, and drawings. This is part of the fun and ad hoc updates to media that Snapchat is all about – and the more offbeat you get, the more Snapchat you are!

Via Ad Espresso

6. Snap-To-Unlock

You can put QR code-like “Snapcodes” on real life advertisements to enhance the user experience at an event. When a user scans the code, it pops open to more branded content within the Snap app that enhances the users’ live experience.

7. Story Ads

Snap’s Story Ads are similar to sponsored posts within Facebook’s ecosystem. They can be found in Snapchat’s Discovery section when people are searching for new things to entertain themselves. They are also shared with all of your followers, so Snap Stories are also a way to reinforce your brand’s personality with some fun.

A branded title cover for a story ad can open up to 3-20 Snaps that a brand curates to tell their… you guessed it, brand story.

Companies start with their logo, a high quality image, and 55 characters to describe their branded story. From there, you get up to 20 Snaps to tell your story. This is a great way to show off your brand’s personality and connect emotionally with your audience through entertaining and captivating storytelling.

The Snap Story is essentially up to 20 curated Snap Ads in one. It is meant to engage longer with a user that chooses to check your story out. You get 25 characters for the headline of each Snap Ad, along with 34 characters for a headline for each Snap. Each Snap ad can run for 10 seconds minimum, all the way up to 200 seconds.

And just like with Facebook, any text within the image or video should be minimal and not conflict with the logo or headline text. You really want the images and video to stand on their own

Often, on other top-of-funnel mediums like Facebook’s News Feed, it is recommended that you show an entertaining or educational video that adds value without pushing the hard sell, which may be a turn off for users. Story ads require a similar mindset and approach.

You’re competing with stories that are entertaining in their own right and that aren’t trying to make a certain brand look great. Therefore, if you pitch a brand, you’ll want to be super savvy and subtle with it. Trying too hard can be a real turn off, especially with the younger demographic, who can be a tough crowd. If you’re from an older generation, maybe this analogy makes the point clearer – you gotta be cool like Fonzie from Happy Days.

Fonzie is Cool Without Trying

Here are other hints from the folks at Snapchat themselves:

• Ensure your brand logo pops on the image – take advantage of the full logo space available by separating your logo into two lines if necessary to fill the maximum allotted space
• Create a curiosity gap or sense of urgency with your Story title
• Keep copy clear, concise, and honest
• When it works, tease utility, novelty, and relevance with your Story title

The process of making a good Story Ad is not that different from coming up with a good movie plot/storyline in a detail-oriented storyboard process. The devil is in the details, and the more work and attention to detail you cover, the better the story will be. You want to tell a story that flows well, exudes energy, and makes an impact quickly.

Story Ads just became available on the programmatic self-service platform, so it is easier than ever for businesses to tell their stories on Snap.

8. Be Real

Above all, be true to your brand and don’t take yourself too seriously. As you can see from some of the examples already, Snapchat is a place where you can let loose and be a little silly. Let your endearing and charming side out, and try to keep the stuffy marketer inside.

9. Target Online Shoppers With Trust

Seventy-six percent of Snapchat users are online shoppers, so Ecommerce and retail companies have a big opportunity – especially with the new push towards online shopping by Snapchat. These new features include a visual search shopping tool with Amazon and shoppable Snap Ads.

Snapchat recognizes their value-add to specific advertisers and their reach to online shoppers – and advertisers should take heed as well. Indeed, mobile Snapchat users are 20% more likely to make online purchases on their phones. The shopping vibes on Snapchat are real.

Snapchat advertisers for Ecommerce and retail companies will no doubt take advantage of these new features and boost their advertising on Snap in the coming year because of these changes. Additionally, Snapchat brands should lay the foundation for trust using the aforementioned storytelling tactics.

By being real and showing a personality through sincere messaging, Snap advertisers can enhance the effectiveness of the new Ecommerce and retail tools coming to Snap in the near future. They’ll be doubly more prepared than brands who are hopping onto the advertising push just because they hear about these new features. In business, as in all meaningful endeavors, ‘luck favors the prepared’. Advertising on Snapchat is no different.

Finally, the Snapchat audience is a haven for B2C advertisers, because Snap users are simply more likely to consume (and even have a penchant for luxury brands).

Via AdWeek

10. Use Coupon Codes

16 Handles exemplifies a staple for B2C ads on Snap: the coupon code. Offering an instant discount using the engagement-conducive setting of Snapchat to promote your product is a win-win-win!

Via Ad Espresso

The other bonus of using a coupon code is that you can track it. Since most campaigns seek to lift brand awareness, using coupon code campaigns allows you to track responses and the usage of the code. You can measure engagement and do cost-benefit analysis with the brand lift and awareness that you create.

Snapchat even has ways to measure the lift in foot traffic that certain campaigns can bring to brick and mortar locations. For example, Wendy’s ran a geofilter campaign to promote their jalapeno chicken sandwich, and in one week increased in-store traffic by over 40K visits.

While the bigger brands with money are obviously going to be the the more successful stories, because of the self-serving platform available starting this year, smaller businesses will be able to run targeted campaigns with comparable impact.

Via Ad Espresso

11. Looking Towards The Future

Coupon codes and discounts build brand loyalty amongst the younger demographic. Of course, quality products and services and exclusive benefits matter, too. These concepts (while seemingly obvious) are important, because businesses are not only building for the short-term, but also for the sustainable future.

If you’re lucky enough to be around in the next five to ten years, your customer base may very well include many of the young demographic that makes up the majority of Snapchat’s current user base … if you treat them right. If you’re thinking really long-term, this can be an opportunity to build that loyal customer base from these users now.

Most of these young people have only known shopping on mobile devices, and that may very well be the future of all shopping. Catering to this audience and sector now creates a brand recognition that will pay off huge dividends in the long run – if you can sustain your business for the long-term.

Youngsters already take pictures of their purchases to share with family and friends and to discuss pricing. Imagine how it would be in the future when product recognition technology becomes more prevalent. By developing a relationship with the tech savvy consumers of the future now, your brand can be among the trusted businesses that these consumers go to for many years to come.

12. Audience Targeting Options

Like most social media platforms these days that offer streamlined auction and self-serve programmatic ad-buying, Snapchat offers a wide variety of audience targeting options based on their sophisticated algorithms that track user behavior and interests.

Predefined audiences can help brands use business-focused parameters to find the right targets based on their goals and relevant buyer personas. It is good to experiment with as many of these audiences as possible to see what works best for you and gauge baseline performance metrics for different types of ads, content, and offers. The sooner you can gather data for future A/B tests, the better.

Predefined audiences can be further broken down into 4 sub-audiences as seen above, and these can be super useful and getting granular with your targeting. This is especially helpful if you have different angles to market your product to different segments of the population. Here is an example of the Viewers subset of predefined audiences.

A lot of the content on Snap is in video format, and if you know the types of viewing content that certain audiences tend to watch, you’ll have a better chance of engagement.

Even more valuable can be the Shopper subset of predefined audiences, which can indicate buying behavior that can be super useful to Ecommerce and retail companies.

Similarly, if you are a retail or brick and mortar business that wants to target an audience based on their actions, you can feel more confident with your messaging when you know that your audience has visited certain types of places recently – which is what the Visitor predefined audience offers to Snapchat ad publishers.

Finally, there’s Custom Audiences, which are a staple of any social media advertising platform these days. You know the drill – if you have emails, customer lists, or device IDs that you want to retarget with messaging to increase retention and loyalty, the custom audience option allows you to upload your proprietary data to Snap’s ad platform to target such individuals.

On top of that, Snap has lookalike audience capabilities, similar to Facebook and other social media ad platforms. Snap also has a special Pixel or tracking code that you can place across your website so that you can target users based on their interaction with your brand or website, such as specific pages visited within the past 13 months.

Finally, Snapchat’s partnership with Oracle and Nielsen allow extra audiences on top of the audiences just described. With these custom third-party audiences, Snap ad publishers can target based on past viewership behavior through an expansive data marketplace provided by Snap’s partners.

13. Snapchat Isn’t For Everyone

If you are a B2B business, or you don’t have a brick and mortar location, or you don’t have an outsized budget to spend on brand awareness activities, then there’s a good chance that Snapchat isn’t worth your time. And it’s okay to come to that realization after doing the research. Snapchat really isn’t for everyone.

Snapchat also isn’t all that influential compared to its competitors.

Via E-Marketer

There’s a reason why Snapchat Ads are cheaper than the rest. As you can see, even blogs are more influential than Snapchat. Since there are fewer users on Snapchat (and they are much younger), advertisers simply don’t use Snapchat as much, which can create a knock-on effect.

14. Test, Test, Test

You’ll never know if Snapchat is right for you unless you test, and there are enough targeted audiences to make tests at least a little worthwhile on their own. There are also certain trends that exist within Snapchat about their users, outside of the young demo.

For example, about 6.4% of users are between the ages of 45-54, 70% of users are women, and nearly 40% have an income above $50K. These are still relevant demos that can apply to businesses that don’t fit the cookie cutter Snapchat ad publisher profile.

You never really know until you try.

After you try, Snapchat has some pretty good analytics tools to help you measure your campaigns’ effectiveness. Analytics, of course, is another staple aspect of a sound PPC strategy.

Via Neil Patel

You’ll want to document as much about the campaigns you run and the baseline metrics you find so that you can make progress on figuring out which campaigns, offers, audiences, and ads work the best. Here are a few key performance indicators that can be relevant to B2C and the brand awareness goals of Snapchat via Ad Espresso:

• Number of stories
• Total number and average of story opens
• Average story completion rate
• Estimated total followers

You’ll want to measure the metrics that apply to your business the most by using those that correlate best with your business’ success.

A Final Word

Snap is a unique medium with a defined user base and a distinct camera app offering of filters, lenses, and other augmented reality tools to drive engagement in its users’ social sharing of content.

While B2C, Ecommerce, retail, and brick and mortar businesses stand to gain the most from this niche social media ad platform, most businesses should at least test the waters if they have any kind of alignment in terms of goals (brand awareness) or audience (not all members are youngsters). Testing is the foundation of PPC, and trying out a cheap source of impressions is a low risk play.

While the future of Snap is rightfully in question, the cost effective impressions it can provide and its alignment with the Ecommerce boom make it more than worthy of a PPC professional’s time.