How to set up a Snapchat for Business account If you choose to advertise on Snapchat, you’ll need a business account. If you don’t have an account, create one here. Identify your audience via Snapchat Insights As a marketer, your audience is everything. Here’s how to do that, step-by-step: Step 1: Identify your competition The best way to identify a competitor is by analyzing your audience. Adding content to your story is simple: Step 1. To create this effect, many businesses create “behind-the-scenes” Stories, providing content followers would otherwise never see. This means your email signature is extremely visible, which makes it the perfect place to display your Snapchat icon. How to do it: Record a video Snap Tap the speaker button in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen Choose the voice filter you’d like to add to your Snap These are 5 essential hacks. Tap the icon to open it. Unique views This is the total number of people who opened the first video or image on your Snapchat story and viewed it for at least one second.
It’s 2019—and Snapchat still has about 188 million active daily users.
But it’s also still dwarfed by Instagram—which has 500 million daily users—and probably always will be.
And that begs the question: why should your business invest in capturing attention and building an audience on Snapchat, the demonstrably less popular platform?
Let me explain.
As of 2018, about 45 percent of Snapchat users are 18 – 24 years old and 71 percent are under 34 years old. That means Snapchat is still extremely popular among Millennials. So if your goal is to engage a younger demographic, Snapchat can be a potent source of engagement.
Also, Snapchat users create 3 billion videos a day, spending an average of 30 minutes on the platform. Those numbers—coupled with Snapchat’s impressive audience targeting capabilities—suggest big opportunities for brands and marketers.
Don’t have a Snapchat for Business account?
Let’s set you up…
Bonus: Download a free guide that reveals the steps to create custom Snapchat geofilters and lenses, plus tips on how to use them to promote your business.
How to set up a Snapchat for Business account
If you choose to advertise on Snapchat, you’ll need a business account.
If you don’t have an account, create one here. Then fill in your business details.
Like most actions on Snapchat, creating a business account is simple and intuitive. Once your business is established, you’ll be prompted to create a campaign. Of course, this is optional. As a business, you don’t need to advertise on the platform to garner attention, build an audience, and make an impact.
Onward.
7 essential Snapchat marketing tips for business
Yes, allocating spend to your content will improve its reach.
That said, there are other strategies you can use to optimize your marketing on Snapchat. These are time-tested, proven tactics and principles social media marketers can apply to grow virtually any brand.
If you’re new to Snapchat, be sure to read our beginner’s guide. It will help you learn the technical skills necessary to apply these strategies.
But if you already know the fundamentals, stay put. You’re in the right place. These tips will help you make the most of your presence.
Let’s go:
1. Identify your audience via Snapchat Insights
As a marketer, your audience is everything. But your audience is not everyone.
Your audience is a group of people who all share the same want. And, maybe, they all share a unique blend of characteristics. For example, your audience may live in a specific location; your audience may speak a specific language; your audience may make a specific income.
The better you understand these characteristics, the better you’ll be at creating good copy and art that captures attention, incites interest, creates desire, and compels action.
You may already know your audience, in which case you’re ahead. But if you’re still working to understand who to target, use Snapchat Insights. This is the platform’s built-in analytics tool, which, among other statistics, can tell you:
- Your viewer count over weeks, months, and years
- Your viewers’ age, location, gender, and even interests
- Your viewers’ attention span (i.e., how many people watched your content until the very end)
In addition to showing your unique views, view times, and completion rates, Snapchat Insights can tell you your content’s fall-off rate and screenshot count.
These statistics can only help you better understand what your audience wants.
2. Set goals
You’re using Snapchat. But are you finding success? Maybe. Maybe not.
You wouldn’t be able to tell if your content investment is worth the resources unless you set clear goals.
Good social media marketers always set goals for themselves. But the best social media marketers set S.M.A.R.T. goals: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely goals.
Let’s break it down:
Make it “Specific”
For example, it’s not enough to say, “I want to increase my Snapchat reach.”
Instead, you should say, “I want to increase my Snapchat audience to 4000 followers.”
Make it “Measurable”
For example, it’s not enough to say, “I want to increase engagement on Snapchat.”
Instead, you should say, “I want to drive my screenshot count up by 12% and my fall-off rate down by 5%.”
Make it “Attainable”
For example, you can’t say, “We’ve never done it before, but I still want this type of content to drive 100 new Millennial followers per month.”
Instead, you have to say, “Introducing this type of content added 50 Millennial followers to our account, so if we double down on this content next month, we’ll be on track to add 100 new female followers.”
Make it “Relevant”
For example, if you want to use Snapchat to grow your mailing list, it doesn’t make sense to create objectives around screenshot counts.
Instead, it makes more sense to focus on driving followers to your website, where they can sign up for your newsletter.
The latter is far more relevant and applicable to your business goals.
Make it “Timely”
For example, it’s not enough to say, “we’ll have these changes implemented sometime in Q2.”
Instead, it’s more effective if you say, “we’ll have these changes implemented by May 15.”
The S.M.A.R.T. goal framework will keep you honest and focused as you create marketing objectives.
3. Conduct a competitive analysis
If you want to know where you’re excelling and where you’re falling short, study your competitors.
That is, conduct a competitive analysis by analyzing the accounts and activities of other brands in your space. Here’s how to do that, step-by-step:
Step 1: Identify your competition
The best way to identify a competitor is by analyzing your audience.
Who else is your audience following? Do any of those brands resemble your own? Those that do are vying for your prospects’ attention. But not every competing brand is worth analyzing.
Start by creating a long list, then pare it down. Choose three or four strong competitors to benchmark yourself against.
Step 2: Dig in
Now it’s time to research, taking several metrics into consideration, including:
Presence
Are your competitors active on every social network? Or only a couple?
Following
How many people are following your competitors? And how quickly is each following growing?
Cadence
How often do your competitors post?
Engagement
How many likes, retweets, shares, and comments do your competitors’ average?
Now it’s time to analyze this raw data.
Step 3: SWOT
SWOT stands for: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
Strengths
Analyze to understand what your competitors are doing well on Snapchat? Are their posts timely or interesting or clever? What strategies can you borrow?
Weaknesses
Analyze where your competitors are falling short. Is their cadence slow or inconsistent? Are their posts…
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