Snapchat has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a disappearing photo app nearly five years ago. Now with storytelling capabilities and interactive—often hilarious—filter options, according to Bloomberg, the quirky social media platform has recently seen tremendous user growth (they now have more users than Twitter) with 150 million active daily users.
While it continues to be a hit among the pre-teen and teenager crowds, use of the platform is growing massively among adults — particularly Millennials – but there’s recently been an uptick in users over 35 as well. While Snapchat could have easily gone the way of MySpace and other passing trends, it has proven to be increasingly utilized for sharing fun, entertaining, and engaging visual content. Snapchat presents both B2C and B2B brands with a great venue to grow brand affinity, company loyalty, and frequent audience engagement.
Unlike many other forms of marketing through social media, getting started on Snapchat requires little to no investment regardless of company size, and many B2C brands are already on the Snapchat bandwagon. B2B brands, however, have been slower to enter the fray. Considering that Snapchat has now gone mainstream, perhaps it’s time to consider if marketing your B2B product or services on Snapchat will make sense for your business objectives and audience. Here’s a quick overview of why your marketing campaign may benefit from adding Snapchat to the mix.
- You can provide value.Snapchat is a great platform to get creative and post unique snaps that can inspire, educate, and engage your audience while keeping them coming back for more. From offering sneak peeks about the latest product you’re working on to tradeshow news to what’s happening around the office, your buyers will get a more personal experience with your company.
- Snapchat has lots of features. There’s always some Snapchat feature that will entertain and engage your audience, including text and drawings, unique and funny filters, emojis and more. You can accompany your snaps and stories with a wide range of visual treats.
- You can use your other marketing channels to promote your Snapchat presence. Have content that’s a little too “casual” for a certain demographic on one social platform? Just point them in the direction of your Snapchat.
- There are tons of B2C brands on Snapchat. They’ve invested a lot of time (and possibly a bit of money) into finding out what works for their brand on the platform. Follow some of your favorite brands and look to them for inspiration for your company’s own marketing efforts and branding. Pay attention to the actions they take that catch your eye as a consumer and take notes for your own marketing campaign. Keep in mind that you are marketing to consumers, too – it’s just that your consumers are purchasing products and services for their business, not personal use.
But, just as with B2C consumers, your potential B2B buyers are also looking for great content from awesome brands that make them laugh, inspire, entertain, and inform. They are probably already on Snapchat. You just need to adapt your marketing campaign to take advantage of the connections and unique engagement Snapchat can provide for you and your audience.
