Here’s How Snapchat Advertising to Millennials Should Be Done
Originally published at linkedin.com on February 18, 2016.
Snapchat as an Emerging Platform:
Snapchat’s Discover has been its road to success: According to Recode’s Kurt Wagner, Snapchat is running ads at $100 cost per mille (CPM), that is $100 per 1,000 views. With an extensive line of publishers updating daily, it is no surprise that Snapchat is now worth $19 billion, possibly more.
With a daily line-up of paid publishers* such as Mashable, IGN, CNN and others (including its own Snapchat Channel), the free-to-download app is generating incredible amounts of ad revenue and content.
Read more about Snapchat’s Discover
→ Snapchat: Making it Easier for Users to Discover
However, how do companies that are not willing to pay for their reach compete against these brands?
Snapchat Influencers:
A very well-known brand is generating content that does not need Discover’s fancy presentation: The Coca-Cola Company. However, the content created on Snapchat is not from Coca-Cola’s social media team. Coca-Cola has given full control of their Snapchat account to people called “Snapchat Influencers”.
With the help of Harris Markowitz (one of their chosen “Snapchat influencers”), Coca-Cola has been providing weekly exclusive content for their Snapchat Story. Harris and other influencers’ branding of Coca-Cola reflect the company’s set mission: to refresh the world, to inspire moments of optimism and happiness, and to create value and make a difference (from The Coca-Cola Company). The Snapchat stories Coca-Cola creates refresh the organic advertisement world within the app by meeting all of their company missions in a creative way.
Engaging Millennials:
While watching Coca-Cola’s story through Snapchat, you are in control of advancing through scenes and the app itself provides a more 1-on-1 feel with the company.
Harris Markowitz’s A+ usage of Snapchat is what makes Coca-Cola’s stories effective. Coca-Cola’s Snapchat team is taking full use of the platform’s organic features. Snapchat users will know that the app allows for 10 second videos everytime, but it is often used event after event (i.e. First Snapchat being of the user walking to the store, and the second segment being one where the user is already in the store.) Coca-Cola breaks from that rough routine into a continuous flow; using the app’s video limitations, their team successfully uses it to transition the audience through different camera angles.
As seen in his first video, Harris changes the audience from a passive viewer to an engaged viewer. He directly asks the viewer, “I need your help. I need you to tap on the screen really really fast. Are you ready?” Here, he is utilizing Snapchat’s feature of tapping to go through Story’s content much quicker. The user is now engaged to quickly tap away, which is really the targeted action. Users see Harris move across the kitchen, getting a Coke for his friend Brad, and delivering it to him at the end.
New Platform, Zero Users:
When you start on a new social platform, in this case Snapchat, it could be hard to transition Instagram/ Twitter followers into your new platform. Coca-Cola updated their followers on Twitter and Instagram with a friendly post, each with 4,282 and 11,938 total engagements respectively.
Sharing is really restricted within Snapchat if you aren’t a paid publisher: users will often not advertise their Snapchat channels within their Snapchats, but instead will take on to other social media platforms to let followers know (in this case Instagram and Twitter).
You can follow Coca-Cola’s Snapchats through the first Snapcode, while the second belongs to their Snapchat Influencer, Harris Markowitz (check out his other accounts here).
Parting Thoughts:
Very few companies are organically advertising on Snapchat. When some do, as does Nintendo of America’s Snapchat (nintendoamerica), they often use the platform as other users do (posting pictures of products, etc.), which is okay. But to really stand out in Snapchat you have to engage your audience: you need to provide your audience with a reason as to why they should want to continue opening your content when it appears under the “Recent Updates”, or else it will only be another Story in your audience’s list. When advertising via Snapchat, you are more personally advertising to your audience as they have chosen to open your content from others.
If you are interested in following companies with engaging content similar to Coca Cola’s, their usernames are mashable, tacobell, and generalelectric. Coca-Cola has done an excellent job with keeping me, a busy college student, waiting for their next update, and I can only hope for more.
What are your thoughts on the different marketing done through Snapchat than in other platforms? Is this the way to approach Snapchat’s millennial users? Do you have any favorites that were not mentioned here? Submit them in the comment section below.
*Publishers vary day to day. Snapchat has introduced new publishers such as Refinery29.
Got any thoughts to add? Tweet me @juliangumbo or comment below!
Julian Gamboa is a UC Berkeley graduate with a focus on marketing. Julian was selected as a LinkedIn Top Voice for Marketing and #Social Media (2017) and a Course Instructor of the marketing and digital publishing course Digital Marketing Today at the Haas School of Business. He is also the founder of Digiviewpoint, a millennial publishing account.
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