Top Snapchat Ad Strategies

Advertising on Snapchat can significantly benefit your business by helping you connect with new audiences, increase engagement, and boost conversions. Adopting the right approaches is essential to effectively using Snapchat for marketing. These include utilizing intelligent data sources, improving how you target your audience, and enhancing your return on investment (ROI). Developing effective Snapchat ad strategies can be time-consuming if you do not know how to create one. Our guide outlines many high-ROI Snapchat advertising strategies to save your precious time.

Why Use Snapchat Ads?

Snapchat is an effective advertising platform that can enhance brand growth and attract high-value customers effectively. What makes Snapchat a potent tool for marketing?

The platform reaches a large audience, helping marketers increase brand awareness and establish a stronger presence on social media. Snapchat boasts over 800 million monthly users, with a significant portion of them—39% of the advertising target audience—being between 18 and 24 years old. Additionally, 64% of users view ads with the sound on, indicating active engagement. Plus, over 57% of businesses utilize video ads on Snapchat.

Furthermore, Snapchat offers a diverse array of innovative ad formats. Besides standard video ads that provide broad reach, specialized formats like Filters and AR Lenses offer dynamic and engaging ways to connect with users.

Why Is a Good Snapchat Ad Strategy Crucial for Marketing?

A strong marketing strategy on Snapchat is essential because of its unique characteristics and appeal to a young, active user base. Crafting a strategy informed by data helps direct your campaign efforts, from content creation to audience targeting, ensuring that your marketing initiatives align with your business goals.

With its 420 million daily active users, primarily between 18 and 24, Snapchat provides a valuable opportunity for reaching a youthful audience. Employing Snapchat’s advertising tools like AR Lenses, Filters, and Snap Ads can enhance user engagement. These features enable brands to deliver interactive and impactful experiences that increase brand recognition and conversions.

Additionally, utilizing Story Ads that integrate well into user feeds, along with creative formats like AR try-ons and exclusive content, can greatly enhance user interaction and visibility. Successful marketers on Snapchat often combine strategic content development with precise advertising, constantly refining their approach using immediate data and analytics. The platform’s robust analytics tools allow marketers to track campaign performance and adapt quickly, concentrating efforts on the most successful strategies. This flexible, dynamic marketing approach is vital for keeping pace with the rapid changes in social media trends and user behavior on Snapchat.

Popular Snapchat Ad Strategies for Result-Driven Outcomes

Set Clear Objectives

When setting up your advertising strategy on Snapchat, the first crucial step is to choose an objective. Think about what action you want Snapchatters to take after seeing your ad. If you’re running an ecommerce business, you might consider several objectives.

• Awareness ads are useful for building brand or product recognition among new customers.
• The Promote Places option is appropriate if you want to promote physical locations.
• App Installs encourage users to download your app, while the Traffic objective directs them to a specific webpage, like a landing page or a product page.
• Engagement objectives aim to increase interactions with your ad, Video Views boost the visibility of your video content, Website Conversions track significant activities like purchases on your site, and Catalog Sales showcase your product catalog.

These objectives can be grouped into three broad categories that align with the typical phases of the customer journey: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversations. Customers are introduced to your brand, service, or product in the Awareness phase. During the Consideration phase, they delve deeper into what you offer and think about making a purchase. In the Conversion phase, they purchase or take another action they deem valuable. Selecting an objective requires understanding where your customers are in their journey and tailoring your ads to match.

For those new to Snapchat, it is advisable to start with awareness-oriented ads to cultivate familiarity among potential customers. Then, retargeting engaged users with ads that encourage consideration and ultimately drive conversions is recommended.

Ensure Your Ads Integrate Well with the Snapchat Experience

Snapchat focuses on its users, and it’s clear that they prefer a feed without intrusive ads. Your goal should be to ensure that your ads do not interfere with or disturb the user experience. The aim is for your ads to appear as a natural part of the Snapchat environment.

To do this, adopt the concise and direct storytelling style typical of Snap, making your ads feel like they belong on Snapchat. Limit your ad duration to a short 5-6 seconds. Although this might seem brief, it is the ideal length to connect with potential customers naturally and unobtrusively within the Snapchat community. This strategy puts your brand in the middle of their conversations.

Consider using user-generated content (UGC) and Snapchat-style features in your ads. Studies show that such ads are significantly more effective in establishing a stronger connection with your audience than more polished ads.

Select the Best Ad Format for Your Goals

When advertising on Snapchat, choosing the right ad format is crucial for meeting your marketing goals. Snapchat provides several ad formats designed for specific outcomes. Whether your aim is to increase app installs, enhance brand awareness, or drive conversions, the correct ad format choice can substantially influence your campaign’s effectiveness. Here are some popular ad formats:

• Single Image or Video Ads: These full-screen ads allow you to highlight your products or services and motivate Snapchatters to act by swiping up.
• Story Ads: Positioned between Snapchat stories, these branded tiles are effective for creating excitement about your brand or latest offerings.
• Collection Ads: With four clickable tiles, these ads let Snapchatters easily browse through multiple products.
• Dynamic Ads: Tailored automatically to showcase a variety of products and their variations, these ads are effective for promoting a broad product range.

Choosing the best ad format for your specific objectives can lead to a more effective and engaging advertisement experience for your audience.

Create Visually Compelling and Engaging Ads

Ensure your ad captures and holds attention, encouraging viewers to watch it through to the end—or even replay it. Achieve this by crafting distinctive visuals, utilizing filters, and narratively structuring your ads. Employ bright colors and integrate text into your visuals, allowing viewers to follow along as the story progresses in real-time easily, or to catch details they might have missed on a first watch.

Correctly Linking Your Ads

It is crucial to link your ads properly to ensure a smooth user experience and optimize for conversions. Snapchat provides several attachment types tailored to different campaign objectives, all designed to prompt an action that leads into your sales funnel and boosts conversions.

Snapchat Ads presents three main types of ad links:

• Web view attachments: Ideal for increasing online sales, this option enables users to swipe up to access your landing page quickly.
• App install attachments: These attachments promote app downloads with buttons like “Install Now” or “Download” that link directly to your app installation page.
• Deep link attachments: These links direct users to specific areas within your app, such as new product collections or special promotions, which help engage current app users.

The type of ad link you choose should correspond with the goals of your landing page and the characteristics of your products. For example, a landing page typically targets specific campaign goals, such as:

• Increasing sales
• Building an email list
• Distributing white papers

For instance, directing users to the Google Play or App Store to download your app would be suitable if you develop mobile apps. If you manage an e-commerce site, you might use your landing page to provide a sign-up incentive, like a 10% discount code for new newsletter subscribers.

Introduce product-oriented Shopping Lenses.

Snapchat’s AR Lenses are not merely for entertainment; they are a practical tool for business. By utilizing AR to present your products, you can immediately grab the attention of your desired audience and give them strong reasons to purchase.

For example, you could enable users to view physical products through an AR Lens or highlight a seasonal promotion with a creative filter. AR’s interactive nature tends to be more engaging for consumers, assisting you in creating effective Snapchat campaigns.

Augmented reality can be an effective marketing tool when backed by a strong creative strategy. Therefore, consider integrating AR Lenses into your Snapchat strategy.

Use Appropriate Sound or Music Effects

Focusing on your ads’ auditory aspects can improve their effectiveness. Remember, over 60% of Snapchat ads are watched with sound turned on. This highlights the importance of using sound to engage viewers effectively, as neglecting to include sound may lead to missed opportunities to connect with your audience.

A proven sound strategy includes using spoken customer testimonials in your advertisements. Hearing actual customers speak about your products or brand helps the audience grasp what you offer, establishes a connection with your brand, and demonstrates the value your business provides.

Evaluate Your Ad Creatives

While Snapchat ads are a robust method to connect with and engage your audience, it is not advisable to rely indefinitely on a single ad creative. Given that both trends and user behavior are in constant flux, it’s crucial to continuously assess and update your ad creatives and consider different ad formats.

Testing your ads provides critical insights into what appeals most to your target demographic. Snapchat suggests running an ad for at least 2-4 weeks to gather sufficient data to assess its performance. Plus, it’s beneficial to experiment with various ad formats, allowing you to identify the most effective strategy for your brand.

Implement Goal-Based Bidding to Target Specific Actions

Goal-based bidding is an effective method for steering your ad delivery towards particular actions you want Snapchatters to take, such as app installs, video views, or purchases. This approach allows you to set a desired cost-per-action (CPA) and ensures that your ads are targeted to achieve these objectives efficiently.

Snapchat provides several automated bidding strategies like Auto-Bidding, Max Bid, and Target Cost Bidding to align with your business goals. Utilizing goal-based bidding helps you enhance your ad performance and achieve the desired results while adhering to your budget.

Make Use of Retargeting Ads

Using retargeting ads to guide an audience through a marketing funnel can yield a higher conversion rate than employing a single advertisement. Retargeting involves showing another ad or a series of ads to an audience based on their interactions with a previous ad.

Snapchat refers to these groups as ad engagement audiences, focusing on retargeting strategies specifically for actions taken on Snapchat ads.

Here’s how you might structure a sequence of retargeting ads:

• Start with a seven-second video ad showcasing your product’s unique features and uses, serving as an initial brand awareness push.
• Next, target users who engaged with this video, such as those who swiped up, by showing them an ad highlighting your brand’s sustainability commitment. This will move them to the consideration stage of the funnel.
• For those who engage with this second ad, advance them to the conversion stage by offering them an ad featuring a sale and free shipping.

Offering discounts and free shipping can be particularly effective in converting users who are undecided about making a purchase.

Optimize Through Understanding Your Audience Reach

Gaining a comprehensive understanding of your audience reach is crucial to enhancing your Snapchat ads campaigns effectively. Snapchat’s Audience Insights tool offers essential data on your target audience, such as demographics, interests, and behaviors. Use this information to customize your ad creatives for specific audience segments and improve engagement.

By examining your performance data and discerning effective strategies, you can adjust your targeting, messaging, and creative elements to increase the impact of your campaigns.

Conclusion

Leveraging Snapchat for advertising offers substantial benefits, including the ability to reach a young and engaged audience. Businesses can significantly enhance their marketing efforts by setting clear objectives, integrating seamlessly with the platform’s user experience, and selecting the most effective ad formats.

Utilizing tools such as AR Lenses, appropriate sound effects, goal-based bidding, and continuously evaluating and retargeting ads ensures campaigns remain effective and relevant. Snapchat’s robust analytics and diverse ad formats enable marketers to craft compelling, high-ROI strategies that align with their business goals, driving brand growth and customer engagement in a dynamic social media landscape.

Frequently Asked Questions