Advertising on Snapchat is expensive; $750,000 for a video that users have to voluntarily watch, it disappears after 24 hours, and you can’t tell how many women versus men saw the ad. That can be the majority of the media budget for a lot of companies, but you also have to realize how many people, especially millennials, use Snapchat. There are 100 million monthly active users on Snapchat, and 71% of those are under 25.
Even if you don’t advertise on it, Snapchat is still a viable social media platform to use to connect to customers. There are many ways to use it for free by starting a brand account and have people follow, similar to twitter. The best way to get followers is to post about it on your other social media channels, since there is no way to promote to new followers on the app. The “My Story” feature are what brands use the most. “My Story” allows brands to post pictures and videos for their followers to see. This could be anything from a sneak peek at a new product to video tours of the office.
Once you post your photos or videos, they will stay on your story for 24 hours, then they will disappear forever. Throughout the 24 hours, you will have the ability to see how many times your “snaps” have been viewed. Currently, this is the only data you can get from your snaps, but Snapchat is in the works to provide more analysis for their brands.
There is a lot of potential for advertising on Snapchat. But for now, brands will have to use it as another social media platform to connect to their followers.