How To Make Money on Snapchat: What and What you need to do

Snapchat is being used by more than 300 million people every day. And it doesn’t appear that it will become smaller any time soon. The platform has seen a growth of 20% year over year. This makes it a potent social media tool that ecommerce companies can use to expand their advertising reach and increase revenue.

What is Snapchat and why does it matter for businesses?

With the help of the social media platform Snapchat, users may send each other photos and messages that vanish after ten seconds (for private messages) or twenty-four hours (for Snapchat Stories). The communications, known as “snaps,” are a quick and mostly visual way for people to remain in touch with pals.

In fact, 71% of Snapchat users are under 34 and 45% are between the ages of 18 and 24. Snapchat has a large user base among Gen Zers and the younger end of millennials. Although the platform is famous for its vanishing messages, it also offers a ton of advertising options including dynamic advertisements, regionally tailored sponsored lenses, and Snap Stories that allow businesses to boost their visibility, traffic, and conversion rates. There are also many other calls to action (CTAs) with various purposes.

The high levels of engagement on Snapchat may be its finest feature.

The typical user uses the app for at least 30 minutes at a time, and the two most common uses are for shopping and socializing.

Additionally, when it comes to shopping, 40% of users claim to have found a new brand while snapping, 60% of users are likely to make an impulsive purchase while using the app, and 35% of users submit snaps of things they’d want to buy, providing firms more visibility and a larger audience.

The pros and cons of using Snapchat to advertise

Snapchat has advantages and disadvantages that you should be aware of before using it. If you’re trying to establish an audience of active Gen Zers, for instance, go ahead; it might not be the greatest platform if you’re trying to target boomers.

The pros of Snapchat for business

Driving traffic to your site: you can add links to your website in Snapchat Stories to direct users to specific product pages or landing pages
Resonating with users: Snapchat content tends to be more personal and authentic, allowing you to connect on a deeper level with your target audience
Communicating with followers directly: the ability to respond to Stories and ads means you can encourage direct conversations with your Snapchat followers
Reaching a young audience: Snapchat’s audience leans heavily on the younger side (who’s spending power reached $143 billion last year)
Facing a low barrier to entry: it’s easy to get started both logistically and monetarily (follow these steps)—you can create an account, set up payment methods, and make sure your pixel is firing in minutes
Using the platform with ease: Snapchat’s built-in ads manager is easy to use with a simple, intuitive interface

The cons of Snapchat for business

Getting a smaller audience: while Snapchat does have a sizeable user base, it’s not quite as big as other platforms like Facebook and Instagram
Dealing with time restraints: videos can only be 10 seconds long, and automatically disappear after 24 hours
Resharing content isn’t simple: there’s no “re-gram” button on Snapchat, making it difficult to share customer-created content and celebrate your fans
Parsing subpar analytics: Snapchat’s analytics aren’t as dynamic or comprehensive as those of other platforms, which can make it tricky to track how well your ads and content are performing

Best practices for making money on Snapchat

1. Understand your audience

Understanding your target audience is essential for effective advertising on any platform, not just Snapchat. However, it’s important to research who your potential clients are on Snapchat and what interests them.

Investigate what your rivals are doing on the platform to achieve this: Do they post Snaps that are mostly focused on products, or do their advertisements have more of a lifestyle feel? To find out what your consumers want and need, you may also leverage data from your website analytics, e-commerce metrics, and other social media platforms.

Here’s a quick guide to understanding your audience:

Drill into web analytics, social media analytics, and buying data.
Create a survey or generate feedback from existing customers.
Research what your biggest competitors are doing on Snapchat.
Build a list of customer personas you can target with your ads.

2. Partner with influencers or create an affiliate program

For influencers, Snapchat has hit and miss moments. Because the network doesn’t provide the community as much assistance or functionality as other social media platforms, there has been some resentment from content creators. Although it might be a terrific approach to reach a new audience through a well-respected source, collaborating with relevant accounts to advertise your items can be quite effective.

As an alternative, you might attempt affiliate marketing by providing your clients and influencers with a unique link they can use to share your content with their audience in exchange for a portion of the transaction.

Joshua Peck, an influencer, and Amazon Echo collaborated to market Amazon Echo.

3. Use geofilters to capture local users

Use Snapchat’s geofilters to target a local audience for your brick-and-mortar business or to extend your reach to a particular town or city:

Toggle your Location Services to On for the Snapchat app
Tap the settings cog in Snapchat and choose the Manage option
Toggle Snapchat Filters on, which will enable geofilters

This may be a particularly efficient method of presenting visitors with location-specific adverts. For instance, you may provide discounts to Atlanta buyers or direct customers to your actual store in New York.

Everlane, a clothing company, employs the LA geofilter in its Snaps.

4. Create descriptive ads

Users of Snapchat are unwilling to uninstall the program. Before leaving their Snapchat inbox, people want to be fully aware of what they are getting themselves into. As a result, it’s critical that your advertisements be detailed.

5. Get to the point

You have exactly 10 seconds to hook users before they click away. You must describe the subject of your advertisement, your identity, and the benefits of clicking through or taking action at that period. That’s a lot to get across in only a few seconds.

You must thus make your argument as quickly as possible. On Snapchat, the initial few seconds are crucial, so make sure they’re working hard for you.

What Postmates wants viewers to do is extremely plain to them.

6. Showcase your product straight away

Make sure the product you are promoting is obvious or addressed as soon as feasible in your advertisements. Users of Snapchat don’t want to have to guess what you’re promoting because if they do, they’re likely to swipe to the next story and entirely ignore you.

Younger generations of customers need simple, straightforward information from the brands they patronize. To do this, showcase your goods right away and, if a discount is available, offer it within the first few seconds.

e.l.f. Cosmetics starts out their advertisements with a small selection of items, which has increased site visits by 20%.

7. Leverage UGC

Consumers are more likely to trust user-generated content (UGC) than any other type of advertising, with 71% agreeing that it increases their sense of security when making purchases. Snapchat’s organic nature makes user-generated material, such as reviews, videos, and images, an ideal fit.

Use UGC in your Snapchat advertising to evoke a personal atmosphere and provide potential consumers the chance to learn about previous customers’ shopping experiences.

Moitié employed user-generated material in their advertisements to advertise to a larger group of millennials and members of Generation Z.

8. Create a sense of urgency

Just to be clear, you just have 10 seconds to grab Snapchat users’ attention. Fear of missing out (FOMO) can be triggered by adding a countdown timer or running a limited-time offer, which will encourage customers to take action.

During Black Friday, the Danish company Matas advertised a limited-time offer.

9. Make sure ads work with sound off

Although Snapchat has previously said that two-thirds of users view content with sound on, don’t base your decisions on this information. Additional study reveals that consumers frequently use the app when on the go, indicating that they are using it to pass the time whether waiting in line for the bus, brewing their coffee, or at the post office.

It makes sense to design advertisements that function with the sound on and off. One of the simplest ways to achieve this is by adding subtitles or auto-captions to your advertisements so that viewers who are watching with the sound off may still follow along.

10. Keep a close eye on budget

Snapchat demands a $5 daily minimum for advertising. The cost of clicks and impressions varies by industry (and by ad type), but if you select your goal budget up front, Snapchat will limit your bids to that sum.

By closely monitoring your spending, you can make sure you know where your money is going and determine which advertising are giving you the best return on investment.

11. Test, tweak, and try again

Snapchat advertising might not appear correctly the first time. Young audiences are discriminating about the businesses they will support and the information they will consume, so it is worthwhile to spend some time experimenting with various ad forms. Keep an eye on how your advertisements are doing, and make adjustments to forthcoming campaigns to match the outcomes you’re seeing.

Your advertising will get better and you’ll be able to reach your audience faster the more you test and edit them.