Don’t Leap Into Snapchat Ads! Or should you?

 

Snapchat offers special strengths to reach certain audiences

Should you leap into Snapchat ads?

Look before you leap; that’s all I’m saying. Some small businesses and marketing departments got all excited last week when Snapchat announced it’s open for advertising.

Not so fast! Any low-cost way to advertise to an audience that’s hard to reach is exciting. You certainly should be looking at Snapchat, and all the major social channels — Twitter offers Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends, and Promoted Accounts; Facebook has side-rail ads, and Promoted Posts that feature your ads in users’ news feeds; even Pinterest offers Promoted Pins, which appear in related category feeds and user search results.

Snapchat hadn’t allowed advertising before now. Their announcement hoped to get you all hot and bothered, coaxing you to dive in: “It’s the first time we’ve done anything like this … It’s going to feel a little weird at first, but we’re taking the plunge.”

They rightly point out the best thing about social advertising: “the best advertisements tell you more about stuff that actually interests you.” That’s the goal of reaching people where they engage every day, right?

Just be aware — simply advertising on social doesn’t automatically make you relevant to the people there. Snapchat themselves caused a little uproar on their very first ad. After assuring users they planned to post ads that are “fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy” … they inserted a very creepy video ad for the creepy movie Ouija into users’ feeds — some folks were creeped out and felt the ad was not relevant to them.

What to be careful about on Snapchat

Did the ad for Ouija work well? Actually, the “uproar” I mention above added to some great buzz for the movie — though the jury is still out.

But one piece of advice is certain: don’t assume your ad will resonate with the Snapchat demographic, just because the ad looks good to you. Really, that goes for all social channels.

In truth, before you dive deeply into any new channel, you need to define your audience and goals, do research your channels, plan some tests, see what works and what doesn’t work.

Here’s a checklist of actions your process should include:

Research what audiences are served by each social channel — age groups, professions, geographies, interests. Each channel provides some data on their users — sometimes generalized, and sometimes searchable in detail on your specific followers. Read research reports and industry articles to learn more about who you can effectively reach on each channel.

Conduct your own primary research. Poll the users of the channel itself. Run some focus groups among your targets or existing customers to find out what channels they use and how they use them.

Live on the channel for a while, and follow and listen to user conversations about your industry. Take note of, and measure, users’ concerns and interests regarding your brand, similar brands, or your general product or service category.

Learn the personality of each channel; does it suit your brand personality? Is a fun and lighthearted attitude appropriate to your message? Does your audience live in a sober place, concerned with solutions to serious problems? Consider the degree of irreverence — or anger, foul language and negativity — your brand message can tolerate.

Read the best practices guidelines provided by each platform.

Review each channel’s options for paid advertising in detail. Most channels have multiple ways to advertise, each with its own minimum/maximum costs and display characteristics. You’re no longer stuck only with banners, links and buttons. Based on your earlier research, which of these seems to target your audience and objectives best?

Decide what actions you want your target audience to take. Click-throughs to your website? Opt-ins to your email lists? Downloads of your content or app? Sharing your content with other users? Questions about your product or service? Purchases?

Speak in a relevant way to your audience. This is the greatest opportunity in social media — provide information that’s relevant to what they care about. As you consider how to frame your advertising message and what tactics to try, now’s the time to reflect on the research you did in the steps above. What approach will fit the expectations of your audience in each channel? How can you help the audience see your message as adding value to their experience, rather than interrupting it?

Invite your audience to engage. The days of shouting or broadcasting your message are over. Your messages should offer open-ended opportunities for your audience to respond, feed back, and ask questions. And you should be ready to respond quickly and transparently to their real interests, not simply try to redirect them to your website and your product.

Be honest, not sneaky. If you plan to use “native advertising” — for example, sponsored posts that appear in users’ Facebook or Twitter feeds alongside organic content — don’t pretend your content isn’t an ad. Your audience may tolerate ads in their feed, but they don’t want to be tricked. Your goal is to entertain and inform enough so they’ll accept you — as an advertiser — into their lives.

Run a test flight — ask the channel’s business unit if they’ll let you run a month-long campaign test flight at reduced or no charge.

Test your campaigns, even after you start paying. Test several different creative concepts. Test different timing and frequencies. Test different physical placement of the ad, and different demographic targeting combinations.

Carefully sort through and weigh the results of each campaign.

  • How is your audience engaging with your content? By commenting or sharing? Simple click-throughs? Are most engagements happening mid-day or in the evening? Mostly on mobile, or PCs?
  • Which kinds of content drove which behaviors? Funny images? How-to videos? Quotes or sound-bites? Links to long-form stories? Contests? Serialized stories about a customer success, or about a product coming soon to market?

Incorporate what you learn into future campaigns. Don’t run on auto-pilot, repeating the same campaign template as is. Try to adjust at least one significant element of your campaign that your tests indicate will increase the actions you seek.

I hope I didn’t scare you away from Snapchat ads — it might be the perfect channel for you! The point is, you need to figure that out for yourself first.

Is there a social channel that matches your goals especially well? How have you approached your campaigns there? Let me know what works and doesn’t work for you — I’d love to share your story here in a future post!

Who is John Paulsen? A former small-business leader myself, I feel your pain (and joy) and hope you’ll enjoy the blog. I launched and ran a well-regarded production company in San Francisco with a team of 9 brilliant, hard working people. I learned to manage a wide array of tasks a small business must handle — business strategy, facilities design, HR, payroll, taxes, marketing, all the way down to choosing telecom equipment and spec’ing a server system to help my team collaborate in real-time on dense media projects from multiple production rooms. I’ve partnered with and learned from dozens of small business owners.

2015-01-14T02:51:20+00:00

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