I’ve been reading about Snapchat recently. It’s an app I use every single day and being 19, it’s an app used the same way by a huge number of people in my demographic.
Snapchat is often overlooked by businesses as a part of their marketing strategy. But Snapchat has taken some real leaps in the past few years with the addition of LIVE stories and their Discover section. I quite often check out the LIVE stories about festivals and other events from around the world. They’re right next to my friends stories so what’s the harm in checking them out? Is there a way to leverage your demographic with this? Unless you travel the world to get to all these events and have your say, probably not. Maybe some clever product placement here and there… So basically no, very loosely, it’s not a sound marketing strategy.
But with the new Discover page, Snapchat has opened up a way to advertise without being intrusive on our personal snapchat stories. At the moment, it’s just a case of how are they ever going to get my demographic interested in checking this page out? Granted, I haven’t paid much attention to it myself. But in a few years time I believe Snapchat could make this work for businesses. It requires some really creative marketing to make us want to switch from our stories to your advertisements but as soon as they are able to attract the attention, there is a huge demographic to be tapped in to.
At the moment, A big business may be able to make Snapchat work to their agenda. But for small businesses I wouldn’t think twice about using it as a marketing tool. Five years from now? If they develop a way to incorporate advertisements and give them a more prominent presence on the app, I think it’s going to set off like a wildfire…
