We’ve already covered the topic of how Snapchat can be useful for your event marketing in an earlier blog post. Now it’s time to discover how Snapchat event ads can help promote your event and increase its attendance.
First of all, let’s look at the bare numbers around the Snapchat audience:
- 166M average daily active Snapchatters globally
- 25-30 average minutes spent every day per Snapchatter
- 18x average daily sessions per Snapchatter
- 10M videos are watched by users per day
It would be a colossal mistake to ignore such a big and highly engaged audience. Moreover, Snapchat knows a lot about its audiences and their preferences and offers a lot of targeting possibilities. The platform segments audience based on what Snapchatters watch, where they go, and what they care about.
Types of Ads in Snapchat
Snapchat provides various ad formats which allow the placement of the ad for your event directly in users’ feeds. There are two types of Snapchat ads:
- Attachments ads
- Filter ads
These types have plenty of variations. Let’s try to sort it out.
1. Snap Ads
It’s 10-seconds, full-screen advertising videos that will appear between regular content (called snaps) from the user’s friends. You can add the CTA on your video and by means of swiping up, users will get to your website from which they can make purchases without even leaving Snapchat. You can use a wide variety of content to ensure user engagement after the swipe: from articles or website with detailed information to longer videos about your event. Intrigue users with short videos and give them a sequel after the swipe. To run this type of Snapchat advertising your campaign need to have $1,000 budget. Roughly your ad will cost $0.02 per view, which means $20 per 1,000 views.
2. Sponsored Geofilters
Geofilters is one of the more exciting formats for advertising an event in Snapchat. It’s unique while at the same time, quite familiar, for Snapchatters. Snapchat uses GPS to determine a user’s location and offers an adjusted filter. The users place on their snaps this graphic overlay that can tie them to a specific geographic location, from a specific place to a city all the way up to a whole country. Snapchatters love to use it so that you can run an event promotion in native for them the way. A Sponsored Geofilter allows you to create a custom graphic that other users can apply to their snaps.
The cost for Sponsored Geofilter depends on the time you want your filter to be available and the size of the targeted area. If you want a filter for your event, you’ll end up spending around $15.
3. On-Demand Geofilters
With this option, you can significantly cut your spending on event promotion in Snapchat. It allows you to get started with advertising for as little as $5. The difference will be in the covered area (it must be between 20,000 and 5 million square feet) and in time (as brief as one hour). It’s the perfect solution for point of event promotion.
4. Sponsored Lenses
In addition to the Geofilter, Snapchat offers the regular Sponsored Lenses. It’s a rather fun and creative way to make an amazing promotion for your event which users will obviously adore. You can create a filter dedicated to your event and consumers can use it to make their snaps. It can be everything, from rabbit ears to butterflies and colorful splashes. Your imagination is the only limitation here. Sponsored Lenses integrate into the lens menu, so users can interact with them the same way they do regular lenses. Turn Snapchatters into advocates of your event with this interactive option and let them share your message on their initiative. But talking about money, it’s not the cheapest way of advertising. The price you need to pay for these types of ads depend on the day of the week, trends, holidays, etc. For instance, weekdays are considered the prime time and sponsored filter can already cost you $450.000, for holidays the price can rise to as high as $700,000.
5. Snap to Unlock
Сurrently Snapchat tests this new ad format. It works pretty simply while being engaging at the same time. The user takes a picture of Snapcode that can be placed on any physical media like billboards, receipts or coffee cups and gets access to “secret” features within the app. Snapchat app unlocks a time-limited Sponsored Geofilter or Lens related to your event.
Effective ads in Snapchat
Snapchat’s ads strategy is quite different from other social networks. Snapchat uses a more exclusive – almost TV-like – approach. That’s why its ads can be really quite expensive. All the proposed types can be very effective as they work in a creative way that the audience is accustomed to. The ads become native and not so annoying for users. All you need is to learn as much as possible about your target audience and choose the format they will love.
How to use ads in Snapchat
Until now, Snapchat ads were available mostly for brands with big budgets. But recently in March of 2017, the platform launched the new self-serve ad manager for buying video Snap Ads, making it affordable for smaller businesses. Before you could buy Snap Ads through Snap’s sales team or third-party with an additional fee, now the self-serve ad manager will allow you make it for free without any markups.
Self-serve ad managers provide a Mobile Dashboard for tracking campaigns from your phone. Ad Managers buy, manage and control campaigns for all Snap Ad types, and the Business Manager site which allows configuring the roles and permissions of team members. It is expected that the new options will roll out in June to everyone in the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Australia and more.
To start, just sign up here and follow the further instructions from the Snapchat team.
Tricks and tips for Snapchat ads
Undoubtedly, a thought-out strategy and carefully chosen type of ad which is in line with your audience habits and interests will lead to successful event advertising.
There is something more you can do. Use these tips to get better results in your Snapchat ad campaign:
- Create a sense of urgency
This old marketing trick is still working. The sense of urgency will help push your users to take action. It’s a good idea to promote early-bird ticket sales or limited offers. Having the option of disappearing content, Snapchat is the perfect place to create that special sense of urgency.
- Test your content in teams entirely or in small groups
Before spending even a penny on the ad, show it to your team, ask what they think about it. Gather opinions from your customers (potential or existing ones) by sending your idea in private messages. Another tip here is doing a survey. For instance, what Sponsored Lenses you should create to pleased your audience? It will save you money and help create client oriented content in all senses.
- Don’t afraid to be funny
Snapchat is much more informal than other social media. Everything is about joy and fun here. So it’s normal to look funny in this place, even if you’re a bunch of serious guys. Users are accustomed to pictures that are taken with the phone camera, with fun filters and add-ons. So it will be cool to show your brand’s personality in an informal atmosphere. Remember Snapchat golden rule – more life and fun, less than perfect but unnatural pictures.
- Mix image and video content
Snapchat is rich on different types of content, use them all to amp up interest and interaction. Show everything around your event, from how you prepare for the upcoming event to its guests and people working to make all just perfect enough.
- Tell a story
Do you remember, content is a king, right? It goes for Snapchat as well. You can combine several videos and images to tell a compelling story about your event. Use this tip to promote your speakers or shoot a Stories with your customers feedback about previous events.
Popular mistakes to avoid
Nothing will work by itself without your participation, even if you paid for it.
Thus here are several of the most common mistakes you can make:
1. Launch your ads and don’t interact with other Snapchat users
You need to always be present in the communication field to reply to comments, answer questions and guide users to purchase the tickets.
2. Choose the wrong audience for your event promotion
Snapchat claims that they know their audience’s ins and outs based on data what Snapchatters do while using the platform. All you need is to just use this data carefully, choosing the right filters. They are as follows:
- Snap Lifestyle Categories
- Demographics
- Location
- Device Attributes
They’re common for any social media except the Snap Lifestyle Categories. The platform has created over 60 unique interest categories like parenting, political news, music festivals, and more based on signals like which content Snapchatters watch.
Takeaway
Making a successful advertising campaign for your event on Snapchat isn’t rocket science. Moreover, now it becomes affordable for small companies thanks to self-service ad managers.
To sum up, follow these easy rules:
- Know your audience
- Show your personality (who’s the person behind your event)
- Be open minded and choose the type of the ad that your audience will love
- Show the advantages and uniqueness of your event
Get started with Gevme to upgrade your event promotion agenda.
