Snapchat Advertising: 7 takeaways from our sales season workshop

With the goal of sharing how Snapchat can help level-up ad performances in the sales season, today we co-hosted a workshop with Snapchat at their Paris offices.

With a room full of performance marketers, social media managers and agency folk, we heard a series of presentations from people who have seen the power of Snapchat advertising in action.

In this blog post we want to give you a quick overview of the key takeaways from the workshop, which featured three presentations:

• Performance Marketing on Snapchat – Grégoire Gimaret, Product Strategy, Snap Inc.
• 5 golden rules for advertising success on Snapchat – Martin Mangez, Creative Strategy Lead, Snap Inc.
• Driving sales period success with Snapchat (panel discussion) featuring:
  • Anthony Danant, Global Business Development, BlackPills
  • Philippe Torloting, Global COO, Socialyse
  • Pierre-Lou Dominjon, CEO Paragone

Here are our key takeaways:

1. Snapchat is not a social network

Snapchat is all about self-expression. As a function of its design, the experience is a lot more private and it doesn’t have the same spirit of comparison as other platforms, where your number of followers and likes can quickly become something of a status symbol.

Gr’e9goire Gimaret (Product Strategy, Snap Inc) summed it up when he said: “Social networks are characterised by just a few people pushing content to the masses. With Snapchat, we turn that on it’s head – it’s about everyone creating content that they diffuse to just a few of their closest friends and family”.

“Social networks are characterised by just a few people pushing content to the masses. With #Snapchat, we turn that on it’s head – it’s everyone creating content that they diffuse to just a few of their closest friends and family” – Gr’e9goire Gimaret, Product Strategy, @Snapchat pic.twitter.com/ydwEdWLD5i

’97 Paragone (@Paragone) June 6, 2018

2. Four Snapchat Ad Formats

Snapchat touched on its 4 ad formats:

Filters

Own a place or event with location-based filters. Filters allow you to be where your product is bought, thought about, or consumed. Create your own Filter and drive awareness, advocacy, and action in one package

Lenses

By inviting customers to play and share, lenses are the most playful and memorable way to increase awareness, on a massive scale. With one tap, you can invite Snapchatters into your world ’97 and your story.

Snap Ads

Captivate your audience with a full-screen experience. They are full-screen, 100% viewable, and have audio on by default, and are available with objectives including web view, app install and long-form video view.

Story Ads

Now you can reach your audience with a branded tile in the Discover feed. With one tap, Snapchatters can jump into a collection of 3-20 Snaps and dive deeper into your new fashion collection, movie release, suite of products, and more!

3. 90% of users share their geo-location with Snap.

Location is a crucial part of the Snapchat experience, and user seem to understand that; Snap notes that a staggering 90% of users have geo-location features enabled, meaning they not only get a better and more contextual experience, but are also open for targeting with location-specific ad formats like lenses.

“90% of @Snapchat users have geo-localisation features enabled. The #userexperience is greatly improved with these features enabled, and they give advertisers many options around contextualisation” – Gr’e9goire Gimaret, Product Strategy, #Snap Inc
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’97 Paragone (@Paragone) June 6, 2018

4. Reinventing product discovery with AR

Snapchat has a vision to reinvent product discovery, and Augmented Reality (AR) is set to play a major role.

Gr’e9goire shared the example of a campaign from Ford, which enables Snapchat users to place the new EcoSport vehicle into the world around them, and even go inside it and check out the interior.

5. 60% of Snapchat users have sound on

As part of his ‘5 golden rules for advertising success on Snapchat’, Martin Mangez (Creative Strategy Lead, Snap Inc.) spoke about the importance of sound in Snapchat advertising. Since 3 in every 5 Snapchatters have sound on while watching Snaps, make sure you use it to grab attention. Linked to this, ensure the first two seconds of your ad grab the user’s attention – after all, from the very start, you’re only a swipe away from being forgotten.

“@Snapchat is a platform of choice. From the first second, users can skip your ad” – Martin Mangez, Creative Strategy Lead, Snap Inc pic.twitter.com/luQRFmjY1P

’97 Paragone (@Paragone) June 6, 2018

6. Consumers prepare their activity before the sales

It was noted during the session that as much as 60% of consumers prepare their activity before the summer retail sales even start. As such, make sure your ads don’t just run during the sales. Plan a solid cadence in the weeks leading up to ensured your captured in as much of that ‘planning’ as possible. For a few more tips on how to do this, check out our eBook which provides a guide to summer sales success.

7. Keep it simple

Our client Blackpills shared some insights on their success with Snapchat advertising. Their advise to other advertisers was to keep it simple and remember the uniqueness of the platform – it has a more personal and private feel that many other networks. Blackpills noted their goal with ads on Snapchat is to join the conversations happening between users, and blend with the social experience.

“On @snapchat we try not to interrupt the #userexperience. We keep it simple and we want people to feel like they are just seeing another story and not an ad” – Anthony Danant (Global Business Development, @blackpills) #SnapAds

’97 Paragone (@Paragone) June 6, 2018

Interested in some more tips for your summer sales campaigns? Download our Ultimate guide today! With tips on which ad formats to use, as well as what makes this time of year special – you don’t want to miss out on our new eBook! Download here or at the link below.