In an earlier blog article we discussed the benefits of email marketing and how it has some clear advantages for marketers seeking to reach a specific, targeted audience. But the growing number of social media platforms are increasingly helpful when it comes to reaching certain demographic groups.
While the early days of social media marketing more or less consisted of Facebook and Twitter, these channels are becoming less popular with smaller businesses; Facebook in particular now caters to those companies with larger advertising budgets.
That might once have been bad news for a small business looking to boost traffic to your website via social networks, but the variety of new platforms popping up everywhere gives you a plethora of different social media outlets to promote your brand and services. The key is figuring out which one fits best with your marketing strategy to reach your potential customers.
If you’re targeting the 18-34 demographic, you might already have heard about an app with skyrocketing popularity among this group: Snapchat. Snapchat is a photo/video-messaging app whose content disappears in ten seconds or less. The format has widespread appeal; so much so that marketers are now increasingly using Snapchat to market their brands and products.
The Spanish language television outlet Univision recently sponsored a Snapchat campaign wherein users shared live-time stories around the CONCACAF soccer final. Throughout the game, Snapchat users attending the event shared their own perspectives through uploaded photos and videos, creating a collective visual tale. Snapchat curated these and released them as “Live Stories,” making each of the them available to Snapchat users for 24 hours. According to Univision Digital Executive Vice President and General Manager, Mark Lopez:
“Snapchat is the perfect platform for us to extend our reach among young, highly digital Hispanics who consume our content on mobile.”
You might wonder how disappearing content possibly helps to market a product? Well, it has one clear advantage over other social media platforms: users have to actively keep a Snapchat photo or video open in order to view it. That means Snapchat can tell advertisers with absolute certainty whether or not an ad was viewed. Snapchat provides guaranteed access to a coveted demographic and promises accurate data for a metrics-driven industry. Perhaps its popularity isn’t that surprising after all.