Snapchat boasts about 443 million daily active users. People flock to the platform to connect with brands and friends. It remains particularly popular among younger generations of users. As Snapchat grows, the platform shows increasing potential for eCommerce by helping brands reach potential customers.
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Social Media eCommerce:
What You Need To Know
Snapchat lives on portable devices, making it a great platform to target mobile-first consumers. It also lets you design highly visual ads that people can use to quickly access your brand’s content for continued engagement.
Let's look more closely at what Snapchat eCommerce could do for you and how your company can sell products on Snapchat.
Why Snapchat Ads for eCommerce?
Snapchat reaches huge numbers of millennials and Gen Z members, with 75 percent of people in those age groups accessing the platform. It continues to be largely dominated by younger users; nearly half of the users remain under the age of 26 and another 30 percent have ages ranging from 26 to 35.
Globally, Snapchat members also boast an incredible $4.4 trillion in spending power, making it an excellent platform to engage potential buyers. Since the platform’s users are twice as likely to share their purchases, attracting these customers can pay off tremendously.
Snapchat’s interactive, highly visual format can help businesses capture the attention of leads. The platform’s ads encourage people to click through and purchase items or browse further, making Snapchat eCommerce a great tool.
Snapchat advertising features, like dynamic ads and collection ads, are ideal for eCommerce brands because they make it easy to showcase products to relevant audiences.
Key Snapchat Ad Formats on Snapchat eCommerce
Story Ads
Located in the “Discover” feed, Story Ads can include three to 20 snaps that appear when users scroll through the “For You” section. Often, an ad will appear as the second snap in a user’s feed and be labeled “Sponsored.” With these advertisements, you can provide a sneak peek of what your business has to offer.
Take advantage of Snapchat’s visual features—whether it be photos or videos—and show your company’s best products to likely customers. Enticing, memorable visuals can make Snapchat users stay on the lookout for your brand in the future.
As you design your ads, focus on highlighting particular brand or product features. Look for ways to align your ads with popular Snapchat content, such as material related to current trends.
Snap Ads
Snap Ads represent another one of the major Snapchat ad formats. They are full-screen videos or photos that let users swipe up to visit your company’s website or app. This makes them a great pick for driving people to product pages. Choose this ad format to show customers your brand’s story and personality or to offer Snapchat-only promotions.
When using Snap Ads, be sure to design in harmony with other videos that Snapchat users are watching. In other words, don’t make your advertisement look too much like an ad. This will cause Snapchat users to leave before they have a chance to see and digest your message. Try to keep the ads organic and native to the Snapchat style.
Collection Ads
Snapchat eCommerce Collection Ads rank as the most popular Snapchat advertising format and offer a product-friendly option for online retailers. This format combines four different products with a brand messaging area that promotes a direct link to an item detail page. Since you can showcase multiple products, it works well for merchandise catalogs and provides enhanced navigation to product pages.
Underneath the image or video, users will find product thumbnails with related ads. You can use this additional real estate to promote related items and demonstrate what else your brand has to offer.
Buying Habits of Snapchat Users
Snapchat users are a serious force in the eCommerce purchasing space. We’ve compiled a few of our favorite facts to demonstrate how Snapchat users interact with eCommerce brands.
For the majority of Snapchatters, the path to purchasing begins on social media. People on this platform, in particular, are more likely to learn about new brands through ads. Eighty-five percent appreciate the value of social ads (versus 68 percent elsewhere). These users also report that they often discover trends through social media and suggest brands to others more frequently than people who don’t use the platform. Most importantly, 88 percent say that they love to shop.
Don’t forget to consider your customers’ shopping habits when deciding how to market your brand. Understanding when, why, and how they purchase items can help your company communicate with them more effectively.
Since these shoppers love discovering new trends, sharing brands they like, and making purchases that start on social media, you can benefit from designing ads tailored to these interests.
Metrics to Track for Snapchat eCommerce Success
To ensure that your business uses Snapchat’s ad capabilities to their fullest potential, consider the following metrics:
Delivery: ensuring the ad reaches the intended audience
Spend: the amount you spend per ad, which you can compare to your traffic and conversion rates
Attachment: looking at click-through and swipe-up rates
App Install: tracking how many people install an app that you promote
Long Form: Snapchat lets you upload longer videos as ads and then track how much of the video different people watch
Conversion: measuring how many users make purchases after viewing your ads
To learn more about what falls under each category, please refer to Snapchat’s Ad Metrics Glossary.
Using Influencer Marketing on Snapchat eCommerce
Snapchat influencer marketing can be a powerful tool for your business. An influencer is someone with a large social media following who consistently posts content that consumers are likely to trust. One of the easiest ways to use influencers to advertise your online store is to encourage them to promote your brand’s products and story.
This amplified word-of-mouth marketing approach enables your company to reach a wider audience. Furthermore, consumers are likely to believe the influencer as long as the message comes across as honest and sincere. People dislike it when an influencer’s social media posts look like advertisements.
You can find influencers relevant to your industry by researching conversations and trends related to your target audience. Focus on influencers with followings that seem to overlap with your audience.
As you build your Snapchat influencer marketing strategy, ask these individuals to develop content that aligns with your brand values. This will help your message go further and appear more authentic to users. Since they already have a trusting relationship with your buyers, you can amplify messages about your business and products.
HiSmile’s Approach to Snapchat
HiSmile is an oral cosmetics company that strives to generate online sales by increasing brand awareness. The company turned to Snapchat ads in hopes of reaching a new audience that it was unable to find on other platforms.
HiSmile used Story Ads to create relatable, enticing content and connect with potential customers. It placed ads in the Music, Sports Fans, and Gamers categories on Snapchat. The brand also initiated re-engagement campaigns for users who exhibited strong purchasing intentions. It tailored the ads for these specific audiences to improve engagement and interest.
With the help of Story Ads, HiSmile was able to target potential buyers with similarities to their existing customers. The company also concentrates on regularly producing fresh content for users and determines what works best so that it can continuously improve ads.
Through Snapchat, HiSmile was able to draw new customers to their website, which led to a 15 percent increase in revenue. The platform has enabled this brand to reach more buyers and spread its message to consumers around the world. It uses creative targeting that engages leads and drives interest in HiSmile products.
Conclusion: Putting a Snapchat Marketing Strategy to Work for You
And that’s it! We hope this blog has helped you learn ways to leverage Snapchat advertising for your business. Snapchat ads for eCommerce offer tremendous potential to develop tailored advertising, build influencer partnerships, and create data-driven campaigns.
If you’re looking for a PPC agency to help with your Snapchat marketing strategy, feel free to reach out to us right now. We'd love to learn more about your eCommerce advertising strategy, give you a free audit, and share how our team can help you sell products on Snapchat.
