Would you like more marketing channels for your strategy?
We can definitely be friends.
With the number of platforms available, marketers are living their best lives right now. We can target so many audiences to find our customers’ avatars an omnichannel presence easier than ever.
Savannah Sanchez, the founder of Social Savannah, is an expert at helping her ecommerce customers market on Snapchat and spending $ 50,000 to $ 2 million per month on social ads. “Snapchat has solid search and retargeting capabilities so ecommerce brands should take full advantage of the ease with which campaigns are set up.”
Not to mention the platform has 280 million daily active users and is up 22% year over year.
Count us.
We bring you Savannah’s Snapchat marketing experts so you can decide if it’s the right platform for you and figure out how to handle your content. As Savannah keeps seeing, “Most of the e-commerce companies I work with are always ready to try a new channel to diversify their marketing and reach new audiences.”
We love how adventurous you are, but like the safety precautions they read to you before jumping out of a plane, we need to tell you first what to avoid.
The biggest mistake ecommerce companies make when marketing on Snapchat
“There are two common mistakes I see when ecommerce business owners start using Snapchat ads. The first is a refined, tight targeting of prospecting campaigns. “
We like to think that we know more than computers. What a delightful thought. We were behind us the entire time at DigitalMarketer before we realized we had to trust the algorithms to do some of the work for us. These little robots know more than we do (mostly) and trusting them to do their job is a necessity for Snapchat – and frankly – for all other ad-based social platforms.
As Savannah found out, “I learned to trust machine learning technology to refine the audience after a few weeks of testing. Interest and demographic that work well on a different ad platform can be completely different for the same brand on Snapchat! “
Here’s some advice from Savannah to understanding which audiences are doing best for your business on Snapchat: “Start with a comprehensive prospecting campaign whose general focus is based on their market research. After a few weeks of testing, I could identify the best performing groups by reviewing the data on Snapchat’s reports and then scaling the budgets for more efficient ad spend. “
The second mistake Savannah makes with ecommerce companies when marketing on Snapchat is “a lack of creative testing.” There are some marketers out there who would tell you that you should post new ads every day. As the consumption of content increases day by day (do we really need the statistics at all, or can we all just take a look at our screen time?), Ad fatigue is getting more real. Says Savannah, “Brands suffer from creative fatigue that would cause their campaigns to perform poorly.”
To avoid ad fatigue, Savannah “offers new designs every week to keep rotating new ads to avoid overall fatigue.”
If these potholes are avoided, let’s deal with the good stuff.
3 Ways To Get Started With Snapchat (To Grow Your Ecommerce Sales)
We went through the safety precautions of this Snapchat adventure and now we know what to do if something goes wrong. Repeat after us, “I’ll let the algorithm do its thing to refine my audience and I’ll create new ad designs weekly.”
The next step is to get into the logistics of serving Snapchat ads. We had Savannah who gave us their top 3 strategies.
# 1: Build a library of your 5 top performing vertical 9 × 16 mobile themes (like Facebook / Instagram Stories).
For now, Snapchat is a vertical platform. When users enter the app, they hold their phone upright as if they were taking a portrait-style photo. An ad that feels native on the platform follows the same 9 × 16 format.
As Savannah points out, there is no need to create original content for your Snapchat. In fact, already published content is better. This content has proven that it will grab your customer avatar’s attention and is convertible. Is there better content to leave your money behind ?! (The answer is a strong no!)
If you don’t have usable content from other vertical platforms, Savannah recommends that you “create original content but follow the golden rules for Snapchat creators when designing Snapchat ads. Keep your ads short and sweet, always add a unique CTA, and make sure the viewer knows exactly what to do in the first second of the ad. “
Time to hit the record.
# 2: Start with a very simplified campaign structure
Simplicity is underestimated. Whenever you’re campaigning on Snapchat or any other ad platform, you always want to start easy. This is important for both your health and logistics. You need a foundation on which to base your future campaigns. When too many campaigns are running at the same time, it can be difficult to determine what is really working and what is not. Savannah suggests “creating a prospecting and retargeting campaign. There is a lot to learn, no matter what the budget. “
This is how Savannah structures the ad groups for their customers. “Maintain at least 3 ad themes in each ad group and allow them to leave the learning phase before making any major changes or tweaks.”
This can be one of the hardest parts of marketing (and in life). Patience. As much as you’d like to believe that you know more than the super wise device you’re reading this on … it isn’t always the case. (We speak from experience here)
Make sure your ads have enough time to get the data they need. In this case, you can create a more complex campaign structure and see ads that are not performing well.
# 3: Make sure your landing pages are optimized for mobile devices
Snapchat doesn’t exist on the desktop. The only way to access the app is on the phone. This means that your target audience will click through your CTAs on their phone 100% of the time. you always You want your landing pages to be optimized for mobile devices, but it becomes extremely important when it comes to Snapchat.
As Savannah explains, “Snapchat is a great way to reach out and intrigue your prospects, but if they swipe up on your ad and arrive in a non-user-friendly environment, you’re likely to see high bounce rates and low ROAS.”
Can you blame them
The last time we saw an interesting ad on Snapchat that didn’t open to a user-friendly mobile website, we put a deposit right away. As consumers (who are also marketers), even we don’t have the patience to get a website up and running that isn’t optimized for mobile devices.
Consumers don’t have to figure out how to navigate your website. You have to make it as easy as possible for you.
You made it this far in your Snapchat Marketing 101 class, which means you have no excuses to hesitate. These are your first steps in creating a Snapchat presence from a trusted professional who is earning a ROAS for her clients.
This is how Savannah knows when to be successful on Snapchat.
The premier metric for tracking the ROI of Snapchat ads
Marketing strategies are cool and everything, but when you can’t show ROI it’s more of a hobby and less of a strategic plan for getting more customers. So we knew we needed Savannah’s insight into what success would look like on the platform.
Of course, success is related to more conversions. What can we look for in our ad account to know that we are on the right track?
“In short, ROAS is the best metric to understand whether your campaign is successful or not. At the ad motif level, it’s always important to double-check that you’re not spending too much on a motif that is not doing well in a particular ad group. If you find that a Motive is spending too much but not delivering enough at the sales level, I recommend turning it off so other Motives can spend more efficiently. “Says Savannah.
Here are some things to keep in mind while reading this quick guide to Snapchat marketing:
- Trust the algorithm to find your target audience and don’t create tight and refined targeting on your first campaign
- Build new ad campaigns consistently
- Use 9 × 16 videos that have performed well on other channels or make your own by following the Snapchat Creative Golden Rule
- Start with simplified campaigns
- Always optimize your landing pages for cell phones
- Focus on the ROAS of each ad
Our guide may be over, but the adventure has only just begun.
Use Savannah’s expertise, gained from spending $ 50,000 to $ 2 million per month on ads, to launch your first Snapchat campaign. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Savannah here.
