How Brands Can Use Snapchat to Drive eCommerce

Snapchat turns a decade old this year! In addition to being one of the most popular social platforms, Snapchat is also a powerful channel for brands to launch their eCommerce campaigns. In fact, more than 50% of Snap’s business is in Direct Response advertising.

So for brands who are leveraging Snapchat to reach their consumers and looking to optimize results, here’s what you should know.

Snapchat’s strategic potential lies in its unique, concentrated Gen Z and Millennial audience as well as its highly visual ad experience. Today, Snapchat boasts over 500 million monthly active users, creating 5 billion Snaps every day. Snapchatters are highly engaged, opening the app 30 times a day on average, and preferring to communicate with their cameras and photos instead of words.

These high engagement rates are possible due to formats like non-skippable Video Ads and Collections Ads (which can swipe up into a MikMak shopping experience). Augmented reality (AR) technology also allows for virtual product try-ons, which helps consumers digitally see themselves enjoying products in real-time, from any location. If you’re a brand that is interested in adding these eCommerce features, now is a good time to test them out and see how they perform relative to your existing ads, and further optimize the shopping experience for your consumers.

Optimizing Snapchat for your brand’s eCommerce journey

There are Snapchat ad formats to support every step of the commerce journey. Which ones to use and how to use them depends on what you know about your audience. For example, MikMak’s Shopping Index shows that Snapchat is one of the top performing channels for healthcare, infant care, and grocery brands driving to Amazon in the month leading up to Prime Day. Knowing these affinities on an industry, product, and even audience level can be valuable information for your brand.

Here are ways brands can use Snapchat to craft a commerce experience that will resonate with their consumer:

• Take a multi-ad-product approach. Snap offers eCommerce ad products to support every stage in the marketing funnel from retargeting to CRM to defining look alike audiences. On average, diversifying your ad products on Snapchat provides a 20 percent incremental reach as opposed to a single ad product approach. Make sure you are measuring the impact each audience is having on your overall eCommerce program.
• Make your branding and CTA immediately clear. Gen Z processes content faster than any generation. While they spend 21 percent less time viewing ads, they have the highest advertiser recall. Ensure your brand, product, and call to action are immediately clear in second 0 in order to capture consumer attention and tell them what they want to know. Test out which CTAs and messages are the best at driving purchase intent and taking interested shoppers to checkout.
• Keep creative simple yet purposeful. When it comes to shoppable media, too much animation or visual clutter can distract viewers from the call to action. Creating a simple but seamless experience is important for strong direct response ads and driving conversion. MikMak Creative offers a second chance to showcase a brand asset as the user is selecting their Retailer of choice.
• Test and learn. If you’re unsure which creative approach on Snapchat works best for your brand, test and find out! Snap’s A/B testing tool allows you to optimize performance within campaigns. Make sure you take your learnings and look at how they perform across the entire consumer journey to make smarter advertising choices.

With a wide reach and unique user experience, Snapchat offers brands access to a large group of visually engaged and interactive audiences, and presents them with unique ways to engage with brands as they shop. Understanding consumers and their preferences is key to leveraging Snapchat as a social commerce channel for multichannel brands. 

Want to know how Snapchat can be best integrated into your brand’s commerce experience? Chat with us today!