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Snapchat is the fastest growing social network. EVER.
On top of that, it’s the most engaged – users snap over 400 million times a day. If your audience isn’t using it now, they will be very soon.
Right now, marketers are struggling to build a presence on Snapchat, for a number of reasons:
Most are relying on promoting to followers on other networks. Unless you’ve built a massive following on other networks, this isn’t going to get you very far.
You need to expose your account to a new audience.
I’ve been promoting my Snapchat account with Instagram and Facebook ads and have seen a steady, low cost growth in followers:
In this article I’m going to show you exactly how I’m using Facebook and Instagram ads to grow my account.
This URL is a deep link to the Snapchat app to follow your profile.
You can get yours by adding your username to the end of this URL:
Once setup, this link will redirect to the Snapchat app and allow people to follow you. It only works on mobile, so don’t waste time promoting it on desktop.
Expert tip: Please, STOP asking people to screenshot your Snap code to add you as a friend. Use this link instead!
Navigate to your Facebook Ad account and select the option to “Send people to your website”.
Dump your “add me on Snapchat” URL into the open website field.
In this section we’ll talk about how to setup the right targeting with your ads.
We’re ready to move on to the next step.
It’s no secret that video out performs text and image ads, so that’s what I went with.
I simply cut up a few videos of myself in iMovie, layered on text and a track.
The call to action of the ad is to watch me grow a business live on SnapChat (my new baby, Laces Out)
Here’s what the final video looks like:
If you’re a good copywriter, feel free to go with text / image ads.
The link we’re promoting only works on mobile devices.
That means we only want to promote it on Mobile News Feed and Instagram ads. I like to split these into 2 separate Ad Groups for better tracking purposes.
Let’s start by creating the Facebook Mobile News Feed ad:
Write out the copy and submit for approval.
From the campaign level editor, select and edit the ad you just created.
We want to adjust the device types the ad shows on to only include newer model phones.
Deep linking to an app takes a few seconds to load – the longer we make a user wait, the less chance of conversion we have. Focus your ads on targeting faster devices connected to wifi.
Next, we want to duplicate the ad we just created.
Then, simply edit the copied ad and adjust the targeting to Instagram only.
Admittedly, I’m doing this on a very small scale. However, you can simply duplicate your campaigns in Power Editor and run dozens of them targeting different audiences.
I strongly suggest you take advantage of this now before this becomes yet another spammed out tactic.
Ryan Stewart Says Hey Curt,
I don’t think every business owner should use SnapChat. In fact, that’s why I like it.
It forces you to use a real, personable human – it’s not something you can automate or outsource.
To me, this means that few businesses will actually adopt it and even fewer will excel at it.
That means there’s a HUGE opportunity. Unlike Facebook, where every business in the world has a foothold, there will be a lot less competition for a MUCH MORE engaged audience.
The only way to win at SnapChat is by being yourself and having something of interest to talk about on a daily basis.
No doubt, it’s hard, and it will be intereting to see how this thing plays out.
Chris Mewhort Says Exactly. Putting the ‘social’ in social media.
Dhirendra goyal Says These are very important points but most new bloggers just write content without thinking deeply about the impact of content. You are right before publishing a new content we need to tweek all the important points as you mentioned..
Thanks for share
Dhirendra goyal
h.cn1 Says nice
Sam Says Hi Ryan greetings from Ireland! Great post! In fact I followed all the steps to promote my snapchat account.
I’m currently running and video add for FB and Instagram (compilation of my snapchat stories) good visuals very interactive, and I create my snapchat add link for mobile as you said.
However, the add manager report that people is clicking to the website link (which is the add link) but I’m not getting the request to add on my snapchat.
Also, people is liking the add on IG but still no adding on snapchat.
I set a budget of 11 euros daily, so far I have had 22103 reach with 56 link click in 4 days.
What are your thoughts about that… what am I doing wrong?
Cheers bro.
Ryan Stewart Says there’s a number factors that could be hindering performance – it’s difficult to tell without digging into the data from the campaign
Anis Says Hi Ryan,
I followed your steps. So far I have 25 clicks and no ads on snapchat… what do you think it is?
Ryan Stewart Says You need more clicks, more like 2500 to get an accurate data picture
Dragos Says Hi Sam, I’ve seen that you wrote the amount that you are spending in euros so I may supose that you are targeting EU on Snapchat. Don’t get fooled by all the hype in the US media and expecting to get same results in EU. Here in Europe Snapchat is still young and used by really young users (whom a lot of countries lack) and therefore is for kind of limited niches.
Or you just may wanna rethink your targeting of the ads, be sure that your target audience have Snapchat (you don’t wanna pay advertising just for people to install Snapchat), maybe you wanna try more groups of ads (for each day of the week and compare and tweak the ads after 2 weeks).
Or your content sucks. Haha
I hope I’ve helped,
Cheers
Itay Raphael Oron Says Thanks for the post. I know Facebook is not approving Snapchat codes as the image. Do you know if it is approving ads with an image containing a customize Snapchat logo?
Ryan Stewart Says i dont, but if you setup the ad you can find out pretty quickly, they kick it back right away
Meriani Says Thank you very much. I was struggling with adding snapchat url but you made it look easy.
Ryan Stewart Says You’re welcome!
Like our site?
Let's design one for you, too.
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Hey Ryan –
What’s the play with snapchat as a business owner?
Is it simply another method to touch your audience on a platform they’ll already be tuned into? The whole going where your audience is already paying attention thing Gary Vee talks about?
Or is there a way to convert?
Great write up.