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Snapchat is a rabble-rouser. People are insanely opinionated about this bold new social player.
In just a few short years, the channel has accrued more than 100 million daily active users with reports of its monthly active users nearing the 200 million mark. Additionally, Snapchat’s video traffic rivals that of Facebook, reaching 8 billion daily views. Snapchat is quickly becoming a massive force and a bona fide millennial fan favorite.
The problem, however, is that due to Snapchat’s limitations on posts, marketers are having an exceptionally difficult time figuring out how to drive discovery, conversions, and other vital business elements through the platform. So ultimately, the question remains: Is Snapchat a marketing winner or loser?
On March 30th, Mark Fidelman, Fanatics Media CEO, sat down with three of today’s most prominent social media experts to delve deep into Snapchat’s marketing viability. The Blab conversation featuring Joel Comm, Bryan Kramer, and Jack Kosakowski covered everything from Snapchat’s current status for marketers to who can best leverage the platform, features that are missing, and many passionate dialogues singing or dinging Snapchat’s features. Watch the full conversation below to see this heated debate in full.
Joel Comm is one of the world’s most recognized authorities on social media. Joel’s initial website was one of the first 18,000 websites in the world and his extensive internet business experience spans more than two decades. In that time Joel has developed partnerships, trained, or consulted with massive brands such as Microsoft, Twitter, IBM, and many others. He is a New York Times best-selling author, acclaimed keynote speaker, and all around internet marketing extraordinaire.
Bryan Kramer is a thought leader in the science of sharing and CEO of PureMatter, as well as the best-selling author of There is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human #H2H, which ascended to the #1 top selling Amazon Business Book within its first week of release. Bryan is also an internationally recognized keynote speaker and strategist whose clientele have included the likes of NASA, MasterCard, Dell, and Harvard.
Jack Kosakowski is a marketing automation, social media, and social sales expert who is known as the “SaaSaNova” of marketing automation in his networks. He is the Global Head of Social Sales Disruption at the Creation Agency where he works with B2B organizations to incorporate social media tactics into their traditional sales processes to help reduce sales cycles, increase pipelines, and better closing percentages.
Check out some of the insights these four had to share on Snapchat’s marketing capabilities.
Question #1: Is Snapchat a Marketing Winner or Loser as It Stands Today?
Joel:
“It’s a winner!”
When any social channel is in its infancy, there are individuals who are willing to take risks and send out messages that have never been seen before. These are the people who are going to get the attention.
Bryan:
It will eventually be a winner. As of now, it is almost where marketers want it to be but there are some things that need to change before agencies can truly adopt it. There is a lot of stuff there, however, that once it is tweaked will make it successful. From a personal brand standpoint, it is excellent.
Jack:
“If you are trying to reach a millennial audience for B2C, [Snapchat] is amazing.”
For B2B marketing it is a loser. The tools are simply not there. For B2C marketing, that might be different. If you’re are trying to reach millennials as your target audience, however, Snapchat is great.
Mark:
It’s a loser today for both B2B and B2C marketing. The more tools available to marketers, the more effective they can be for their clients, but they also have to be real about it. Clients spend big money and Snapchat simply doesn’t perform as well as other social channels. Mark admitted that he has even reached out to many people who have pushed efforts through Snapchat and none of them have had a positive ROI experience.
Question #2: What is the Number One Reason Why Marketers Should Use Snapchat?
Joel:
“If you connect with the idea of telling stories using the formatting and the tools that Snapchat offers, then it becomes a home for you.”
Nobody “should” be on any given platform. Whatever platform a person finds most appealing, they are having the most fun using, and where the most people are engaging is where a person should be; this can be any social channel. If you find that you enjoy telling stories with the setup that Snapchat provides, then you should be on there.
Jack:
“Use it to your advantage if millennials are your target buyer persona.”
If millennials are the core group of individuals you are targeting, this can be a great resource for newer companies. Many engage with it on a daily basis and that, in turn, will bring loads of interactions.
Brian:
“We have to get to the point where the UI and analytics are better, but when they get those things tight, it’s going to be a great tool.”
All social channels have a hard time getting people to understand how to use them when they are growing. After time, people slowly figure it out how to leverage the platform. Snapchat still hasn’t figured out who they are and marketers are still trying to figure out how to use it. They will have to get to the point where the UI and analytics are better before it becomes an asset. At that point, millennials will move on to a new platform and marketers will be using Snapchat. Then, this cycle will start all over again.
Mark:
Snapchat is amazing because of the storytelling. If you want to learn how to tell stories in 10 second increments, Snapchat is the place to experiment. The platform should, however, allow marketers to do the same things discovery tab brands are doing.
Question #3: What is Snapchat Missing for Marketers that They Need to Implement?
Joel:
Links that can be clicked within snaps. If you send a private snap with a link, the app will open it with an internal browser. If this could be applied to snaps, it will allow for CTAs to be incorporated and used.
Jack:
When dealing with clients, you have to be able to provide them with hard data on views, clicks, how many people are being nurtured, and you can’t do that with Snapchat. It just can’t be used until they provide analytics.
Brian:
The week prior, Brian sat with the CMO of Cisco and several other companies. Each one asked to see and understand Snapchat stating that they know it will be a pivotal part of their strategy moving forward. This is huge considering that it wasn’t prompted, but they will all have a hard time learning how to use it.
Mark:
The problem is that Snapchat makes it impossible to convert and with everything disappearing within 24 hours, there is no discovery. All marketers can do is hope that people will see their content in that time. If Snapchat can get to a point where marketers can convert without ruining the user experience, then it will be useful.