Snapchat for Brand Development
I was looking for my first opportunity to use Snapchat to aid in brand development and the annual Youth Evangelism Conference (YEC) “Speak”, an event of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions fit the bill. The event drew in nearly 900 students from the ages of 12 to 18 from across Alabama.
In 2012, this event began using and promoting an event specific hashtag – normally, the initials YEC followed by the year – and would place the students’ tweets on the screen using an integration inProPresenter to promote usage. After the newest release of ProPresenter, Instagram was added to the mix.
Snapchat, with its younger skewing demographics, was one of those areas that I knew that we needed to be using to communicate with the students attending. The name of our event itself was changing and extra thought about branding the new name was an added factor.
I had read about other events using a Snapchat geofilter, a way of targeting users in a specific location, to enable a special graphic that could be overlaid on a person’s picture. Using this function would help us accomplish two tasks, introducing the new brand and helping us communicate with a younger audience in a new social media realm.
Snapchat has made it fairly simple to create a design and submit a geofilter via their site. For events like this, the designs are to be submitted as on-demand. You choose the date, times and the location, and Snapchat will tell you the cost. The first area I drew was too large, so I downsized it to just the auditorium and reduced the time available, all with the goal of staying as close as possible to a $20 budget.
One thing to note: You will need to be able to submit a design that does not have a background. Popular methods include using a program like Photoshop which can be costly if you don’t already have it. Canva is a low-cost alternative that can help your budget and accomplish this task.
I received approval on my first try, largely in part to following the instructions. Don’t be surprised if your first design is rejected as this is common. You can submit designs many days in advance, so try to allow time in case your first try doesn’t work.
The next task was making sure the students at the event knew it was there. I created a slide to be displayed on the announcement screens promoting the availability of the custom frame. I included the Snapchat logo along with a mockup of what someone would look like taking a selfie and applying our custom filter.
As the event began, it was awesome to watch as the students took advantage of it. Not only were they snapping with it, they were sharing the images on their Twitter and Instagram accounts!
The total investment was $20.69 for the geofence that lasted 30 hours. Snapchat provided analytics that showed it was used 187 times. Those 187 snaps were viewed 8,800 times. Breaking that down, it was slightly more than 11 cents per use. Even better, it was 2/10 of a cent per person who viewed one of those pictures.
Ultimately, Snapchat doesn’t provide a true clickable call-to-action but the value I found was in adding another level of interactivity, relevance and branding for our event. Quickly, Snapchat geofilters have moved into a must-use tool during future events!