Snapchat Custom Filters: Game Changer for Marketing, Recruiting & Hiring

This post was originally published on Medium

You know that feeling when you’re presented with something new… something that totally blows your mind and suddenly you become mildly consumed (or completely obsessed)? Like when you got your first camera phone? Or learned that the pound sign had evolved into this thing called a hashtag?

That’s pretty much how I felt when Snapchat came out with custom filters. No, really. I literally couldn’t sleep because I wanted to create a custom filter right then and there and snap the crap out of all my friends. Unfortunately (or fortunately), Snapchat has to approve custom filters so I had to wait until the sun came up.

But mark my words, when I got into work the next morning, I derailed my marketing team’s current projects so they could create and submit a custom filter for our office.

Sidebar: I’m the founder and CEO of a real estate transaction management software company in Sacramento called SkySlope. We help real estate agents streamline their process and go paperless. Needless to say, most SkySlope employees are pretty tech savvy and many of us are quite fond of capturing and sending those self-destructing little snaps.

I’m not afraid to admit it. I’m a huge fan of Snapchat. And while I realize that in its infancy, Snapchat had a bad rap, I’m telling you it’s not just for d!#k pics anymore. It’s a low maintenance social media platform combined with just the right amount of instant gratification and ridiculously irresistible content.

In a culture that has so much FOMO, users can’t help but pay attention! And that is exactly why I think Snapchat is going to dominate the social media scene when it comes to marketing. According to Snapchat’s internal data, more than 60 percent of 13 to 34 year olds are using Snapchat, it has over100 million daily active users and 7+ billion videos views a day. And now with custom filters… THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!

Of course there are tons of features that Snapchat can and probably will release to make the app more accessible but for the time being, custom filters are a game changer.

So how did I go about unleashing the custom filter and what happened when I did? I’m going to give you a rundown of a little experiment that my company did. If you don’t want read the case study, feel free to scroll to the end but the details might get your wheels turning about how to apply the custom filter and make it work for you.

How Snapchat Custom Filter Works

There are several things that Snapchat requires for a custom filter: a design, a location, and the duration. Which led us to consider:

• Who would be able to apply the filter? And thus, who would see it?
• What would it look like?
• Where would the filter be accessible?
• When and for how long would we make the filter available?

Location. Location. Location.

You would think we would want to design the dang thing first but trust me starting with the location makes the most sense. Trust me, keep reading.

To use the custom filter you have to be in a pre-defined location. Basically, only people in a designated area can apply the filter but anyone they send their snap to will see the filter. The bigger the area you select, the greater the cost. Since this was a trial, we decided to limit the area to our building and parking lot (you never know, tons of crazy stuff happens in our parking lot).

Who’s going to use the filter? And who will see the filter?

If a user can only apply the filter in our building and our building doesn’t get a lot of visitors (we aren’t a storefront), that means that the people who would use the filter would most likely be employees.

Since most of our employees are local to the Sacramento region, our filter would likely reach a local audience. This information was the drive for the design.

Time to design

Since we knew our filter would be used by employees and would reach their friends we decided to design with a local audience in mind. Did we just want to let people know we existed (a simple logo)? Did we want to include a message? We needed a point. We wanted some return on our investment.

Coincidentally we are hiring and that was the perfect springboard for a design. We’ve had great success with employee referrals so a custom filter would be another avenue to promote ourselves to potential candidates. We decided to take a tongue and cheek approach to the design:

Duration

This part was easy. We wanted the custom filter to be accessible during peak work times when employees where in the office. We decided Wednesday through Friday. Three days, lots of opportunity to get snappin’.

Approval

Once you have your design, location and duration, Snapchat needs to approve your custom filter and charge you. The total cost for approximately 26,000 sq feet for 3 days was about $40.

How it all shook out

Once we had approval from Snapchat, I sent an email out everyone to give them a heads up. Needless to say, our employees were pretty excited and a day later, the Snapping ensued.

Here’s a few snaps:

What we learned

• Our office looks as cool as it is! Our employees boasted about the awesome perks and the fun environment we’ve cultivated.
• Additionally, our employees LOVED it. They snapped a ton of great pics. Despite contrary belief, it didn’t interfere with productivity. That’s the great thing about Snapchat, it’s quick and easy. You don’t have to be a professional photographer. You don’t need to photoshop anything. It really is just a snapshot of the exact moment that you are in.

Design-wise:

• Light colors work better. The dark logo showed up great when we submitted the filter but when you applied it on a photo, it often blended into the photo.
• Less is more. The less obtrusive your design is, the better.
• Transparency is key. The filter shouldn’t get in the way of the photo but the filter still needs to be discernible.

Our return on investment

Snapchat provides some metrics on how much bandwidth your filter is getting. Here are the metrics after just 2 days.

And while we can’t tell how many people actually went to our website from Snapchat, here’s a small piece of evidence that our filter accomplished our objective.

This ending has no filters

Remember when you said that you would NEVER use your credit card online? Or you would NEVER sign up for Facebook? Well, look at you now! I see those Amazon boxes! I read your passive aggressive status updates about your co-workers!

Snapchat is by no means new, so you aren’t exactly a trailblazer. But you could definitely be a pioneer of the custom filter.

Think of the venues this feature can be used at?—?conferences, festivals, fun runs, sporting events or concerts. If attendees are using Snapchat and you have created a fantastically branded (and more importantly, fun) filter, your reach is exponential. Remember, my office used the custom filter we created 130 times and it reached 3,176 people. You do the math! That’s an absurd ROI! The potential to expose your brand is absolutely incredible.

Custom filters are a fresh and untapped avenue for marketing (for now), especially when marketing to millennials. But don’t think that Snapchat won’t wiggle it’s way into the hearts of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. If you get on the bandwagon now, you will be considered the industry pro when Snapchat becomes the prominent social media platform!

p.s. we really are hiring!