Is Snapchat part of your Digital Marketing plans?
With over 178 million daily active users, Snapchat is one of the fastest growing social media platforms. With that growth comes the huge potential for advertising, and accommodation providers are no exception. Snapchat’s high engagement levels are ideal for increasing brand awareness and direct bookings. Snapchat is particularly effective for targeting a younger audience, as 71% of users are under 34, and a surprising 70% are female.
There are two main forms of paid advertising on Snapchat: geofilters; and in-stream snaps. I’m going to explain the main benefits of these, what you need to promote your brand on Snapchat, as well as the reporting metrics.
1. Snapchat Geofilters
The Benefits
Snapchat filters are a fantastic way of spreading word of mouth about your hotel. While used by guests already visiting your property, they’re a great way to encourage their friends and social media followers to do likewise. Your current guests are likely to have friends and family with the same travel interests, so it’s an easy way to put your brand in front of an audience pre-inclined to make a booking.
The Details
Snapchat geofilters are priced per square foot, and by date. The filters can be used on a per-campaign basis, or through an annual plan. Though these can’t be cancelled, the plan proves far more cost-effective than paying-as-you-go. On average, the annual plan costs €1000-€3000 per year, depending on the size of your hotel and the area it’s located in.
As an example, for Avvio’s head office in Limerick, an annual plan would cost €134, starting in February. The below space would be covered and to compare pricing, you could also run a filter from 1-2 February, which would cost €5, or the first week of February would cost €7 (although the average hotel footprint is much larger than Avvio’s head office!)
Additionally, with these annual plans, the geofilters can be switched out whenever required. This allows your brand to customise them for the different seasons, or events happening in the hotel.
The Metrics
Snapchat geofilters can be reported on effectively through the following metrics.
- Swipes – how many times it was viewed in Snapchat, even if it wasn’t used
- Uses – how many times the filter was used
- Views – how many times other people saw your filter being used, in a friend’s snaps or stories
- Usage – how many times people chose to use your filter.
2. Running Snapchat ads
The Benefits
Snapchat ads allow us to put your brand in front of a new audience, and are particularly effective for engaging the younger market. We can narrow down the demographics by age, gender, language and location, to make sure the right people see the ads. Interestingly, accommodation providers can also narrow it down to predefined audiences. So, we can target Travel Enthusiasts, and even break it down by type of traveller.
The ads also increase the amount of traffic being driven to your website, as users can click on the adverts.
The Details
The minimum spend on advertising through Snapchat is €50 per day. Ads can be shown on publisher stories, or on stories generated by actual Snapchat users.
All you need to run a Snapchat advertising campaign:
- A video up to 10 seconds long, with h.264 encoding, and dimensions of 1080w by 1920h or use a stationary image and have the video be a zoom effect
- A PNG logo of your property
- A suitable landing page
The Metrics
Snapchat provides details of how many impressions your ads gained, and how many people swiped up to access your website. However, in order to report on conversions, you’ll need the Snapchat tracking code installed. This is currently in Beta testing, and interested users can apply for the Beta trial here. Once this is rolled out globally, you can also use this for remarketing to Snapchat visitors.
Interested in discovering more?
Learn more about Snapchat marketing for hotels by contacting our devoted digital team. Our social media specialists can help you explore the pricing options for your property, and discuss the anticipated ROI. Learn more by speaking to an Avvio Digital Strategy Manager – just email me or tweet us @AvvioDirect
For other digital stories take a look at our Digital News – January 2018 Edition.
