Snapchat & TikTok Marketing Tips
This isn’t your typical “how to place Snapchat ads” article – if you’re looking for step by step instructions or details about each type of ad, there are hundreds of articles out there. I’m taking you behind the scenes of a real marketer who places Snapchat and TikTok ads on the reg. If you want honest, effective tips on how to generate high performing ads across these platforms, keep reading.
If you’re thinking about advertising on Snapchat or TikTok, you’re likely trying to reach a younger audience. The ideal age to reach via these platforms are teenagers, specifically 15-25 year-olds for Snapchat and 10-30 year-olds on TikTok. If you’re trying to reach 50-year-olds, for example, C-suite executives, you’re in the wrong place. In fact, only 5% of US 56+ year-olds use Snapchat (source) and only 11% of US 50+ individuals use TikTok (source).
Great, so now we’ve established that you’re trying to reach people who have never heard of The Wonder Years. Now you need to think about what your goals are. Both Snapchat and TikTok are great platforms for brand awareness and app installs. Neither of these platforms have many options when it comes to targeting highly specific individuals (we’ll get more into this later). Trying to get the word out to everyone and anyone in your age demographic and location? You’re in the right place. Looking to reach industrial manufacturers to promote a new engine? You’re better off somewhere else (and may want to contact us for help…). To give you an example, we recently ran a campaign for a SNAP-Ed program to get the word out to eligible households about pandemic relief funding being mailed to their door. In order to reach as many people in a target audience with lifestyle, demographic, geographic and socioeconomic attributes, we knew Snapchat and TikTok would be ideal platforms. And we were right… we were able to get the word out to over 1.6 million affected people in less than a month! Okay, enough about us, let’s talk about what your content needs to look like to get results like this.
Content is one of the most important aspects of advertising on these platforms. You don’t want to do your classic stock image with a catchy headline and description – these work great on other platforms, but you won’t see the same performance on Snapchat or TikTok. Put in the extra work to create great content specific to these platforms and you’ll see exponentially improved results. For both Snapchat and TikTok, video is the optimal ad format. Users are on these platforms with the intention of consuming content in the form of videos and likely have some extra time to kill. Next, remember that your content will only show on mobile devices and will need to be sized accordingly. Be aware of the various limitations with where you want to put your logo/text – TikTok will have words or icons that appear over your content.
This is where Snapchat and TikTok vary slightly. You have more options with the type of content that will perform well on Snapchat. Check out these Snapchat success stories for some ideas. For TikTok, the best type of ad content mirrors organic content you see on the platform. Spend some time browsing the platform and pay close attention to the content that’s trending or that catches your eye instantly. TikTok trends are always changing, so browsing online won’t always provide the best information – you’re better off going directly to the source. While you’re at it, make sure to pause any time you come across an advertisement and take notes on how well it engaged you. Remember, you’re advertising to people who have grown up spending hours on end browsing social media. These users have been trained to quickly identify an ad and swipe past it almost instantly. Your ads should grab user attention within the first 2 seconds, as opposed to your typical 2-5+ seconds on other platforms. The best performing content will “trick” users into thinking they’re watching Addison Rae before they realize they’ve started learning about your brand (and if you don’t know who that is, you need to do more research). Here are some examples to get you started.
Now to start placing the ads. As a digital marketing specialist that places ads across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, and more I have to say these platforms are not the friendliest for marketers. Being relatively new to the advertising space, you can tell they still have some work cut out for them. But being some of the most used and effective social media channels across our target age group, we can’t avoid using them. TikTok has your typical campaign goals – reach, traffic, app installs, video views, lead generation and conversions. Snapchat, however, only has website visits, calls & texts, app installs, app visits, and their newest feature Promote Local Place. A few things I’ve noticed while using these platforms that differ from other digital advertising platforms are:
- You can’t save the campaign as you go, and you can’t save audiences for future use. Make sure you have all your ducks in a row before you go to place the ad.
- Minimum daily budgets are $5/day for Snapchat and $20/day for TikTok. This will be important to know in advance if you’re working with a low budget.
- Copy is limited – you’ll get a short headline and description, but you won’t be able to fit much information in those. You’ll want to incorporate all of the information into the content itself.
Lastly, just like any other digital platform, always test out different content to see what works for your business. Both Snapchat and TikTok provide basic analytics such as reach, impressions, clicks, conversions, cost, etc. but neither will get as granular as something like Google. Pay attention to the click-through-rates, cost-per-clicks and conversion rates, and always make sure to use UTM URLs so you can track how users from these channels are engaging with your website content.
Take this information and use it to create the top performing Snapchat and TikTok ads you’ve always dreamed of having. And if you need any extra tips, we’re always here to help.
Evelyn Demirjian
Account Executive & Senior Digital Marketing Strategist
DCC Marketing