Snapchat: The Next Big B2B Marketing Tool?

Snapchat.

You’ve probably heard of it.

If you have teenage kids, they are definitely using it. If you’re a Millennial, chances are, you’re using it too.

But guess, what? It’s not just for kids anymore.

In fact, more and more Business to Business (B2B) brands are jumping into Snapchat and using it as a serious marketing channel to promote content, engage with readers, and grow leads. Those early adopters using it now, could actually be a little bit ahead of the game.

But don’t just take our word for it…

Snapchat will be an excellent place for B2B players who act like media companies – media companies that create stories to bring value to their end users. Those players will find their niche and their audience, allowing them to disproportionately pick up business.

– Gary Vaynerchuck

Social media marketing experts are projecting that Snapchat has hit the mainstream, which means that over the next year or two the age of users will start creeping up, and that’s very good news for B2B brands and marketers.

Interested? Thought so.

But first, let’s dive a little bit more into the power of social media.

The Numbers Behind Social Media

Social media has exploded. It’s become an every day part of the lives of billions, yes billions, of people all around the world. That makes it a very viable tool to use for marketing.

Let’s face it, there are very few other ways to reach so many people at once for so little money, comparatively. Here are just a few stats:

• “90% of businesses now use social media for business purposes.” (Proskauer)
• At the end of 2014, over 31% of all referral traffic came from social media. (Shareaholic)
• “54% of B2B marketers said they’ve generated leads from social media.” (Whittington Consulting)
• “78% of marketers said they saw increased traffic with as little as 6 hours a week invested in social media marketing.” (Social Media Examiner)

So social media is big, you know that.

Let’s take a deeper dive into Snapchat itself. It’s one of the fastest growing social brands online, grabbing a huge percentage of smartphone users on a daily basis.

LiftMetrix

It’s pretty easy to see just how huge Snapchat is poised to be. So it’s going to be an interesting landscape to watch over the next few years as this platform becomes on that business to business brands begin to embrace.

Is yours going to be one of them?

Psychology of Snapchat

You shouldn’t be surprised to find out there is another reason behind the explosion of Snapchat. Here’s a hint, there’s more to than it just being fun. There’s quite a bit of psychology that comes into play.

Now, one of the biggest reasons why reveal marketing is so successful is because it also relies heavily on psychology, namely the concepts behind curiosity, fear of missing out, and conditioning.

Curiosity

Curiosity is one way Snapchat engages users. When someone gets a notification, it automatically triggers that curiosity.

But what’s interesting about Snapchat compared to other social media streams is that you don’t get to scratch that cognitive itch right away, you have to engage in order to see the photo, chat, or video. That engagement helps to build a relationship with that user.

Fear of Missing Out

Another key feature of Snapchat is the snaps are not available forever. If a user doesn’t check their account within 24 hours of that first notification, the snap is gone.

Knowing that you might miss something interesting, important, funny, or emotional if you don’t act, helps drive users towards more engagement. It’s that fear of missing out that makes Snapchat quite different from a number of other social media channels.

Conditioning

One other way psychology plays into the growth of Snapchat is through operant conditioning. Basically, a form of positive reinforcement, this type of conditioning helps to give users a feeling of happiness and excitement from a result (i.e. watching a video) that makes them want to repeat the process over and over.

When users feel like they get a positive result from interacting with a Snapchat, it makes them much more likely to continue doing it over and over again.

Tapping into these psychological factors can help brands really harness the potential power of Snapchat when it comes to driving engagement with customers.

Snapchat Marketing Best Practices

If your brand is thinking about getting into Snapchat, there are a couple of approaches that marketers and brands have found successful.

Marketo

Behind the Scenes

People absolutely love behind the scenes experiences and Snapchat is one place where brands can really grab attention and engage with their users. Use Snapchat to share special videos, make “world premiere” announcements, and feature content that can’t be seen on other platforms.

Tell a Story

We all know that storytelling is a vital part of marketing, but brands that are able to use the Snapchat Stories to tell a story have seen their engagement dramatically increase. B2B brands can educate their customers with Snapchat highlighting how products work and case studies of clients.

Promotions

If your brand is offering promotions and coupons on other social media channels or with your email marketing, you can do the same with Snapchat. Offering things like promotion codes or limited time offers is a great way to try and drive active engagement with your users.

Build Relationships

So much of B2B marketing goes into building a relationship with your customers, and that means the people behind the brand. As the overall workforce becomes younger, it’s important to understand those with the “buying decisions” can be reached on new platforms.

If you’re starting to explore how you can use Snapchat as a new marketing channel for your brand, keeping these best practices in mind is going to be a good place to start.

Tying it Together

The good thing about Snapchat is you can tell pretty quickly what types of content is working and isn’t, so it can be quite easy to pivot to a new concept without feeling much pain.

This is why more B2B specific brands are making the move towards exploring this channel as a new way to find and connect with potential buyers on social media.

Has your brand started using Snapchat for your own marketing efforts? What types of results have you seen?