Snapchat, one of the best social media marketing tools for engaging millennials, just made a big announcement: brands can now sponsor geofilters.
Geofilters are one of the coolest things about Snapchat, giving it’s 100 million active daily users the ability to add a special stamp with the name of a place, event or brand image to their own photo or video messages. Now, anyone, including brands, can easily make their own geofilters and pay for placement.
(Wondering if your business should be on Snapchat? Here’s an article explaining why you probably should be on Snapchat if you’re marketing to millennials)
Once you have a Snapchat account, here’s how you do it:
Design and Submit your custom Snapchat Geofilter
It’s important to keep in mind, you’re designing your filter for a very specific location and audience, (under 5M square feet for each paid placement). It’s also crucial to keep the designs within Snapchat’s technical and creative guidelines.
Next, log in to the new On-Demand Geofilters area using your Snapchat account information to upload a custom filter for approval.
Select When to Run Your Geofilter
Similar to Facebook’s ad platform, you then choose the dates and time you’d like to run your paid Snapchat geofilter. The longer your geofilter runs, the more you’ll pay. The specific cost (per square foot, per hour) is determined by the density of average Snapchat activity that goes on in a given area. More on this below.
Choose Your Location
While it helps to determine a location for your promotion during the design phase, setting up geofencing is the third step in sponsoring Snapchat geofilters. By drawing an area on a Google Map within their platform, you can select the exact location your geofilter will run. Just click to place pins and drag your shape to cover your desired area, which needs to be over 20,000 square feet and under 5M.
The more square footage you choose, the higher the cost. As mentioned above, not all square footage is created equal. When placing a geofilter over a university campus pictured below, the hourly cost per 1000 square feet is $0.05, (( $245.06 / 4,901,119 sq. ft) * 1000).
When highlighting a location just outside of that same college campus, we get a price of $0.025 per 1000 square feet, or (( $120.45 / 4,818,161 sq. ft) * 1000).
What is the variable affecting this pricing differential? Our best guess is that it’s most likely the density of average Snapchat usage per the area.
Pay and See Your Geofilter Come to Life
The last step is entering payment information and designating your geofilter is for business use, (personal geofilters can’t include company logos or brand images).
After placing your order, Snapchat can take anywhere from a few minutes to a full business day to review your geofilter, ensuring it’s within their creative guidelines. Regardless, you’ll have to wait at least 24 hours after approval for your paid Snapchat geofilter to come to life.
It’s surprisingly simple for both small and large companies to take advantage of Snapchat’s most recent innovation in making ads on its platform more accessible.
Our clients have experienced tremendous success on the platform as it continues to grow, and your company will too with the appropriate steps. If your company is already marketing to millennials, I’d highly recommend adding Snapchat to your approach whether you tap a social media agency or not. Why not start with testing geofilters before the novelty no longer exists?
Attention on many social media platforms has a short lifespan, so it’s important to choose where you invest your time and resources wisely. Snapchat and its paid geofilters are a smart next step for brands focused on marketing to millennials. While the platform’s messages may disappear in just a day, Snapchat’s young and growing user base won’t be going anywhere, anytime soon.
