How Snapchat is helping businesses harness the desired audience

By: Vedika Malhotra, intern, Dataquest

Taking a paradigm shift of sorts from what was earlier an entertaining social network for youngsters, to a platform for business users; Snapchat has become a multifarious app that allows people across all genres to benefit themselves in one way or the other. With 100,000 million daily active users, it has successfully shown that it is here to stay. This app’s appealing capability to reach the target audience did not attract the celebrities alone, but also big business holders. The ease, with which they can advertise and make their content reach their consumers, is one of the main reasons for its popularity in this space. In this regard, one of the distinguishing factors is the 10 seconds marketing challenge. Also, the fact that the content will disappear in 24 hours, increases the possibility of users coming back to follow up for new trends and updates everyday.

Whether it is Cosmopolitan and Buzzfeed using snapchat’s discover feature to deliver content to their users, or it is Taco Bell updating customers about the new schemes and food, this app has carved out new opportunities for everyone. Showing people something they would not see on any other social network, is the reason for its worldwide usage. The life of brands on snapchat is growing day by day. Providing the users with live videos and snaps showing new products and items has become common now. Kylie Jenner showing her cosmetics collection on this app before even launching it in the market and creating a craze among the users is the new trend now. Domino’s making short films featuring the tasty pizzas along with snapchat’s geofilters led to an increase in the daily orders. Celebrities showing behind the scene fun to their followers have also created a buzz in the market. Be it football fans watching live videos of the players playing, or be it Comedy Central making their users laugh, this app has opened up a new world for companies to include snapchat marketing in their marketing strategies line up.

In essence, Snapchat is fast becoming a platform for all kinds of brands to promote their services and products in their desired communities and in the fastest way possible. However, it would be interesting to see how Snapchat behaves in the future and competes against the likes of Facebook and Twitter which are ruling the brand promotion market at present.