Did you know Snapchat is now the 2nd most favourite social network across US (Facebook being the 1st) surpassing Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn?
Given its current 301 million monthly active users, who are creating 3 billion+ snaps per dayand watching over 10 billion videos in a day - it's no wonder that this social networking channel (which started off as a simple photo messaging App), today holds immense potential for businesses and marketers to engage with their target audiences.
Much of the buzz surrounding Snapchat are their creative and fun-loving features like lenses, Snapchat Stories, Chat, Our Story, and our focus for this post – the Geofilters.
Snapchat Geofilters are still images or illustrations that any Snapchatter can overlay on top of any photo or videos taken at a particular location and share it with friends.
For instance, a geofilter at the Grand Canyon could be the text, “Greetings from Grand Canyon” along with a postmark image to make the photos taken from the national park, to look like a postcard, like the pic below using one of Grand Canyon geofilters:
The Geofilters have taken on a whole new trend with marketers, individuals and businesses alike, after its release of ‘On-demand Geofilters’ in 2016. It's a concept similar to that of ‘geofencing’ – meaning you draw a virtual fence around the area that you wish to highlight or promote:
Just like illustrated in the sample above, with the on-demand geofilters, whether you’re a brand hosting an event, friends celebrating a birthday party, or a store launching its new product - you can now designate an area that you’d like to target at a specific time and date, and offer a custom filter for Snapchat users in that location.
Your custom geofilter will pop onto the screen of Snapchatters who are within the designated vicinity and they can use it to overlay their snaps and videos to share with friends and followers.
And for businesses and B2B marketers, on-demand geofilters have opened up much affordable alternatives to sponsoring of lenses and filters on Snapchat, which could mean investing in 6-figures.
The cost of hosting On-demand geofilters starts from as low as $5 per 20k square feet per every hour - A boon for digital marketers who can build custom filters like logos, slogans, mascots, and compelling business images and messages for targeted audiences to use in a specified location.
Let us now explore 5 such brilliant examples of businesses using Snapchat Geofilters to engage with targeted audience:
1. Everlane’s Product Launch
Any brand would like to make as many impressions as they can when launching a new product, and Everlane did just that with its Snapchat geofilter for its summer collection-Elevate Summer.
When you engage with your audience through geofilters, you help them to connect with the brand on an emotional level, and also deliver the ‘marketing’ message that your products are of value and worthy of branded filters.
The fashion store also featured influencers who previewed the line for their LA launch, and partnered with magazine editors who gave their opinion on collection favourites.
This marketing campaign helped Everlane to cleverly capture the attention of its community by showing them the importance and giving them real-time insights of their new product line.
2. Starbuck’s Frappuccino Happy Hours
Another success story is that of Starbucks. Every May Starbucks runs a promotion called ‘Starbucks Frappuccino Happy Hours’ where you can get any Frappuccino for half the price.
The geofilter only works if you’re in the vicinity of Starbucks and only during the ‘happy hour’ time frame:
The geofilters alerted people that the deal was on and would only last a couple of hours – which helped Starbuck increase its sales, as people rushed into the coffee outlet to grab the promotion in time.
3. HubSpot’s ‘Partner Day’ Event
Whether it’s about nurturing your ‘company culture’ amongst your employees or accentuating your ‘brand presence’, geofilters can work wonders.
If you can encourage your employees to use geofilters to share the stories that unfold in one of your events or if they can be interviewed regarding fun memories in their jobs – this sends an encouraging message to the bigger communities regarding your company culture, values and work standards.
The above geofilter is that of HubSpot, created for its 'Partner Day’. The employees and partners were encouraged to highlight the best moment of the day through this fun geofilter, designed using their signature ‘orange’ colour.
Your employees can essentially be you brand advocates and can positively impact your brand identity, company morale and audience reach, if you can engage them with branded Snapchat geofilters.
4. RED – World AIDS Day Fundraising
On the occasion of World AIDS Day 2015, Snapchat partnered with a nonprofit, RED, by creating three free filters for Snapchat users.
The users could overlay these filters on that particular day onto their snaps and send it to friends and followers to spread awareness about the condition. To help raise fund for the cause, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had pledged to donate $3 for every time the filter was used – helping to raise over an estimated amount of $3 million in a single day.
This was a unique opportunity for the snapchatters (mostly millennials) to join hands with a charity and to make a positive contribution to the world at large!
5. General Electric (GE) Airport Geofilter
When GE wanted to raise awareness about its involvement in the transportation industry, it took to Snapchat Geofilters.
GE created geofilters to go with 50 major train stations and airports around the country. The filters were specific to each individual location, and had a built in interactive component where the users could write their destinations, along with their pictures:
The geofilters got massively popular amongst the travelers during the 2015 holiday season; with GE receiving over 4.5 million impressions from the engaged travelers.
Finally…
If you’re looking to promote your brand, engage your audience, inspire your community or ramp up your sales, Snapchat Geofilters can help you achieve these goals and many more, even under a low budget!
We hope these takeaways will inspire you to use creative geofilters of your own to reach your marketing objectives.
If you'd like further assistance or would like to discuss anything covered today, we'd love to hear from you.
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is element7digital.com.au
