Can you reach millennials with Snapchat? The millennials are also called Generation Y or Generation Me. Though there’s no specific number of years for this generation, the popular notion is they comprise of young people born between 1982-2002.
In order to know if it is feasible to reach millennials with Snapchat, it is helpful to know the common characteristics and traits of the people who belong to Generation Y are. So what are these?
Common characteristics of millennials:
They are also often called as Boomerang or Peter Pan generation because of their tendencies to still be financially dependent on their parents, the Baby Boomers. Others paint an unflattering picture of the “Me” Generation, often as someone who is lazy and unable to hold a regular 9 to 5 job for a long time.
Millennials are often described as narcissistic, materialistic, coddled and have somewhat distorted views about life, politics and values. They are indifferent to helping out the community compared to Generation X.
Being born when technology is at its peak of development, they are also the most technical savvy among all generations. They live and breathe the internet. Everything they do is intertwined with their smartphones and laptops – may it be in sending emails, doing online banking, booking hotel reservations, keeping in touch with friends from all over the world and even purchasing goods and services.
Social media has a profound influence on the lives of millennials. To many of them, checking their various social media platforms is as natural as drinking their nth cup of coffee or brushing their teeth. Snapchat is one of the newer social platforms that’s creating quite a commotion with the younger generation. Businesses are always finding ways on how they can appeal to people and get them to do business with them.
These are the 5 ways to reach Millennials with Snapchat
#1 Snapchat is great when it comes to teasers
Teasers are quick previews of what your product or business is all about. Being on the internet all the time, teasers are great selling points to entice millennials to take notice of your products and eventually purchase them.
When used cleverly, the 10 second allowable time to send your snaps will whet the appetite or interest of the millennials enough for them to have clamor for your business. You can even attract millennials to interact with your business by asking them to send snaps in relation to your teasers.
#2 Snapchat is great when it comes to introducing promotions, contests, and giveaways
Another great attraction that you can use to promote your business is to introduce promotions, contests and giveaways via Snapchat. No one would say no to a freebie, right? So why not use Snapchat to get millennials to take advantage of your giveaways?
In the same manner, you can introduce promotions and contests via Snaps. To build the hype with your audience, you can send a snap of a portion of the promotion you are going to have or rule of your contest on a daily basis. That way, millennials would surely wait for you to release a snap every single day so they will know all the details of your promotion or contest and take part of it.
#3 Snapchat is all about story telling
Another distinctive characteristic of millennials is that they are fond of good stories or storytelling. Snapchat allows you to tell the story about your business via 10 second videos or images that you can post under “My Story”.
Want millennials to notice you or your business? Then send snaps about what your business is all about. You can make segments about your business and send them one at the time. As Snapchat has this 24-hour rule, you are actually forcing your audience to check Snapchat on a daily basis for the latest installment of your story. There is this tantalizing appeal to your followers to try to exert more effort to check your latest snaps because of this time limit.
#4 Snapchat allows you to connect influencers and your brand
Influencers can really make or break a product or service. Influencers don’t necessarily mean that they have to be some hotshot celebrity or popular athlete promoting your brand. Millennials take the word of these influencers seriously.
So if you want to maximize using Snapchat to attract these millennials to patronize your product ASAP then connect with influencers. To date, some of the biggest influencers on social media are not really mainstream celebrities.
Jerome Jarre is an internet sensation who became famous for his comical videos on Vine. He made his transition to Snapchat so smooth that one of his videos actually garnered 26M views in the 24 hour time span. Another worthy Snapchat influencer you can check out is Jenna Marbles who happens to be one of the earliest online sensations who started gaining audience with her YouTube videos.
By finding the right influencer, you can bring your brand to new heights simply by allowing this person to take over your brand and promote your products to their rather massive following in their own prespective.
Doing a Snapchat Takeover is actually easy. You just need to:
- establish your goals
- find the perfect influencer to partner with
- coordinate
- plan the takeover
- promote the takeover
- the actual takeover
- document the takeover
#5 You can reach millenials with Snapchat by promoting your events
Millennials love getting access to various live events. I mean who doesn’t want direct access to product launching or private sale? By using Snapchat to promote these live events, you get your followers as excited as you to see these activities unfold on social media.
An example of how you can reach millennials with Snapchat is by creating gimmicks for your business. You can give out rewards or gift certificates to your 50th customer of the day. You can send snapshots of your customers counting down from the 41st until the lucky 50th. When you document your gimmicks this way, you are appealing to the millennial’s not so hidden desire to be the star of their own show.
Wrapping it up
Snapchat is one of the newer and more popular social media platforms that has taken over on how videos should be done these days. How big has Snapchat gotten? In January 2016, Snapchat has grown to 350% from its initial 2 million daily views in May 2015. You can reach millennials with Snapchat since this is the perfect platform to create, promote, rewards, distribute, and leverage your products and services.
Zac Denton says
How good is this description of the generation Y or the newest millennials! It sounds very harsh but it’s true. Thanks for sharing these suggestions, these are some useful ideas.
Halid says
I belong to generation Y, but I don’t feel my self that way. We are not lasy, we are just braking stereotypes of previous generation job establishment. But, never mind, nice article, I’ll check it out for sure. Nice to see something new.
Todd Sykes says
I started to realize how much I don’t know about Snapchat! We are trying to implement it in our marketing strategy. Hopefully we will be able to take advantage of it in some future period, since learning about it will take some time.
Tracey says
I’m planning to introduce one giveaway on our Snapchat, so looking for some ideas on how we could implement it. Thank you for sharing these tips!
Zack says
Yes, millennials are exactly like described and all business owners must use their weaknesses as much as possible.
Ussain says
Thanks for sharing this innovative article. I never thought that we can use SC for that purpose. Thanks again, keep up.