How to Use Snapchat Ads to Boost Your E-Commerce Store

Did you know that nearly 75% of Gen Z and millennials use Snapchat for at least 30 minutes every single day? With statistics like that, it goes without saying that, if you are looking for an effective advertising channel for your e-commerce business that targets younger generations, Snapchat may serve as your pot of gold at the end of the advertising rainbow.

Effectiveness of Snapchat Ads

Snapchat adverts are effective for many reasons, one being economies of scale. Think about the exposure your brand or product will get through a social media platform that:

• Is still (over 10 years after its launch) one of the top 15 most-used social media platforms in the world
• Has well over 300 million active users daily

Another good reason why Snapchat adverts may be beneficial to your e-commerce business is that the platform's advertising uptake has been slower than other social media platforms—making it an essentially untapped market in the bigger scheme of things. Because the uptake has been slower, Snapchat ads are also relatively cheaper than other platforms, such as advertising on TikTok.

How Do Snapchat Ads Work?

In short, a Snapchat advert is a vertical, full-screen video, gif, image, or cinemagraph that pops up in between a viewer's friends' stories in an attempt to acquire new customers without spending too much. If the viewer swipes up, they can interact with the ad by, for example, downloading an app. Snapchat ads are most effective when they are quirky and stylishly unpolished to reach the targeted younger audience.

Cost of Snapchat Ads

The good news is that you can control your Snapchat ad spend. As a result, the exact costs of advertising are difficult to bed down. It all depends on your bid amount and goal, your objectives and budget, as well as the duration of your campaign.

Snapchat has a nifty ad manager tool that bases the cost of an advert on how you structure your campaign. The platform charges a cost for every 1,000 impressions (CPM) with goals-based bidding on a self-serve platform. With goals-based bidding, it's up to you to set up a maximum price for every time one of your viewers initiates an action that you've optimized your ad for. The bottom line is that you can advertise your products or services to a youth market for an estimated cost of $5 a day!

Did you know that ads are not included when calculating your cost of goods sold (COGS)? Read How to Calculate COGS for Your Amazon Business to learn more.

Snapchat Ad Analytics

The Snapchat Insights tool tracks the number of story views your brand gets weekly and monthly, as well as how long you keep your users transfixed to your ad! You'll soon be able to see what your viewers like, and what type of ads inspire conversions from brand awareness to product sales. Statistics like these can guide your campaigns until your goals and objectives are reached. Here's what a good click-through or swipe-up rate looks like.

Snapchat Pixel

Snapchat Pixel—otherwise known as the Snap Pixel—is JavaScript code that will help you to measure the cross-device impact of your ad campaigns. This means that you'll be able to get exact numbers of how many of your viewers take action on your website after seeing one of your ads. In other words, Snap Pixel works really well when it comes to driving subscriptions, leads, and sales because you see beyond a single viewer's session and a single device.

Snapchat is gaining momentum as the new e-commerce ad kid on the block. It is very easy to sign up and navigate, cost-effective to use and a pretty good match for your business if you are targeting younger customers.

General Snapchat Ad Strategies

The platform is highly flexible, giving you a wide range of advert types to choose from including collection ads, story ads, creative filters and lenses, commercials, and dynamic ads. You need to find the strategy that works best for your brand, which can be achieved by using Snapchat Insights. This tool tracks the number of story views your brand gets weekly and monthly, as well as how long you keep your users transfixed on your ad!