What is Snap Map and how can brands use it?

If you are a marketer and you are reading this you are in one of the two mental states.

1. Frustrated – Because your CMO has asked you to find out about Snap Map which s/he thinks is big in the 18-35 audience.

2. Curious – You want to completely understand Snap Map so that you can use it to do amazing marketing campaigns at almost zero cost.

If you are in the first mental state, you can see the official Snap Map video below and go ahead and close this tab

Otherwise, read on,

Brands can get a few hundred thousand micro video/photo views on Snap Map without spending a dollar. I got about 40,000 Snap Story views for a client in one day in Mumbai. Right now it is nascent and those numbers are easily achievable. By October 2017, there would be 15000 businesses in your area wanting a piece of consumers attention, and those number of views will drop.

How can your brand use it? Use the step by step guide below.

Step 1: – Know whether your audience is on Snapchat?

If your audience is between 18-35 and your product is not heavily B2B like SAAS software, they are pretty much on it. You personally KNOW people who share every single moment on Snapchat. If your argument is that all of them have shifted on Instagram, why not try it, see data and then decide.

Imagine if your business is a theme park. Everyone in the whole town can see what’s happening in your park right now. Plus you are not even doing it, the customers are doing the work for you.

Step 2: – What do you show? Which story to put up?

Like you do everywhere else, wait a second before flashing that up to 50% off in the users face when they tap on your story. Break your image for a second, show a human element of the company. Show how consumers are feeling great where they are. Show how employees are having fun.

Step 3: – Okay, how to do this step by step?

As you see in the video, users pinch on the screen and find out two things.

A. Where their friends are?

Remind people to open their Snapchat, that’s it. Just do a follow us on Snapchat standee in your store. This will prompt people to open the app, thereby updating their location in Snapchat, prompting their friends to come and join them in your store. And you know what happens when walk-ins increase 🙂

B. What places/geolocations are hot in their area.

If you have an event going on in your store, it might be a great idea to get some eyeballs on Snapchat.

Just take a few really cool Snap Stories, usually, 5-6 individuals with 5 stories each are enough to make a place red hot and getting everyone in your city to become curious as to what is happening there (This depends on competition though). Don’t know how to do that, read on.

1. Snap something

2. Hit story

3. Tap on our story

4. Repeat step one with a more interesting snap

5. After about 20 mins you would start seeing results so don’t go rogue and upload 200 snaps of your feet. Wait!

6. Once your business location is red, it would stay that way for about 24 hours but my gut is that Snapchat might change this anytime based on user activity in the area.

7. Wait for data to flow in.

8. Tell me how did it go for you in the comments section below. I would love to see more data on this.

Using the above steps I did the same for a retail client and got about 40,000 views in 24 hours in Mumbai. You can get higher or lower views based on the city you live in Snapchat user base and other options.

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