How To use Instagram and Snapchat to reach your target audience

Social media platforms have been a major player in how marketers are reaching their target audience, especially within consumer markets. While different platforms have varied growth and popularity among different demographics and age groups, it’s safe to say that marketers need to be well aware of how to reach their target audience on these platforms, especially on Snapchat and Instagram and the benefits of using each platform. Each platform has its own perks, features and benefits depending on how who you’re trying to reach. According to a 2018 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, six-in-ten Snapchat and Instagram users visit these sites on a daily basis. That is music to a marketer’s ears. Also, according to that same survey, 77 percent of Snapchat users, also use Instagram. These two social media apps are key to reaching your target audience in a variety of ways on a daily basis.

Instagram is arguably one of the best social media platforms to post visually-engaging content with a reported 800 million active users since April of this year. Starting off as just a platform to post photos to your feed, as of August 2016, users can post stories with multiple videos and photos to engage with their audience and followers. There are so many creative ways to send a brand message or launch a marketing campaign through Instagram’s growing features. Instagram reports that 80 percent of users say that they follow at least one business on the app and 300 million accounts use Instagram stories every day. The best part of Instagram’s platform is that whether a brand is a mom-and-pop shop or a million-dollar conglomerate, you have the ability to reach your target audience who are among the millions of users who are active on this platform.

By creating a business profile, users can easily access contact information, location, and gives you the ability to collect and receive actionable data on the content you’re posting—this is critical. Instagram’s analytics through business profiles provides you with data that includes impressions, follower demographics, and reach per post so you can gauge and evaluate each post’s success rate and compare data. Advertising on Instagram is another way to use Instagram outside of posting to your own profile. Posting advertisements allows users to also understand how well a certain ad performed. These data points are vital so you can tailor content to what your target audience wants and responds to as you create fresh content and stories. Why spend time on content that isn’t giving your business a proper ROI?

Instagram reports that one-third of the most viewed stories are from businesses and there has been an 80 percent increase in time spent watching video on the app year over year. Each year, Instagram seems to be rolling out new features to accommodate the needs and wants of its users that in the end, also benefit businesses. Users can save, share, and easily access products and their favorited posts. Gone are the days of posting content once and hoping your audience sees it organically. Instagram is clearly being used for business growth whether it’s to create brand awareness, increase sales online or in-store, or to even promote new initiatives like a new website or app by creating daily stories. With these business goals in mind, it’s important to understand how creating content via Instagram can make those goals a success, especially since Instagram reports the highest engagement rate out of any other social media platform.

Snapchat on the other hand is about a year younger than Instagram, that doesn’t mean it’s any less powerful. What differs Snapchat from Instagram is that it’s defined as being a multimedia messaging app by using photos, videos, text and drawings. This is where you need to also consider who your target audience is. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, about 78 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds use Snapchat and that percentage quickly drops off at 54 percent of users who are 25 to 29-years old.

However, if your target audience is among a younger age group, there are many benefits to using Snapchat to enhance brand and product awareness by introducing features that are very unique to the app. For example, using geofilters to detect a user’s location for example, that allows the user to access certain stamps and send unique photos to followers based on where you are. Geofilters can also be used for special events and for certain promotional purposes. You can also create unique Snapchat filters for your brand’s special events such as product launches or during the holidays. Snapchat has really stretched their hand out to create exclusive ways for businesses to reach their audience in a fun and creative way as they add snaps to their overall stories. Snapchat is especially popular and known for its lenses that is another exclusive feature for the app. This is where users can apply animations to selfies. While Instagram also has a stories feature, Snapchat coined this feature first. These stories are quick ways to share content with followers and they only last for 24 hours. A brand that wants to be really innovative and create unique content will definitely find its place on Snapchat’s platform.

Snapchat has also improved its targeting capabilities with Snap Audience March. This allows brands to use their own data to target certain audiences on Snapchat. The platform also makes it easy to monitor campaigns in real-time in regards to reach, viewability, reaction, etc. It’s partnership with Oracle Data Cloud will help match Snapchat users to offline purchasing behavior. This will allow marketers to deliver targeted ads and track sales from ads that are on Snapchat. When creating Snapchat stories, you’re able to see who is viewing your story and how many people. There’s also Live Stories that allow users who are at the same location to contribute Snaps to the same story. For example, if there a product launch, employees can create live stories that are focused around that event. Taking the stories feature a step further, Discover stories compile audio/video and photo content that links to articles or graphics. Brands have the opportunity to advertise in these stories, however small businesses may have a hard time swallowing the daily ad rate starting at $50,000. Premium placements are also reserved for more well-known brands.

How should you be uploading or editing this content to create these stories? Apps like Instasize are great to use before uploading content to either one of these platforms. Not only are there a number of tools available to you that can enhance the content you’re posting for each story, but you can ensure the quality of the content and edit it before uploading content to the actual platform. Want to create a certain tone or enhance certain colors with the content you’re uploading? Instasize has a number of filters and editing tools that allows users to create and maintain the same tone and message with all of the content that is uploaded. It’s vital to ensure that the brand’s voice and message is communicated properly to the target audience.

Depending on your target audience and where they’re spending the most time, each platform has many benefits and apps such as Instasize has tools to help add more glam to each snapshot or video with tools that will capture your target audience’s attention.