Snapchat (NYSE: SNAP) has introduced a feature potentially of great interest to small business marketers — in particularly online sellers. The Shoppable Snap Ads feature is a new way to promote products on the social channel and is already making a difference for some ecommerce businesses.
Snapchat Shoppable Ads
This new feature comes just after Snapchat announced a collaboration with Amazon to improve product search. Just as with that feature, Shoppable Ads will let users tap directly into the product page of a brand.
This will allow businesses to improve their engagement level and even increase their conversion rates from smartphone users, which has the highest cart abandonment rate of all platforms. For small businesses looking to reach Snapchat’s user base of 180 million plus monthly users, this is an affordable ad vehicle.
According to a case study from Internet Retailing, the cost of advertising on Snapchat has delivered savings of hundreds of percentage points in CPM and cost per click.
Tom Everson, Head of Paid Media at Lounge, a men’s and women’s underwear brand, told Internet Retailing, “With 80% less spend on Snapchat vs Facebook and Instagram, we managed to deliver a 461% increase in traffic from paid ads.”
The key to making your ad dollars count on Snapchat is knowing your audience. While Facebook and Instagram have more monthly users, Snapchat can deliver influencers with niche markets that are affordable.
Compared to regular Snap Ads with the same item, Wish.com, another online seller, said its Shoppable Snap Ads delivered engagement rates that were up to 17 times higher.
This feature is available to all advertisers in Ads Manager through the Snapchat self-serve buying tool.
More Features
In addition to Shoppable Snap Ads, Snapchat also announced the introduction of Product Catalogues, Advanced Pixel Targeting, and a new crop of agency partners.
Product Catalogues will let advertisers automate the process of creating ad campaigns by importing their existing product feeds to Snapchat’s platform. Brands can now take their files containing product information and flow them into Snapchat.
Once the data is in there, the system can create Product Ads, Story Ads, Snap Ads, and the new Collections Ads templates automatically. According to the company, this will speed up the creation of ads so businesses can test their campaigns and learn faster from the results.
Advanced Pixel Targeting will allow advertisers to capture even more detailed information to deliver targeted ads with more precision to users on Snapchat based on their individual shopping preferences.
New Partnerships
The partnership with more than 30 new Snap-certified performance agencies is the company’s drive to increase the monetization of the platform with advertising, which has been lagging compared to other social media channels.
The certified agencies will get help from Snapchat with ecommerce, direct response, and data-driven advertising along with webinars and online training sessions on ecommerce marketing.
Image: Snapchat
This article, “Shoppable Ads Give Ecommerce Businesses a New Way to Promote on Snapchat” was first published on Small Business Trends