Crude-oil futures finished sharply lower Friday, with the commodity staging a turnaround from earlier gains after a better-than-expected report on U.S. employment helped to deliver a fillip to the U.S. dollar, weighing on assets priced in the currency. West Texas Intermediate crude for September delivery closed down 81 cents, or 1.2%, to settle at $68.28 a barrel, with a weekly slide of 7.7%, based on the most-active contract at last week’s settlement. The weekly decline marked the sharpest for the contract since the week ended Oct. 30, FactSet data show. The dollar was climbing 0.6% on the day and 0.7% on the week, as gauged by the ICE U.S. Dollar Index .
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.
Whether your customers are shopping for tennis shoes or a marketing automation tool, they care about your product’s features. Features (along with price and design) are one of the main factors people consider when comparing products.
Would you buy a computer without knowing how much storage it has? Or a pair of yoga pants without knowing whether they stretch?
Despite their importance, many brands fail to make their product’s features clear on their websites—and that could cause revenue to drop.
Your product’s features are massive selling points, so they need to be clear and compelling. Here’s how to get your product features right.
What Is a Product Feature?
A product feature is a characteristic of your product that differentiates it from other products in the market. It could be how it looks (a design feature), how you can use it (a functional feature) or what it comes with (an added-value feature).
Let’s take running shoes as an example. The material of the shoe is a feature, so is the technology in the shoe. Both are highlighted in this example by Nike.
What about a software product?
Features typically center on the product’s functionality (what you can do with it), but they can also include integrations or data security. Slack’s feature page below highlights these types of features:
Features don’t have to be unique to your product, though. As design, technology, and manufacturing processes evolve, some features become standard. You’d be hard-pressed to buy a smartphone without a touchscreen, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a feature brands can talk about.
Whether your product comes with ten features or two, you need to be talking about them across your website including your product descriptions, landing page, and even your homepage.
Make your product features clear so customers can easily compare you to your competitors. It’s even more important if your product boasts the best features in the industry. The more you shout about them, the more likely consumers are to take notice—and maybe make a purchase.
7 Strategies for Highlighting Product Features
You know what features are, and you know why they’re important to include on your site. Now let’s look at seven ways e-commerce stores and SaaS tools can effectively leverage them.
Include Social Proof
Talking about how great your features are is nice, but every other company does the same thing. Even if your product features are superior, customers may not believe you. After all, only one-third of customers trust the brands they buy from.
You need social proof to convince them your product delivers. Add quotes and testimonials from your customers or trusted third parties that mention your product features to relevant pages. Better yet, include images and videos of them using your product.
Featuring real people showing off your product’s features instantly makes them more credible and makes it much more likely consumers will trust your brand.
UK maternity brand Isabella Oliver does a great job of this, including a quote from Vogue in the product description of a maternity tank dress.
Speak to Your Target Audience
You need to understand your target audience to write about your product features effectively. If you have buyer personas, make sure to refer to them while writing. This will help you prioritize which features your customers care about most.
Start by looking at reviews for your product and those of your competitors—G2 is a great place to start for software companies and Amazon for e-commerce brands. Identify the top features customers talk about and prioritize them.
Be wary of trying to target everyone. This is particularly important for SaaS products that can have a dozen different use cases. Each target customer should have a dedicated landing page where you speak exclusively about relevant product features. If you try to speak to everyone on one landing page, you’ll end up not targeting any audience well.
Everlane is an example of a brand who knows their target audience and what they care about. Each product description includes a link to the factory it’s made in and other information related to sustainability.
Focus on the Benefits
Consumers only care so much about what makes your product special. What they really care about is how it benefits them.
Talk about a benefit whenever you mention a feature.
Writing about benefits requires a bit more effort and creativity. Your product’s features are fairly obvious, especially to you. What isn’t so obvious is how the user benefits from them. Think about your customer personas and spend some time reading product reviews. These will help you get into your customers’ minds and focus on the benefits they care about.
If you really want to do a good job, interview your customers to find out exactly how they benefit from your product. It takes a little more effort, but this is hands-down the best way to tease out the benefits of your product.
One of Hootsuite’s most popular features is the ability to track social media mentions on their dashboard–but that’s not how the brand sells the feature to its users. Instead, they focus on the benefit: finding out what customers really think. They even follow this up with another user-generated benefit of the feature.
Draw Attention to the Important Details
There are some features you’ll want customers to take note of more than others. That’s why it’s important to create a hierarchy of features and look for ways to draw attention to the features consumers care most about.
To do this, break your page into sections and devote each section to a specific feature. Use a bold heading to grab your reader’s attention and back this up with short, sharp copy and eye-catching imagery.
Google takes this to the extreme by letting each feature take up all of the screen’s real estate. There’s no way to miss them:
Another is to remove the navigation menu from your landing page. With no way to move away from the page, users are forced to focus on your sales copy and read about your product’s features. Don’t get carried away using this tactic, however. Most customers won’t be happy with you removing the navigation bar, especially if you’re an e-commerce site.
Make Information Scannable
Your customers are busy, and most aren’t going to read every word on your page. Instead, they’re going to scan it for key bits of information. It’s your job to make your product features as scannable as possible while still getting across the core message.
Bullet points are an excellent tool because huge chunks of text are a massive turn-off for readers—especially if you want to share a lot of information.
Target includes a bullet list of each product’s features on their listing page, so you don’t even have to click them individually to get the need-to-know information.
Use Video and Images
Words aren’t the only way to get across your product features. Images and videos are usually a much better way to get across exactly what your product can do.
Images are an easy way to show customers how key features look and work. They are particularly powerful for design-focused features and most e-commerce products in general. Bonus points if you include user-generated photos in your descriptions.
UK furniture brand Made did a great job of including user-generated images in their product listings. Potential customers can see exactly what each sofa will look like in a range of settings.
Videos take a little more work, but they can be even more effective. For example, you could create an explainer video that highlights your product’s core features, or a separate video for each feature.
Your feature-led videos can also be used as part of your onboarding process and by your sales team during client calls. They can even boost your search rankings, especially if you host them on YouTube.
Write Blog Posts and Emails
If you have a SaaS product, blog posts, emails, and other forms of content marketing are one of the best ways to highlight your product features—particularly if those features come in the form of new software releases.
Make sure your blog posts talk about the benefits that users can gain from the new features and don’t just talk about the features alone. Plenty of screenshots are also a good idea, so is a video if you can create one.
Unlike other forms of content marketing, there’s no need to post these articles regularly. Writing them when you have a new feature to describe is enough.
Email updates should also be sent sparingly. Only email when you have a new feature to announce and keep your email succinct. Only include the key details in the email and link to a more in-depth blog post if necessary.
Existing users will learn about the new features when using the software, so it may be wise to only send an email about features that may re-engage lost customers.
Asana’s blog is filled with feature-focused blog posts. Note that many don’t focus on individual features. Rather they cluster feature releases around a particular topic and write about that instead.
3 Examples of Product Feature Highlights
If the examples above weren’t enough for you, I’ve got three more examples of brands that do a great job highlighting their product features.
Apple
Few companies are better than Apple at creating buzz about their products. There aren’t many better at highlighting their product’s benefits, either.
Apple makes a point of creating a new banner for every feature, pairs each with a user benefit, and includes high-quality images and graphics. Even if you already have an iPhone, reading their product pages makes you want to upgrade.
Amazon
Amazon is famous for its in-depth product listings, but those listings are also great at highlighting each product’s most important features.
The clear layout makes it easy for customers to skim the product description, and bullet points highlight the most important features. There’s even a video showcasing the product in detail.
Tesla
Tesla combines several of the tactics mentioned above to highlight the key features of the Model 3. Each feature is given a hierarchy—security is first—and takes up the entire page. They also use graphics to illustrate points and annotations to draw attention to specific features.
Frequently Asked Questions About Product Features
What are product features?
Your product features are any characteristic of your product that makes it stand out and separates it from your competitors. It can include the look and design of the product, how it’s made, or what you can do with it.
What are examples of product features?
For an e-commerce product, the material the product is made with can be a feature—if it’s made from recycled plastic, for example. For SaaS products, features include the functionality of the product. The ability to instantly message colleagues is a feature of Slack, for instance.
What’s the difference between a product feature and a benefit?
A feature is a characteristic of your product. A benefit is how a customer can use that characteristic to overcome a pain point.
How can I highlight the features of my SaaS product?
A sales page is an excellent way to highlight all of the features of your SaaS products. Blog posts, videos, and demos are also great ways to highlight SaaS features.
How can I highlight the features of my e-commerce product?
Your product description is the best place to highlight the features of your e-commerce product. Make sure they are easy to read and stand out from the rest of your copy.
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The Conclusion of My Product Features Guide
Showcasing your product features is a hugely underrated tactic. Marketers and salespeople will tell you to focus on the benefits of your product rather than the features. While benefits are important, they rely on explaining your features clearly first. Features are also one of the most common ways potential customers compare your product with your competitors.
Take time to determine which features are most important and get opinions from current customers if you can. Then use the seven tactics I’ve listed above to make them as clear as possible on your site.
Which features of your product are you most proud of?
Did You Want to Learn About Your Equifax Credit Report?
It is time to learn about your Equifax credit report.
But let us start with some definitions and background on business credit.
Business Credit
This is credit in the name of a business. It is not tied to the creditworthiness of its owner or owners. Instead, business credit scores are going to depend on how well a company can pay its bills. Hence consumer and business credit scores can vary dramatically.
Business Credit Benefits
There are no demands for a personal guarantee. You can quickly get business credit regardless of personal credit quality. And there is no personal credit reporting of business accounts. Business credit utilization is not going to affect your consumer FICO score. Plus the business owner is not going to be personally liable for the debt the business incurs.
Business Credit Details
Being accepted for business credit is not automatic. Building business credit requires some work. Some of the steps are intuitive, and some of them are not.
Fundability
Fundability is the current ability of our business to get funding. Some factors are within your control. Others (like your time in business) are not. Your online presence and data are one area which is at or close to 100% with your control.
Business Credit, Fundability, and Business Funding Applications
The better your business credit and fundability are, the more likely you will get approval for business financing. Today, let us concentrate on your Equifax report.
Build Fundability on Business Credit Applications to Avoid Denials
Keep your business looking fundable (legit) with:
A professional website and email address
A toll-free phone number
List your phone number with 411
A business address (not a PO box or a UPS box)
Get all necessary licenses for running your business
Fundability: Industry Alignment
If your business is over the road trucking, then it needs to be listed that way. Pro tip: when your industry can be called several different names, like long distance trucking, mention those other phrases on your website.
There are Three Main Credit Bureaus – But What Differentiates an Equifax Credit Report?
What distinguishes Equifax reports from reports from the other two main credit bureaus? And can you use that information to your advantage?
Business Credit Reporting Agencies
There are three different credit bureaus for business: Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax. FICO SBSS and CreditSafe are also players.
In the business world Equifax and Experian are up there, but it is Dun & Bradstreet which is the major player.
Dun and Bradstreet has more than 10 times the records of the next closest reporting agency. For more information, see dnb.com/about-us/company.html. It makes sense to start with Dun and Bradstreet, even when looking at your Equifax credit report. This is because you are going to have to start the business credit building process with them anyway.
Dun & Bradstreet
Dun and Bradstreet is the oldest and largest credit reporting agency. Go to Dun and Bradstreet’s website and look for your business, at dnb.com/duns-number. But what happens if you are unable to find it? Then get a free D-U-N-S number. You will always need a D-U-N-S number to start building business credit. Go here to get a D-U-N-S number: dnb.com/duns-number/get-a-duns.html.
A D-U-N-S number is how Dun and Bradstreet gets your company into their system. And a D-U-N-S number plus 3 payment experiences leads to a PAYDEX score. A payment experience is a record of a purchase from a business which reports to a credit reporting agency. In this case, Dun and Bradstreet. Once you are in Dun and Bradstreet’s system, search Equifax and Experian’s sites for your business. You can do so at creditsuite.com/reports.
But your Equifax credit report is going to be different. The company gets its data from:
A data sharing agreement with the Small Business Exchange
Net 30 type industry trade credit information from a wide variety of suppliers
These suppliers provide products and services to businesses on an invoice basis
Equifax scores answer one basic question. How likely is a business to go severely delinquent in its payments? The score is an indication of whether a company is likely to make late payments.
The first section is devoted to identifying information about your company, namely your business name and address and telephone number. This section will also include your Equifax ID. An Equifax ID is how Equifax can tell your business from similarly-named businesses.
Credit Risk Score
The next section is about the Credit Risk Score. This score runs from 101 to 992. Higher numbers are better. This section also shows key factors.
Key factors are positives and negatives about your business, such as how old your oldest account is, and whether you have any charge-offs, and the size of your business.
Credit Utilization
The next section shows credit utilization. This is shown as a pie chart. It graphically shows which percent of your available credit line you are using. It also has identifying labels to show how much each percentage truly is. But it is only for your financial accounts.
Payment Index
The next part is your Payment Index. The score runs from 0 to 100. Higher numbers are better. It also shows Industry Median.
There is also a table explaining the numbers:
90+: Paid as Agreed
80-89: 1-30 days overdue
60-79: 31-60 days overdue
40-59: 61-90 days overdue
20-39: 91-120 days overdue
1-19: 120+ days overdue
Days Beyond Terms
This is a line graph. It shows the average days beyond terms by date reported. It is for non-financial accounts only. Plus it shows any recent trends, so if you’ve improved your payment habits, it will show up here.
Business Failure Score
The next piece is on your Business Failure Score. This score runs from 1000 to 1880. It shows its own key factors, like recent balance information.
Inquiries
The next section is devoted to inquiries. It shows the date, and whether it was an inquiry on a financial or non-financial account. This is a rather short part of the report.
Bureau Messages
The bureau messages part, appears to be a free form field. It seems its purpose is to add notes to a profile. These can be notes on the number of locations, or business aliases.
Bureau Summary Data
The bureau summary data section contains a wealth of information. It shows:
The number of financial and non-financial accounts
If there are none reported, then the date field will indicate as much.
Additional Information
The final section appears to contain somewhat miscellaneous information, which probably doesn’t fit in well anywhere else. such as alternate company Names and DBAs.
It also contains:
Owners and Guarantor Names (name, type, date reported)
Business and Guarantor Comments (seems to be another freeform field) and
Report Details (this shows the date the report was generated)
Improving Your Equifax Report
Now that you know what goes into it, you can see that some of the more important pieces of data Equifax looks into are:
public records
credit usage
and how you handle your financial and nonfinancial accounts
Improve your Equifax score by:
Clearing your debts as quickly as possible and not going delinquent
Keeping credit utilization within reason, as that makes it easier to pay your bills
And avoiding late payments
Whatever improves your Equifax report is bound to improve your reports at D&B and Experian. Paying off accounts pays dividends, as does avoiding bankruptcies.
Disputing Issues with Your Equifax Report
Equifax will not change your scores without proof. They are starting to accept more and more online disputes. But include proofs of payment with it. These are documents like receipts and cancelled checks.
Fixing credit report errors also means you specifically spell out any charges you challenge. Make your dispute as crystal clear as possible. If you need to snail mail anything in, then use certified mail so that you will have proof that you sent in your dispute. Correct Equifax issues at: equifax.com/small-business-faqs/#Dispute-FAQs. Be specific about the concerns with your report.
Monitoring Equifax Credit Report Scores
At Equifax, you would use Equifax Complete. It currently costs $19.95 per month, after an offer of 30 days for $4.95. See equifax.com/equifax-complete/Equifax.
Monitoring Your Equifax Credit Report and Other Business Credit Reports
But add together monitoring for the three biggest credit reporting agencies for a year and the cost is staggering. It costs $468 for Dun and Bradstreet, $189 for Experian, and $224.40 for Equifax (with a special). For a grand total of $881.40!
Monitoring Your Dun and Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax Credit Report and Scores
You can monitor your business credit at Dun and Bradstreet, Equifax, and Experian through Credit Suite, for considerable savings over what it would cost you at those different credit bureaus. And all in one place! Credit Suite offers monitoring through the Business Finance Suite (through Nav). See what credit issuers and lenders see so you can directly improve your scores and get the business credit and funding you need. See suitelogin.com and creditsuite.com/monitoring.
Your Equifax Credit Report: Takeaways
Equifax gets much of its data from the Small Business Financial Exchange.
Monitoring all of your business credit reports is always going to be expensive. But you can save 90% by monitoring your Dun and Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax scores through Credit Suite.
If you own a small business, content marketing is a tactic you should consider to grow your audience base and increase your brand’s name recognition.
Content marketing refers to the creation and dissemination of online materials that grow traffic to your website. Content types can include blogs, infographics, and whitepapers that are geared toward creating interest in your products or offerings.
In this post, we’ll break down why business owners of every size should deploy a content marketing strategy and how to create one.
Why Should Your Small Business Do Content Marketing?
Serving up useful, timely content allows your business to become a thought leader in your industry, increasing your business’s recognition and building consumer trust, respect, and loyalty.
Content marketing also allows you to identify your consumer’s pain points and speak to how your products solve those issues. This can lead directly to sales.
Another lasting benefit of content marketing is any evergreen content you create. This refers to assets that do not become outdated, like blog posts about the history of your industry or an infographic on how to complete a process that doesn’t change.
You can also find use in content marketing when you create assets that can be used across multiple channels and marketing campaigns. For example, if you write a blog post about the needs of a certain community, you can create a YouTube video on the topic and use the video in your blog post. Then you can link to the post and/or video on your social media channels. This saves you time and money, all while firmly establishing you in your field of expertise.
Small Business Content Marketing: 7 Steps for Success
The rest of this post will break down the seven steps every business owner should undertake to build a successful small business content marketing strategy.
1. Start a Blog
Blogging is a completely free way to market your services and capabilities, while simultaneously establishing yourself as an industry expert.
2. Build a Social Media Presence on the Social Channels Your Audience Uses
If you’re actively involved in selling a product or service, you most likely have a social media presence of some variety.
Unfortunately, simply being present isn’t enough. You need to be active on platforms that your audience uses.
How do you choose which social media channels among the multitude of options are right for your brand?
Before you start posting anywhere, you need to identify your target audience. On social media, you’re not speaking to everyone; you’re speaking to a specific set of consumers with specific interests. After you’ve established who you’re speaking to, you must determine how to reach those individuals.
You can use a variety of strategies to determine where your audience is active.
Aggregate all existing consumer data to see where your audience is spending their online time.
Visit your competitors’ social profiles to see where they have the most active users
Use tools like Google Analytics to determine consumer online behavior.
These three steps can help you begin to identify where your target audience is active and begin delivering content to them on those particular platforms.
Resources for Building a Facebook Presence for Your Small Business
Email newsletters are an excellent way for small businesses to wade into the world of email marketing. They alert your readers to new products, upcoming events, industry-related news, and any other notable business-adjacent happenings.
With historically high return on investment (ROI), for every dollar spent on email marketing, expect an average ROI of $42. Email marketing is an excellent tool for small businesses to use. In addition to sheer ROI, email newsletters can help small businesses:
4. Create Content Corresponding to a Basic Customer Sales Funnel
Finding the right consent to correspond to your consumer’s needs is key to getting them to actually make a purchase.
With a basic customer sales funnel and an accompanying content strategy, you can identify which stage of the funnel your customer currently occupies and deliver them content that speaks toward that stage.
A marketing funnel is the process people go through to reach the conversion phase. The funnel includes everything from getting introduced to your brand until they convert. Most marketing funnels have four steps:
Attention: a would-be consumer sees your ad, social media post, or learns about you through word-of-mouth
Interest: consumer wants to learn more
Desire: consumer wants to convert
Action: consumer acts (buying your item, subscribing to your email newsletter, etc).
To align this four-step process with your content creation, be sure you’re targeting customers within the various stages of the funnel with relevant content. For example, you wouldn’t want to overburden a potential consumer in the attention phase with an in-depth content asset.
Resources for Creating a Basic Sales Funnel/Content Journey
While it’s important to do the work to establish your buyer personas and to deliver them the content they need during their respective buyer’s journey stage, it is also important to keep delivering relevant content in a cadenced fashion.
Instead of scrambling to create content in a reactionary manner, build monthly calendars that include social posts, blog posts, emails, and whatever other content you would like to create that month.
Not only does this strategy keep you organized, but it also allows your readers to get comfortable with a schedule of content and to build continued trust and familiarity with your brand.
In a competitive landscape, it’s important to stand out however you can. One way your small business can achieve this is through your content marketing strategy.
Do a deep dive into both your existing content and your competitors’ content. See what is resonating with audiences and what isn’t. Once you’ve established efficacy, it’s time to try to replicate that success with your upcoming content.
Then it’s time to get creative. Don’t be limited by what already exists. Take your latest blog post and turn it into an infographic. Take your infographic and turn it into a whitepaper. Take your white paper and make it a series of quote-centric social tiles.
97 percent of local consumers use online media, including reviews, to search for local services. If you’re a small, local business, that means your reviews are driving your business.
Make those reviews work as hard as you do by bringing them to life through social posts and testimonials on your website and blog.
By sourcing the best quotes and ascribing a face to the name, you make that review much more personal, creating a consumer-generated ad that speaks for itself.
Resources for Building Effective Customer Testimonials
Building buyer personas allows you to establish a better understanding of your audiences and their respective pain points. By determining who is purchasing your products, you can assess which content they need and when.
Identify valuable consumer content
Consumers don’t want content for content’s sake. They want content that can solve their problems. After you’ve identified buyer personas, work to identify what content assets can best serve your buyers’ unique needs.
Set business goals
Setting business goals that align with your marketing strategy can feel overwhelming at first. Use the principle of SMART goals to make your benchmarks reasonable and reachable.
Solidify distribution channels
You’ve got your content ready to go and your goals ready to measure. It’s finally time to start sharing your content. While it would be nice if every piece of content performed well on every channel, that’s sadly not the case. Determine which pieces of content are appropriate for which channel to ensure success and reach.
Establish cadence
It’s not good enough to deliver one piece of content and rest on your laurels. You must establish a cadence that regularly delivers quality content to your consumers.
Small Business Content Marketing Frequently Asked Questions
Why do small businesses need content marketing?
Even though you’re a small business, you most likely have big competition. To make your business stand out among the crowd and grow your audience, you need a content marketing strategy that allows you to demonstrate your value to future and current consumers.
What are some examles of content marketing?
Examples of content marketing include blog posts, infographics, social media campaigns, podcasts, white papers, ebooks, downloadable PDFs, and YouTube videos. Any type of media that is free to access and brings in leads to your website is content marketing.
What is the best content marketing strategy for a small business?
Having clearly delineated buyer personas is vital for a strong, small business content marketing strategy. Without these personas, your content won’t have clear direction or purpose, resulting in low audience interaction.
How should small businesses create content for their content marketing strategy?
Small business content marketing is all about solving for the buyer’s pain point. After you’ve identified personas, all created content should center both around the respective pain points and what point the buyer is within the funnel.
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Small Business Content Marketing Conclusion
While your small business content marketing may be minuscule, it doesn’t mean that you can’t undertake most, if not all, of the above eight strategies.
After successfully defining your buyer personas, you’re well on your way to developing a winning content marketing strategy that can grow your audience and increase overall sales.
What’s the most effective strategy you’ve seen for small business content marketing?
That’s a ton of people sharing and engaging with content on a daily basis.
On top of a huge user base, the engagement levels are off the charts. People open the app 30 times a day on average, over 75 percent of 13 to 34-year-olds in the U.S. use the app, and over 5 billion Snaps are created every day.
It’s no question Snapchat has potential in numbers and engagement, so why don’t you see results with the platform?
Below, you’ll find some of my top Snapchat ad strategies, tips, and resources to help you run successful campaigns.
However, before we dive in, we need to establish if Snapchat ads are actually worth your time and money.
Why Should You Advertise on Snapchat?
If your brand appeals to Gen Z and millennials, you should look at Snapchat as a way to increase user acquisition, brand awareness, and sales.
Why?
Snapchat has over $1 trillion in direct spending power between these two generations. With one-third of users more likely to make purchases on their phones, it’s a platform that’s worth a second look.
Spinnaker Nordic tried Snapchat ads for three days and had incredible results. With $759.04 ad spend, the company achieved:
+300,000 ad views
+1,300 Swipe Ups
+24,000 site visitors
52 phone calls
What if you don’t have $700 to blow on ads? No problem. You can advertise on Snapchat for as little as $5. With such a low daily minimum spend, you can test, learn, and optimize your ads on any budget.
Not enough to convince you?
Snapchat also has a partnership with Amazon. If a user sees a product they like, all they need to do is point their cameras at the barcode or product and long press on the camera screen.
Snapchat will then show a card with a link to the item on Amazon. The app has created one of the fastest ways to shop online and is one of the frontrunners for augmented reality e-commerce.
10 Snapchat Ad Strategies and Resources
If there is anything we can learn about finding success on Snapchat, we can learn it from experience.
Here are some of the best Snapchat ad strategies and resources to help you mimic their success and grow your business.
1. Add Polls to Your Snapchat Ads
Why should you care about poll ads?
Well, it can increase your engagement and views.
On Instagram, polling stickers in Story Ads increased the number of three-second video views in 9 out of 10 campaigns.
The insights you gain from your audience can also strengthen your ads, help you stand out from the competition, and potentially increase your sales.
The only downside? Snapchat doesn’t have a built-in polling feature like Instagram.
However, by using an app called Polly, you can mimic Instagram’s polling success on Snapchat. Polly lets you create polls and share them to Snapchat, where your audience can answer anonymously.
How to Use Polls in Your Snapchat Ads Strategy
Brand announcements: Ask your audience to vote on your newest flavors, colors, or product varieties. You can use social media trends like Selena Gomez versus. Miley Cyrus battle and pit your products against one another.
Trivia questions: Who doesn’t love a good quiz night at the pub? Put your audience’s wits to the test, and add some game show flair to your Snapchat ads. You can also redirect people to your website to see the answer.
Audience insights: Need to know what makes your audience tick? Poll them! It’s a great way to see what content resonates or what people want to see from you next.
2. Link Your Snapchat Ads to the Correct Landing Page
Once you have your audience’s attention, you need to direct them to the next step, i.e., your landing page. You don’t want users to watch your ad and move on. You want to instigate an action that will get users into your sales funnel and create conversions.
What is a landing page?
It’s a stand-alone webpage created for an advertising or marketing campaign.
The page usually has a goal like:
sales
email list sign-ups
white paper downloads
For example, if you’re an app developer, you would redirect people to your Google Play or App Store download page. If you’re an e-commerce brand, your landing page could link to sign up for a newsletter and get a 15-percent discount code.
On Snap Ads, there are three different types of ad links you can use:
Web view attachments: This is a great option to drive online sales. Users swipe up, and your landing page will instantly load.
App install attachments: Use the “Install Now” or “Download” buttons as your CTA and redirect users to your app install page.
Deep link attachments: This option helps you to re-engage users who have your app. If an existing user swipes up on your ad, you can direct them to a location in your app, e.g., the latest collection or an exclusive sale.
The one you choose depends on your landing page goals and the types of products you’re selling on the app.
If you need help creating a high conversion landing page, use these resources below:
great visuals (no blurry, pixelated images or videos)
a short, snappy, message (i.e., what is the purpose of the ad)
enticing call-to-action (CTA)
With the short attention spans of Gen Z and millennials, Snapchat recommends writing copy that’s easy to understand, is localized for your audience, and has an offer message within the first two seconds of the ad.
Subway used this approach to announce its new cheesy garlic bread. The ad is only five seconds long and uses two short sentences to get its message across.
4. Use Split Testing on Snapchat to Create Higher Performing Ad Content
Spit testing or A/B testing is crucial to improving your conversion rates. It helps you hone in on what’s working and get rid of what isn’t. Most importantly, it helps save you money.
Gone are days of blowing your entire ad budget on a campaign with lackluster results. With split testing, you can combine your more effective elements to boost ROI, lower the risk of failure, and create a winning ad strategy.
How does spit testing work with Snapchat ads?
Inside your advertiser’s dashboard, you can test different variables such as:
creative
audience
placement
goal
For example, let’s say you want to test an audience. Maybe you’re not too sure if you should target 18 to 25 or 30 to 35-year-olds for your next campaign. Your creative, placement, and delivery will be the same with the split-testing feature, but each ad set will target the different audiences you’ve created.
The winning test is the one that achieves the lowest cost per goal. A goal can be:
swipe-ups
app installs
shares
story opens
When you’re done, create a campaign with the winning variable, and start getting better results from your ad spend.
You can choose from three shoppable AR categories:
Website: Comes with a “Buy Now” button. It has the option to link to a product page and works best for e-commerce brands.
Video: This option has a “Watch” button and is great for promoting content like movie trailers.
Install: The “Install Now” button takes users to the Google Play or App Store to download an app.
What are the benefits of creating a Snapchat ad strategy around AR lenses?
Brand awareness: Lenses from their Creator Community have over 2 trillion views, and 2 million lenses have been created with their Lens Studio.
Increase in sales and a decrease in returns: Users who engage with AR are twice as likely to make a purchase and are 30 percent less likely to return a product.
Snapchat’s Audience Insights is a powerful tool for marketers. It provides a wealth of information about your audience and can help you tweak your campaigns to improve your conversion rate.
Inside the dashboard, you can compare and create new audience segments. The data, a mixture of demographics, Snap Lifestyle Categories and external third-party partners, tells you more about your current audience and helps you discover new segments for your brand.
By using the Audience Insights dashboard, you might discover that 70 percent of your audience is also interested in rock climbing. You can use this interest to optimize and create more relevant ads that appeal to your audience.
Pretty nifty, right?
Well, Snapchat’s wealth of data doesn’t end there.
One of the best features on the dashboard is purchase intent. You can see at a glance what is the likelihood of your audience purchasing your service or product.
You can also compare the purchase intent across different audiences and use the information to adjust your Snapchat Ad bids.
If you’re not incorporating UGC into your Snapchat ads strategy, you’re missing opportunities to convert your audience into paying customers.
There’s plenty of data that shows it’s an effective marketing strategy.
A study by Stackla reveals 79 percent of users said UGC impacts their purchasing decisions and find UGC 9.8 times more impactful than influencer content.
Thirty-one percent of consumers agree that UGC content is more memorable than traditional ads.
When analyzing watching habits, YouTube found Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to watch UGC than older generations.
According to Snapchat, not only is it more likely to get viewed in full, but your ad will feel more authentic and less over-produced.
If you don’t have any UGC yet, create ads with a similar look and feel. Use Snapchat’s features, have someone speak directly to the camera, and keep your ads five to six seconds long. It will appear more organic and come across as an extension of other Snaps rather than an intrusive ad.
8. Choose the Right Ad Format to Match Your Snapchat Ad Goals
If you’re using the wrong ad format, you’re not going to see results with your Snapchat ad strategy.
Each format is designed to help you achieve specific business goals, such as:
brand awareness
increase conversions
drive sales
increase app downloads
Here’s a brief guide to what each format can help you achieve:
Dynamic ads: These include collection ads, story ads, and single image or video ads. Dynamic ads are great for driving sales and increasing sign-ups.
App install attachments: If you’re promoting an app, this ad format is made specifically for you. It adds an Install Card at the bottom of story ads, single image or video ads, and lens AR experiences.
Retargeting: Want to target users who didn’t convert or have engaged with your brand in the past? Story Ads is an excellent ad format to re-engage, boost brand awareness and increase customer loyalty.
This advice might seem odd, especially when there are statistics like 69 percent of people watch videos without sound.
Shouldn’t your Snapchat ad strategy follow suit and design for no sound?
Nope.
According to Snapchat, 64 percent of ads are watched with sound on.
This isn’t surprising.
As I mentioned earlier, the best Snapchat ads are the ones that fit natively within a user’s feed and don’t disrupt the experience. Most Snapchatters are watching their friends’ Snaps with sound, so your ads should do the same.
Create ads with your customers talking to the camera giving a testimonial.
Use sound to get more information across (remember you only have about six seconds).
The final Snapchat ad strategy you need to implement is goal-based bidding.
What is goal-based bidding?
It’s a feature that allows you to optimize your ad spend toward a specific action you want a Snapchatter to take e.g., downloading your app or making a purchase.
By setting this cost-per-action, Snapchat will deliver your ads in the most efficient way possible to achieve the desired outcome.
The result?
Your ads will go out to people most likely to complete the action, and you’ll see higher conversions.
There are six different ad types on Snapchat: Single image of video ads, filters, lenses, story ads, product catalog ads, and commercials.
How do I know which type of Snapchat ad is right for my business?
It depends on your campaign objectives. For example, filters help you create a branded conversion, lenses create interactive moments, the product catalog showcases a series of products, and commercials are great for driving brand awareness.
How much do Snapchat ads cost?
Snapchat Ads have a minimum daily spend of $5.
Why should I advertise on Snapchat?
If your audience is Gen Z and millennials, Snapchat is one of the best social media networks to engage with them and drive sales. The app reaches 75 percent of Gen Z and millennials in the U.S., has 293 million daily users, and on average, people spend 30 minutes on the app each day.
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Snapchat Ad Strategies and Resources: Conclusion
With almost 300 million people using the platform, Snapchat is not a dead social media network. It still carries weight, especially with the younger generation.
If your brand appeals to its user base, it’s worth investing in Snapchat ads. With such an affordable minimum daily spend, almost everyone can afford to roll out successful Snapchat ad strategies.
Get creative with AR technology to create unique campaigns and build hype around your products. Use split testing to figure out what works for your business and what needs to go, and you will see your acquisition cost go down with more conversions.
The above tips and resources will make sure you create ads that resonate, engage, and drive action with your audience.
How do you get the most out of your Snapchat Ad investment?
Location: GMT+1 (I'm located in Switzerland)
Remote: yes, 100%
Willing to relocate: no
Technologies: Rust (currently learning)
Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UGOeH4N4v6MW2iglaDD7g3b-jxxDEgNJ/view?usp=sharing
Email: dhofstet@gmail.com
Hi, I’m Dan and I’m looking to return to software development after a very long break (~10 years). During this break, I worked as a self-employed investor on the stock market, but in the end I failed.
In my previous tech life I did a four year IT apprenticeship (Pascal/Delphi, Java) in the industry, worked two years as a software engineer (ASP) at a web agency, got a B.Eng. in CS (mainly Java), did some freelancing (PHP), was a core-contributor to two open source projects (PHP), and wrote a tech blog.
For my comeback I’m looking for a job as a Rust developer (if you have a “return to work” program, all the better). On the other hand, I’m also open for opportunities related to what I did the last 10 years.
Thanks for reading.
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