Marketing is all the buzz over the internet. The interests and preferences of customers and businesses have shifted from offline to the online market. Gone are the days when you had to directly deal with customers. Social media has revolutionized the way promotions take place. It has the potential to sell anything within seconds. Of these platforms, Snapchat and Instagram have taken brand marketing to the next level. Businesses are constantly devising novel strategies and techniques to showcase their potential to the masses. Some are even engaged in finding the secrets to viral marketing. Although both these social media platforms are the ideal choice for online promotion, some confusion lurks while choosing the right one. Hence, we researched thoroughly to find out what parameters make these platforms lucrative for advertising your brand. We will have a side-by-side comparison of Snapchat and Instagram so that you can take a quick decision. Let’s go ahead and find out what platform will complete the missing piece of your brand marketing puzzle.
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Table of Contents
The art of Advertising
Most internet marketers are already aware that advertising is an effective way to organically gain followers on Instagram and Snapchat. Instagram ads target users by integrating them with their newsfeed. This method drives engagement based on previous likes of users. Trying to figure out how to get more real Instagram followers? Nevertheless, you can easily get popular on Instagram with accurate targeting of customers.
Instagram Stories ad functionalities
- Call To Action (CTA) swipe-ups
- Shoppable features and videos with tagged products
- Shop in-app
- Equipped with Retargeting capabilities
- Polls and more editing functionality
- Carousel ads (appropriate for product showcases)
- Operates through Facebook Ad Manager
Snapchat offers a more aggressive ad method. For instance, you get the option to create sponsored lenses or geo filters. For a high reach and engagement on instagram , we recommend discovering stories or sponsored lenses. Although the Snapchat lenses option is a great way to reach a high number of views, the skyrocketing cost is not ideal for small businesses. So, what’s the catch? Small businesses can leverage a location-specific geofilter as an effective way of advertising.
Snapchat ad functionalities
- CTA buttons and swipe-ups
- Sponsored lenses and geofilters
- AR shoppable lenses
- Retargeting capabilities
- Operates on Snapchat ad manager
In the online advertising segment, Snapchat is ideal for local businesses while Instagram is more focused on targeting users based on interests.
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Audience engagement
Billions of active users on both these platforms pose certain challenges when it comes to targeting the right audience base. The top global businesses have an account on Instagram and most have started Snapchat too. User Engagement has long become a metric for testing the success of social media sites. Your brand needs more likes and comments so that potential customers are convinced to buy your offerings. According to research, users spend an average of 30 to 60 minutes on these platforms. Hence, you have to provide something that drives engagement within this time frame. This is possible when you are ready with winning content and social media strategy.
On the engagement front, both these platforms have their upsides and are ideal for grabbing the attention of your fans.
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Content is the ‘King’
Digital and content marketers place the highest bets on quality content. The entire digital marketing strategy would never work if you struggle with your content. Content assists in optimization and paves way for a higher rank on search engines. Hence, the right content is what your business needs at the end of the day for high traffic. Both the platforms are trendsetters in images and videos.
Snapchat
Why not cast a lasting impression on your fans with curated content that goes well with their taste? Snapchat is the ideal platform for businesses that want to share direct and trending content. It has consistently been following its premise that works on perfecting a particular feature, especially Snapchat stories. Diversification is certainly not a thing for this platform.
Let’s jump to the video-sharing platform. Instagram has diversified the ways of content sharing that tempt users to spend more time. Stories and reels have gained tremendous popularity among the folks and businesses are engaging in these for high growth. You can share daily updates, sneak peek, product teasers, and other out-of-the-box content.
In the case of content, both the networking contenders are appropriate to people with different tastes. Instagram requires an optimal strategy while Snapchat focuses on a single engagement method such as ‘Stories’.
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Cost efficiency
Indeed, research on advert platforms unleashes pretty staggering results. Choosing the right platform would depend on your budget.
This service uses Facebook ad Manager that facilitates customized spending. The cost varies according to ad frequency. Instagram is the ideal promotion platform for E-Commerce companies as most users love to explore new products & services.
Snapchat
This may cost a fortune. Undoubtedly, the cost for Snapchat ads is exorbitant and not suitable for every business. However, this is just one side of the game. Ads on Snapchat garner more visually appealing to users than the average CTR.
Hence, in this section, Snapchat has an edge over the former.
Perhaps the social media debate is a never-ending topic but we hope you do conclude. We cannot take out a clear winner between these two. You can take into account demographics and average ad performance to choose the right platform for brand marketing. Critically analyze all factors to discover what’s best for your business because there’s simply no clear winner between these two.
