Snap Happy

Property Marketing Goes Guerrilla

By Kyle Jones on Feb 15, 2017 in Marketing

OMG’s, LOLZ’s, puppy-dog faces and flower crowns. Snapchat is sometimes reduced to these simple stereotypes and thought of as something to entertain the kids when the adults get tired of the noise at family dinners.

But noise and chaos are staples of modern life, for company and consumer alike. And as the godfather of guerilla tactics, Sun Tzu, expounded upon millennia ago, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” When fully leveraged, Snapchat can be used to cut through the chaotic noise, both at family gatherings and in today’s rental marketplaces, to turn potential opportunity into new prospects.

Background

All social media platforms once represented an unconventional and unrealized marketing space. This is no longer the case. Snapchat is one of the many recent social frontiers that qualifies as a guerilla marketing opportunity for brands. It’s a place where you can outmaneuver your competition through unconventional and creative means (without a huge budget), thereby gaining greater exposure and winning.

Some continue to dismiss Snapchat as “just an app.” At one point, the doubters may have been correct, but as the scope of Snapchat’s business has expanded so has their reach. It’s now a social media platform that competes closely with the companies typically identified as giants in the space.

Case Study

So you want proof, eh? The intrepid property managers at Continental Realty Corporation (CRC) just so happen to be early Snapchat adopters, and they were kind enough to share the data of some recent campaigns with us. In October 2016, CRC ran two Snapchat filter campaigns for onsite events, one in the commercial space and one in the residential space.

At the commercial property, CRC ran a custom filter for the “Jerry Adams Chili Cookoff.” The Snapchat filter campaign lasted for four hours and cost just $5. During the event, the Snapchat filter was used in 20 instances and reached a viewing audience of 644 people.

At the residential property, CRC ran a different custom filter designed around “All-You-Can-Eat Resident Wing Night.” This campaign ran for only two hours and again cost just $5. However, this Snapchat filter was used 66 times and resulted in a mind-bending reach of 5,371 individual views. This represents an average reach of 81 people per use of the filter.

Takeaways

On top of these impressive numbers, it’s important to remember that not all audiences are created equally. Snapchat filter views don’t reflect passive or disengaged viewing numbers. Snapchat users must actively engage with the platform by clicking on the stories they want to see what their friends are sharing and, by extension, which company filters and products their friends are using.

By leveraging the interests of your target audience – young renters who want see what their friends are doing and how and where they’re living – you can capitalize on an undervalued opportunity to interact with challenging, hard-to-reach target demographics that your competitors are missing out on. For even more ideas on how to use Snapchat to enhance your brand marketing, check out how Georgetown University used Snapchat to differentiate themselves from other colleges and drive results.

Is Snapchat part of your marketing plan for 2017? We think it should be!