Black Friday: Succeed with your Paid Ads on Snapchat

Alexis Gabillet (Head of Sales for Digital Native Brands, Southern Europe at Snap Inc.) and Florian Cailles (Team Lead Investment Associate at Silvr) shared their best practices for a successful Black Friday through Paid Ads on Snapchat.

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It's the story of a super-interesting partnership, that of “a virtuous circle for Snap, the advertising network, Silvr, the financier, and the advertisers, who are customers of the first two parties.” If you're an e-tailer and you advertise on Snapchat, or want to advertise on Snapchat, this is the place for you. And if you don't know how to finance these campaigns: Silvr is here to ensure top results.

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Some background on the Snapchat audience

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Discover Snapchat: a unique tool for a unique audience. It is the second largest audience in France (study: Médiamétrie). The social network is used by 90% of 13-34 year-olds. This network is therefore a major lever at almost any age, due to a large and unique audience. As a comparison, every day of the daily +16 Snapchat audience:

• 77% do not use Twitter;
• 62% do not use WhatsApp;
• 58% do not use Messenger.

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Alexis provided a useful summary of Snapchat, via the five main tabs of its Activity Bar, for users...and advertisers:

1. Snap Map: the interactive map that generates drive-to-store. On your Business Manager, list your business.
2. Chat: to interact with your close friends (the average on the network is about 20 friends, unlike other social networks where people may have hundreds of contacts); the digital word-of-mouth is transcended and facilitated.
3. Camera, the central tab: super-advanced, this is their flagship feature, their trademark. The camera now offers a “Virtual Fitting Room" with branded filters. Users can use augmented reality and contextualize [themselves].
4. (& 5) Discover and Spotlight for product discovery: Discover, “is the Netflix in your pocket – find seasons and episodes in which you can insert your ads.” On Spotlight, your ads or influencer content fit perfectly into a dynamic stream, like an informational feed.

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Some Ad financing background with Silvr

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Silvr summed up in a few lines:

• In business for two years;
• European leader in Revenue-Based Financing;
• Accessibility to non-dilutive, fast, recurrent, flexible and unsecured financing;
• Data-based financing for all digital entrepreneurs (Apps, Ecommerce businesses, but also SaaS companies);
• Several hundred clients provided with financing;
• 98% of customers refinanced.

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Re-read the article on Silvr’s Revenue-Based Financing and come to our site to learn more. With the data that Silvr can receive, a performance evaluation is made to look at the top third of customers. Silvr derives best practices from each financing action (experiences to follow), to better advise and support you.

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So where should you place your ads and how can you monetize that audience and those spaces, especially for Black Friday-Cyber Monday?

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How can you best prepare your Black Friday-Cyber Monday?

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As Silvr reminded you here, Black Friday-Cyber Monday is not a two to three-day snapshot. It is both a marathon of several weeks that begins in mid-October, followed by a final sprint that begins 10 days before BFCM.

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Timing during this period is important, as it consists of the awareness phase and then the [re]targeting phase. On Snapchat, everything starts at least a month before Black Friday. Anticipate visits from those who are preparing their shopping lists and those who are on the hunt for gifts for others [and themselves]. Then, you have to be inspiring as early as possible to encourage top-of-mind awareness at the time of the purchases. You should therefore launch awareness campaigns “as broad as possible”, with ads built with loss leaders. Socio-demographic targeting is enough.

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After this period, and once you have reached 50 daily conversions (the optimization threshold for an ad): start gradually accelerating your budgets with a weekly increase of 20-30% until D-day. The overall idea is to boost your budgets to help the algorithm to better optimize and thus seek the maximum purchase potential. Florian Cailles reiterated the speed with which Silvr's financing is released: in 24 hours (he has previously released financing in 5 hours!). This means that we can meet your needs almost instantly). This agility allows us to immediately inject the requested amounts that will help e-tailers optimize their sales.

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This is also the time to test and learn on new areas and new audiences. Why? To test your marketing traction. BFCM is an exceptional time for visibility and opportunity. If your awareness campaigns are convincing, you might be surprised at the incremental consumers they can bring to your traditional base.

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Know the best practices to better convert during this period

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Which budgetary strategy should you opt for?

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Look for acquisition, yes, but essentially try to capitalize on your existing CRM base: activate retargeting. Alexis Gabillet talked about a best practice at the beginning of the final sprint (reminder: 10 days before the BFCM), that is too often neglected, which is the budget pivot. Before this period, the ratio is 80% acquisition to 20% retargeting. “Then we flip things around to strongly accelerate the retargeting.” You need to capitalize on hot leads that have already shown an interest in your brand by reaching a 50-50 or even 40-60 split.

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How to effectively target the broad audience?

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There was also a reminder that 50% of the purchases related to the end-of-year celebrations will already have been made before the end of November. So, you should widen your field of action with the broad audience. The optimization of an event at the bottom of the sales tunnel should be added. The broader the audience, the more you look for a specific optimization such as a cart add or a purchase. Conversely, the more specific the target, the more the campaign optimization is at the top of the tunnel with an action like a page view or a click.

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What types of advertising should you adopt on Snapchat?

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Florian Cailles pointed out that some of Silvr's clients launched VIP pre-lists last year before the BFCM. By doing so, VIPs are delighted and create UGC(User Generated Content). Alexis Gabillet added that this organic UGC is a practical lever for creation, and therefore for conversion.

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Snapchat offers dynamic ads:

Example: three users view the same e-commerce site, but do not look at the same product. Thanks to these Dynamic Ads, the space bases the advertising on browsing history. So, each one is exposed to an advertisement that corresponds to a precise search for a product.

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The slashed price option:

Black Friday creations are dynamic with a slashed price to drive even more FOMO(Fear of Missing Out ) for Black Friday. Go to your Snapchat Ads Manager console. This option is very straightforward.

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What formats should you use if you're just starting out on Snapchat? Alexis Gabillet recommended using two or three different formats. Find out more:

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1. Snapchat Ads (or Single Video). In your friends' video stream, run single videos “without waiting until the tenth second to reveal the product benefit. The more homemade it seems, the more effective it is.” The brand should be identifiable within the first three seconds of the video.
2. Story Ads: This format is similar to a tutorial. The authentic aspect of this content shows the product in situ, a convincing figure talking about it and a familiar context close to your friends' video stream. By clicking on the thumbnail of the video, the user chooses to engage with the video. This is a strong engagement marker which optimizes conversion.
3. Finally, the Snapchat expert discussed Collection Ads. On a vertical video format, you can integrate three thumbnails underneath to fully contextualize a product, like a fashion look.

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Watch a video of the entire webinar right here:

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