SNAPCHAT STRATEGY for Instant Success

He runs VaynerMedia, one of the world's hottest digital agencies. He has single-handedly created a movement to put the marketing world on Snapchat. If you want to learn how to do well on Snapchat, you want to learn from Gary Vaynerchuk. Mentor me, Gary.

Hey guys, you're about to watch a clip that I did in 2013 where I kind of started telling the world of my intent or belief in Snapchat. You know, I also wrote this article back in '14. About, you know, you disrespecting the ghost when I think it's got huge upside. I think 2016, 2017 are gonna be the years where the marketing world and the business world really recognize what's actually happening in Snapchat, which is Snapchat right this minute is the closest thing to Facebook 2007 and '08 that I've seen since then, and I just, you know, this is almost like a last ditch effort video to try to get you into a place of like, this is gonna happen, You need to figure it out. There's a lot of nuances within Snapchat. You need to get in there, become native, 'cause it's going to be a massively important, massively important platform. I think Snapchat's gonna open up their platform and won't be one-to-one. And I think brands and businesses can send a Snap to 10,000 people that are following them, and that when they open it, for those 10 seconds, they're actually paying attention.

Yeah, yep.

And so, what if the Snap said, take a picture, screenshot of this, and scan it at the register for 10% off. I think people will do things like that. Or take a Snapchat of this and tweet it at me, and I'll give you my ebook for free. Now you've got people putting out tweets to their community with you on it. Got it? So I think there's a lot of gamification that can happen with Snapchat. You know why? 'Cause Snapchat forces you to pay attention. Email, Facebook, Twitter, we think we can get back to it. They'll re-email me, I'll see it again in my stream. Snapchat, you know that once you look at it, it disappears forever.

Yeah.

Which requires you to actually pay attention.

Scarcity.

And so, what, we are all in the business of attention. Everybody worries about the top line, how many visitors you have, email, followers. That doesn't matter. It matters, top line matters, but conversion is what matters. And Snapchat focuses on conversion in my opinion. Right now Snapchat is one of the most successful marketing tools for me personally with my brand. Everybody worries about width, right? Like everybody cares about top line numbers, impressions, followers. People care about dumb fucking data. What Snapchat is doing, everybody, is very simple. It's not about how many impressions you get, it's how much attention you get. I don't care what anybody in this room does, or watching at home on livestream, the number one thing we all have to do is tell our story to somebody along the path of them making a decision. Before you tell your story, You have to have somebody's attention. And what Snapchat does is it gives you the attention. How do you grow audience? Correct. On Snapchat? Yes. So Snapchat has no natural in-Snapchat-app discovery, which is fucking with a lot of people's heads, 'cause they're like, what the hell? Like, where's the suggested user list? Where can I search? How do I run ads? Like, I can't grow. Of course you can. You grow the old way, pre-internet apps infrastructure. You use other things to grow your business. I built this business using a newspaper and a radio and other things of that nature, so, The answer is absolutely, I think he was going there. I mean, watch my behavior, it's not super complicated. I'm using my Twitter, my email, my Facebook, my Instagram to drive awareness towards my channel. I'm hitting up, I mean, I don't think I remember throwing this many right hooks outside of a book ask, which is weird 'cause I'm doing that right now as well. Dropping March 8th, go get it. I've asked plenty of people when they've sent me emails like, oh, you've really helped my Snapchat. These are historically emails that I would reply to reply to and say, "Thanks, have a great day." Now I'm saying, "Hey, in your next story, shout out my @GaryVee handle." I'm going in for the ask. How about the bottom of your email signature? How about your username on Instagram? Go look at mine. You hack to build awareness for it. You think about billboards and print, where there's no click or permalinks or anything of that nature. No, it's just awareness drives. You didn't have to move, huh? It's got a wide angle. Damn it, I was trying to make you move.

I know.

I was very impressed with you there, DRock. —where it kind of, that was a standoff that you won, which pisses me off. Where you drive awareness to your handle. So yes, any means of awareness. I mean, soon I'm gonna put a sign in here that says, "Follow Gary on Snapchat." So yes, that's the answer. Using other platforms to drive awareness to get followers from that platform. But scalable ones. Email signatures, your LinkedIn account, look at my Instagram profile, things like that. You know, I think one of the biggest mistakes by so many Snapchat and YouTube influencers right now is they want to become Hollywood famous because they grew up where that was the pinnacle, and to me, I keep trying to remind them, my early days with Jerome and Rudy and Brittany Furlan and that whole space with the Vine influencers that were definitely the spark that you've watched Instagram and Snapchat, I think very different than the generation of YouTube that I grew up with, is guys, in 2022, in 2024, the most famous person is not the person that's on a TV show on MTV, it's the person that dominates this, which is the new television. Just like being a cable star wasn't interesting in the early '80s, but then eventually, if you're the number one Number 1 star on an HBO show, which to remind everybody, you guys are too young for this, HBO was shit. HBO was a shit place to go in 1982, 1984, 1986. You were a B, C-list, D-list, F-list. Nobody wanted to be a Netflix star 48 months ago. Nobody. Now everybody wants to in Hollywood. So first and foremost, Aaron, I think that you need to decide what you want to happen. Do you want to get your art into the world? Is it about money? Is it about fame? And I think you need to own your vanity, 'cause way too many people try to bullshit it, number 1. Number 2, you gotta go You know where the attention is. To me, enormous emphasis on Snapchat and YouTube, and now look, 1-minute Instagram videos probably opens up a lot of creativity for a lot of people here, and definitely people that are watching, so that becomes a new thing, and look, Musical.ly. Actually, this is a question for me real quick. Are any of the 3 of you playing on Musical.ly? [Speaker] Yeah, downloaded it after hearing you talk about it a couple times. [Speaker] Have you had the time yet to spend to look at what's going on there? [Speaker] Little bit. [Speaker] Yeah, and so this is what's so interesting, right? A lot of my YouTube celebrity friends, When Vine came along, we're like, eh. And I'm like, you came from YouTube. That's what was just being said 5 minutes ago. Now, then a lot of, when Snapchat came, I was telling a lot of Viners, I'm like, this thing, I'm telling you. And they're like, eh. And then of course now everybody's there. And now even Musical.ly, right? Snapchat, it's at its apex. But ironically, I think those Snapchatters, and I'm giving you advice right now, that go and really go all in on Musical.ly, are gonna win those junior high people are gonna be here in 36 months and be like, holy shit, that was a good idea. Or it could go away. But much like what happened on Vine, and this is such a good learning from Vine, and we were talking about Vine off as DRock broke the sound, and you know, the people that won on Vine have been able to siphon that attention and be successful on other platforms. Not everybody. [SPANISH] Exactly, not everybody. Because some of them wouldn't have held on Vine either 'cause they didn't have enough talent to be anything more than a few minutes. But some were, and that's no different than being a, a really good actor on a hit show on CBS for 2 seasons, and then coming back 2 years later on ABC and siphoning some of that audience and building on that momentum. I think that people are not practitioners. I would argue that 95% of people in marketing, 95% of people in marketing at digital and social agencies, on the brands and the business sides, actually don't know how Snapchat works. Actually have never went through all 4 screens of Snapchat, to the left, to the right twice, and the camera itself. Literally have not done that. Literally, I would argue that 70% of marketers have never touched one of the discover tabs on Snapchat because they are just not practitioners. And Snapchat has a context and a cadence and a system that is not native to a lot of people 'cause it's left to right, not up and down like all the other apps. And so there's some learning. Like, it actually takes 4 to 5 minutes of thought and energy to really understand how Snapchat works. If you've never used it before, and that's about 4 to 5 minutes worth of actual practitionership that most people don't apply. They like to headline read that the kids send sex pictures to each other, and they like to be old white men, even if they're not old white men, right? Plenty of 23-year-old Hispanic women acting like old white men, 'cause they're not practitioners. Slang term old white men to like, you suck shit. Like you're not putting in the work, you're tired, you're not innovating, you stink. You stink, you stink. And so why do I think people are scared of Snapchat? Because they stink. Because most people suck at marketing. Most people just want to do what they've already known. They don't evolve. I wake up every morning of my life trying to put myself out of business because it's a lot better to do that than have somebody else do it for me. And that's how I live, and that's how I'm gonna live until I'm an old white man acting like a 14-year-old chick, right? 'Cause that's just the way I'm gonna roll. I think a lot of brands are gonna go for the lowest common denominator, which is they're gonna run contests or follow us on, you know, on social media. Snapchat and blah blah blah will happen and you can win a free trip or a free this or da da da da da da da da da. What I think the right thing to do is make an incredible story and then download a piece of it, right? And then upload it on your other channels so that when people see it in a tweet or in a Facebook post or in an Instagram 15-second clip, they get so excited about, well, what else is there? It compels them to go follow it. The content is always king. You know, we say it in marketing all the time, it's super cliché. The problem is most people don't execute on it. And so instead of doing a cheap move just to get as many views on your story as possible by giving stuff away or incentivizing it, I say make great quality content, use your other social vehicles and other digital and even traditional vehicles to share that content and then compel people to come and watch. Hey Gary Vaynerchuk, JLD here. And I have a question for you. About Snapchat. Because of you, I've been snapping my face off and loving every second of it. DRock @JohnLeeDumas, and I would love for you to share with us, how do we grow our Snapchat followers? You've answered this question before. I haven't loved any of your answers. If you could go deep, break it down, we're VaynerNation. How do we grow our Snapchat followers? JLD wants to grow his base. JLD, excited, I think I'm actually going on your podcast today. Which you'll probably air as the book comes out. That's later in my day. Jody, listen, I'm sorry that I'm not giving you a good answer. The answer is you have to use every other channel. It's using every other channel and it's hacking. You're doing it right now. You threw up your Snapcode because you're hoping a bunch of people in the VaynerNation stop it, take a picture of it, and add you as a friend. You're doing exactly the right thing, which is you've gotta use other people's platforms and other, you know, collaborating, like literally emailing everybody that you know or messaging them on Instagram if they have big Instagrams, assuming that that means they have going to some sort of community on Snapchat and saying, hey, how do I take over your channel? How do I, give me a shout out. I mean, it's literally endorsements on other people's Snapchat, or, I mean, listen man, make your podcast over the next 6, 7 weeks pounding Snapchat. Interview people about Snapchat. Interview Snapchat executives. Make your world about Snapchat. I've won because I'm branded. You're looking for a tactic. You're looking for a sales tactic, right? A transaction. Go do this, buy this search term, da da da, right? Like, you're looking for that. You're looking for maybe you should buy the long tail term on Google as a Google Adword that says, who should I follow on Snapchat? And then maybe you're the first result that you paid for. It's me, follow me, right? That will work, probably cost a buck or two per follower, and that might work. But I'm doing it in marketing and branding by being about it, 'bout it. Right? By being about it, and by talking about it, and by being out there, people are picking up on that behavior, they're writing about me being in there, and yes, I sit at a high level in marketing, but there's a lot of people, DJ Khaled wasn't. He was a DJ. He went all about it, now people give him exposure. Right now, because there's no functionality within Snapchat to growth hack or pay for ad spend or any other functionality to build your user base, you have to win on marketing, not on sales. JLD, there's too many people in 2016 that have become internet marketers, and it's all about arbitrage. Facebook ads, Pinterest ads, Google AdWords, affiliate marketing, email marketing, landing page optimization. It's all about tactics. It's not about marketing and religion. The reason I've done so well on Snapchat is I'm a marketer, right? I built Wine Library on marketing, not just transactional couponing and Google AdWords. I've built myself in marketing, coming, I built myself in marketing by building my brand, and that's trickled down. It's not just transactional. I sell a lot more books than a lot of people 'cause it's not the tactics, it's the overall brand. Brand, it's really the thesis of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Those jabs are branding and bringing value. And so, there's tactics like you just did, JLD, but there's also branding. And you have a platform, you have a successful podcast. Make your content about that. And then there's a lot of tactics like I mentioned earlier in this rant as I wove some tactics in there for you. But you've gotta level up your thinking, bro. I'm not kidding. You know, you're gonna razz, I'm gonna razz right back. You gotta think marketing versus, you know, you're more than welcome to go out and do guest blog posts on a ton of business sites about why you think Snapchat's important, and now you show up in a lot of distributed places with a call to action to, oh, P.S., by the way, follow me on Snapchat. So there's a lot, you know, you may not like the answers because you may not wanna do them, or you might not like this answer because marketing's a lot harder than a growth hack or an execution, it doesn't take away from the fact that it's the answer. The reason so many people are asking me how to build a base is 'cause it's not easy. 'Cause it's branding and marketing, not sales and transactional. I'm excited right now because that was actually a very important answer to a lot of questions that have going on for a long time. Too many people here are playing checkers when the game is really chess. Branding and marketing is different than transactional affiliate. It's math versus branding. It's quant versus qual. Snapchat is in branding and qual world, and that's just too hard for most of you. Gary, how on earth do you measure your progress on Snapchat? Abdul, that's very easy. It's called how many views are you getting on your stories? A week ago I was getting 3,000 views. Now I'm getting 20,000 views. I'm making progress. You did? Okay, making progress, Abdul. We're making progress, Abdul.

I think you brought more people on the Snapchat than anybody else. You are the Snapchat marketing maven. I've always had a challenge with stuff that just disappears. I like creating stuff that lives forever. Like you mentioned at the top of the show that You know, 10 years people will still come back and watch this video. I hate the idea of creating something and then poof, it's gone. Like the street artist writing something down and then the rain washes it away. Am I seeing it wrong or is it just, okay, so what's, what's, I get the attention is there, but I want like the lasting stuff. Well, good, do both.

You can download the stories and upload them. Like you can do a ton of things. And so, yeah, I mean, every conversation you've ever had in life disappears. Most television pre-DVR, all television pre-DVR did, like, yeah, I mean, I think, and by the way, not everything has to do the same thing. And most of all, the value of that attention is extreme. You know, like people are just gonna be there. It's just gonna happen. You know, I'm a very big believer of like, look, whether I like it or not, it's gonna be. And so, you know, for a guy like you that is building his brand as a curator of content, And excuse me if I'm wrong with that, that's just kind of how I see it from afar so far. Like, I don't see how, I don't see how, you can't afford in my opinion to punt Snapchat, it's gonna be too big. So to me, it starts with that religion, right? Like if you fully believe that. [Speaker] Right. If you fully believe that, then that alone in itself. But yeah, I mean, I think it's kinda cool. Oh, sorry man, I don't know what's going on. Hello? [Speaker] Yeah, I got you. [Speaker] Okay, cool. You know, I think that, I think that there's gonna be different genres of ways to communicate, and if Snapchat doesn't work for you, that's fine, but I'm telling you like a homie, Just don't disrespect it because it's going to be a beast.

Okay, I'm— yeah, I get it. I'm also not huge on Instagram or doing a ton on Twitter or Facebook. I just hate the business of things disappearing. I want the stuff I make to last forever. Well, Instagram—

Instagram, you, you making 1-minute versions for Instagram and being smart about hashtags would blow up your—

okay. Good advice, write it down.

And you know, the good thing about advice is like, look, you don't have to. You've got like, I always think that people need, like, people give me advice all the time. I completely disregard it. Like, you do you, but like, that's one man's point of view, you know.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made the Mentor Me series because I wanted you to be able to hang out with people who've done a lot more, and hopefully by hanging around those people just a little bit more, some extra of their magic pixie dust rubs off on you and starts to change the way you think, you act, you behave. So hopefully you enjoyed this video. I'd love to know what you think of it if you wanna leave it in the comments below. And if you have a Snapchat ID that you'd like to promote or a question about Snapchat or wanna tell people how you're using Snapchat, your experiences, leave it in the comments below and I will join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.