MBA1003 Guest Teacher: Timothy Armoo- How to Leverage Snapchat to Tap into a Young Demographic

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Hey O welcome to the $100 RMBA Show. Your favorite part of the day every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. And today's guest teacher is Timothy Armu. He's going to be teaching you how to leverage Snapchat to tap into a young demographic. This is a lesson I listened to a couple of myself because I'm not on Snapchat and I'm not a huge social media guy. But to be completely honest, I had to have an open mind because part of the demographic that I serve are young people and I'm leaving an audience on the table, so to speak, by not really taking on Timothy's advice. This is a jam packed episode and it's sort of a crash course in using Snapchat the right way to serve a young demographic. There's been a lot of buzz about Snapchat in the last, I would say two years, but it's still early days for Snapchat and like Timothy will mention, it's great to get in while it's Early. I wish I got into Google AdWords in the early 2000s. I wish I did Facebook ads back in 2009. So now is the opportunity not to miss out when things are still young, still early in a new platform. Timothy's got a lot to cover when it comes to Snapchat in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Timothy Armu, who's 23, is the CEO of Fanbytes. You can check him out@fanbytes.co.uk and that's Bytes with B Y T E s. Fanbytes is a mobile video advertising platform and Fanbytes has worked with huge companies like Warner and Universal and Sony to reach teens on Snapchat. Now, even though Timothy's young, he's got a ton of experience in business. He started his first company when he was 14, his second company when he was 17, and now he's an old timer here at Fanbytes at 23. But having that experience when he's young and still being young is a huge advantage because he understands the audience that he's serving on Snapchat, and this is why we wanted to have him on board. He's a perfect fit for this lesson. So, without further ado, I'm going to pass it on to Timothy and I'll be back with my takeaways and to wrap up the episode. Take it away, Timothy.

Hey, everyone, I'm Timothy Armour. Thank you for joining me today. Today I'll be talking about how to leverage Snapchat to tap into a young demographic. So let's get down to business. So why Snapchat? You're probably wondering why you should really care about Snapchat. And there are three reasons why. As a brand, if you're targeting ages 13 to 25, it's hugely important that you actually tap into Snapchat. The first reason is that there are more teens on Snapchat than on Facebook, despite it being an eighth of its S. That is crazy. The second reason is that it's super personal. Snapchat is the first app where the moment you open the app, it shows you a picture or video of your own face, forcing you to consume content. And this idea of it just being all about the users adds this heightened element of just personalization. And for that, if a brand is able to tap into that and really create content which resonates with the user in a really personal way, that is a really powerful thing. The third thing is this Snapchat has super underpriced Attention. What that therefore means is in the same way Facebook ads were super cheap and super low in 2009, or like Google AdWords in the early 2000s, Snapchat now provides this huge opportunity for brands who understand how to use it to really, really reap the benefits. Huge caveat. However, Snapchat is great for audiences between 13 to 25, older than 25, or kind of skewing more towards 30. Then I don't think there's enough of an audience there for you to tap into. So that's just a huge disclaimer for the rest of the show. Okay, so now I'm going to teach you five hacks you can use to create content that resonates with the audience on Snapchat. So hack number one, tapping into culture. Here's the thing. Snapchat is a super young audience. And so these guys have grown up with a lot of these cultural memes and social references which have really defined their generation. And so as a brand, the best thing you could do is find a way to actually position your brand or your product or your service and connect that with that cultural moment. One example could be if, you know, between the ages of 15 to 18, there was a song that really defined that generation, perhaps you can use that as your backing track for your advert or your piece of content on Snapchat. Perhaps there was a meme that was going viral. You could perhaps use that picture or use that meme and push your brand around it. What you then tend to find is that by taking that moment and then by connecting your brand into it, you find that people really resonate with that because the moment they think about that moment, the moment they think about that meme or that song, your brand is part of that conversation. That's a very powerful thing. So the second thing, hack number two, that is using faces in your content. Now, as I mentioned earlier, Snapchat is a super personal platform, right? The content there is super personal, and it's stuff you can't actually find on any other social network. The brands who really win are those who then say that we are going to adhere to that idea of it being super personal, and we're going to create content which actually features people inside it. An example, for example, at fanbuys that we did, where we're promoting two makeup products and we found that the content which actually showed someone's face, perhaps using the makeup rather than just talking about the makeup found, had a 73% higher click through rate, which is astounding that something as simple as showing a face can have such a huge impact on a product's success. So that's number two, respect the fact that Snapchat is super personal and show someone's face in the content. Okay, so hack number three, and that is timing. So here's the thing. Although Snapchat is shot in 10 second snaps, Snapchat's young audience actually make the decision as to whether to watch your content in the first two seconds. So as a consequence of that, it's imperative that you communicate what you want your user to do up front. So this can be done by either having strong visual or audio call to actions. So the biggest mistake we see brands making is thinking, oh, we have 10 seconds, let us take the whole 10 seconds and then give our call to action in like the 8th or 9th second or even worse, the 10 second. That is awful. We found that by using a strong visual call to action, that actually led to like a 2.4% increase in click viewers. And those that did not. When you say stuff in the first two, three seconds, that is where you can really get people's attention and drive action. Okay, so hack number four, remember the human that sounds really woo woo, but unexplained. So as I mentioned, Snapchat is a super personal platform. And because of that, the worst thing you could possibly do is, for example, just talk about yourself. So just like disrupt their content feed because they will skip. Right? So if you, for example, are like a film studio, the worst thing you could actually do is just take the film, a trailer of the film, and just use it to disrupt people's stories because they will skip, rather offer some form of entertainment. And remember that fundamentally it's a person who's watching on the other side of the screen. And if there's some kind of action you can get them to do, which actually feeds into their emotions, that is where you really win. So one example I've seen is a social gaming app that we work with and it could be very easy for them to just say, hey, here's a trailer of our game, go and download it. But rather they didn't even talk about the game. They actually said, hey, this is a game where you can challenge your friend. And they spoke to the fact that people always want to kind of compete against their friends. So they remembered that there was a human being on the other side of the screen and they weren't just trying to generate impressions, but they were trying to make stuff that was relatable and that's the stuff that really drives action. On Snapchat and hack number five, last but 100%, not least is don't be lazy. So so many people feel like, oh, Snapchat is just another social media platform. So I'm just going to repurpose what I've done on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and then just going to put it on there without really understanding that it's a completely different set of rules. There's and the people who really win again, in the same way that I spoke about how Facebook ads were in 2009 and how Google was in the early 2000s, the people who really win are those who respect the rules of the platform and really devise unique ways to go after that platform. Repurposing stuff which is like horizontal video, when Snapchat is completely vertical video or just badly cropped stuff, is the sure fire way for you to get bad results and miss out on the underpriced attention on Snapchat. Okay, so a bit of an advanced tip right now, and that is augmented reality. So in the past, what used to happen was that unless you had super deep pockets, there was no way at all you'd be able to tap into the power of AR or augmented reality. Until now. Snapchat launched a thing called Lens Studio, which is where you can actually create your own AR creations. And it's really easy to get set up. You might need a bit of graphic design work to create something which is super complex, but you could actually get away with creating a mascot. For example, if you have a mascot for your business, you could turn that into an augmented reality thing and then you could share it across your product packaging. If you have an app, you could distribute it in your app. You could distribute it just kind of out of home and outdoor or using influencers as well. And I think it's a powerful way to increase your user experience, bringing entertainment and advertising together. That's really, really cool. Okay, guys, this was Tim at Fanbytes teaching you guys how to leverage Snapchat to tap into a younger demographic. If you want to continue learning about how to really win at Snapchat, we've created a cheat sheet which has all the tricks and also some examples of these tricks actually being used, which you can find in the show notes. Thanks so much for joining me today. And now back to Omar.

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Taxes, tips and fees extra. What a great lesson from Timothy Armu. Make sure you check out our show notes today. To get that cheat sheet he mentioned, just go to 100mba.net mba1301 of the big light bulb moments for me when listening to Timothy's lesson was that Snapchat is a completely different platform with a completely different set of rules. I need to treat it differently. I need to create content and serve that content differently than I would do with any other platform. I think sometimes we all just bundle social media into one pile and like you said, try to repurpose things from Facebook or Instagram and just pop them into Snapchat. If you really want to do well with this platform, you really need to take on his advice. And I love what he mentioned, remembering there's another person on the other side of the screen and to speak to that person like a person. And because of the nature of the platform and the audience, you have a limited time to grab their attention. Don't waste time. You have two seconds, like you said, to grab their attention. The whole video is 10 seconds. So cut to the chase, keep it fun, keep it interactive, keep it entertaining, which I really heard a lot of entertainment is very important to include in your marketing on Snapchat. And to me it sounds really like a vlog, except you have a shorter amount of time to really grab their attention. The other takeaway guys that even if I'm not a huge hardcore, you know, Snapchat lover and user, that doesn't mean my potential customers or audience members are not it's not just about me. I need to make sure I'm catering to other people. So someone on my team, if it's not me, needs to cater to them. And if we're going to do it via Snapchat, it's not a bad idea to get somebody who's really into it. You don't have to like things and agree with every single thing that you do with your business. You can get somebody else to do it. If it's serving your business and your audience and that's a good thing. You personally don't have to always do everything. Thanks again, Timothy for that great, great lesson. That wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. The easiest way to keep learning and improving your business is to hit subscribe right now with whatever you use to listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get all our episodes automatically. But not only that, you get access to our archives. It's the only way you can kind of see all the episodes in our feed. Yes, that means you'll have access to over a thousand episodes, a thousand lessons to really pump up your business. So do me a favor and hit subscribe right now. This also ensures you don't miss any future lessons. They get downloaded to your device automatically. Speaking of future lessons, tomorrow we're going to be covering how to run a successful cross promotion. This is when you partner up with another business or another person and say, hey, how about I introduce you to my audience and you do the same for me? Money might not change hands between the two parties, but attention is. You're offering your audience and they're offering their audience. How do you pull that off seamlessly and have a successful cross promotion? That's what we cover in tomorrow's lesson. Hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Alright, before I go, I want to leave you with this. Sometimes we feel like if we don't personally use a platform or a tool for our personal lives, we don't like to use it for our business. I may not like Facebook on a personal level, but I might use it for my business to run ads or to have a Facebook group or whatever. You got to separate yourself from what your business needs. And remember, the opposite is true as well. Just because you like something, say for example, you love Snapchat, but you serve, you know, senior citizens. They're not necessarily going to be on Snapchat. So don't force it. Don't force that aspect in your business. You get what I'm saying? What's good for your business is not necessarily good for you or something that you like to do. All right, thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Until then, take care.

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