Are you in search of the most effective Snapchat ads maximizing ROI strategies? If so, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, you will discover how to execute successful Snapchat ad campaigns in 2023 and beyond.

What are Snapchat Ads?

Snapchat Ads are an integral part of Snapchat’s advertising program, catering to one of the largest social media platforms in existence today. Given the extensive user base of Snapchat, businesses wield the potential to efficiently and conveniently connect with their target audience.

Snapchat Ads are available in various formats, each designed to align with distinct marketing objectives. These formats encompass:

Snapchat Ads FormatsSource

  • Single Image or Video Ads: This dynamic advertising medium accommodates a broad spectrum of business goals, from bolstering brand awareness to driving conversions. The hallmark of Single Image or Video Ads lies in their immersive full-screen presentation, commanding the entire mobile screen and ensuring undivided attention without the interference of competing elements.
  • AR Lens Ads: Advertisers have the liberty to craft their AR Lens Ads, showcasing their brand. Users can then employ these AR lenses as filters for their photos and videos, amplifying user engagement.
  • Story Ads: These ads grace Snapchat’s Discover section. When users engage with these ads, they gain access to additional images or videos that complement your advertising content.
  • Collection Ads: If your aim is to spotlight your products, Collection Ads offer an ideal solution. These ads feature four tappable tiles where you can insert images or videos to captivate your audience.
  • Dynamic Ads: Dynamic Ads leverage the power of Snap Pixel, catalogs, and Mobile Measurement Partner to automatically generate tailored ads. This automation streamlines your advertising efforts and optimizes performance.
  • Commercials: Commercials are unskippable Snapchat video placements strategically designed to enhance video views, ensuring your content reaches a wider audience.

Familiarizing yourself with each of these ad formats is essential for selecting the one that best aligns with your specific marketing objectives.

Why Should You Consider Using Snapchat Ads?

If you’re on the lookout for a fresh and effective approach to connect with your target audience, elevate your brand’s image, and enhance awareness, Snapchat ads maximizing ROI strategies should be on your radar. To help you gauge whether Snapchat Ads are the right fit for your marketing endeavors, here are some compelling reasons to consider:

  • Expansive User Base: Snapchat boasts a staggering 383 million daily users worldwide. This impressive reach ensures that your message has the potential to resonate with a diverse and extensive audience.
  • Engaged Demographics: If your ideal audience comprises Generation Z and Millennials, specifically those aged 18 to 24, Snapchat is your prime destination. These age groups are highly active on the platform, offering a direct path to your target market.
  • Effortless Setup: Creating Snapchat Ads is a breeze, and you can have your campaigns up and running within minutes. Whether you opt to upload a photo or video directly from your mobile device, the process is swift and user-friendly.
  • Budget-Friendly: Cost should not deter you. With Snapchat Ads, you can initiate campaigns for as little as $5 per day. This affordability provides an excellent opportunity to test and refine your ads over time, ensuring optimal results.
  • Diverse Ad Formats: Unleash your creativity with a plethora of ad formats at your disposal. Snapchat empowers you to experiment with various formats, granting you the freedom to pursue diverse marketing objectives.

These compelling reasons underscore the potential of Snapchat Ads to amplify your marketing efforts. It’s worth examining your overall marketing strategies and considering how the integration of Snapchat Ads can enhance your brand’s visibility and engagement.

10 Effective strategies for Snapchat ads in 2023

Snapchat advertising has evolved significantly since its inception in 2014. Back then, it was a fledgling platform with limited adoption due to its relatively high costs. However, as Snapchat continued to refine its advertising program, its revenue surged. In 2021, Snapchat’s revenue reached an impressive $3.1 billion, and by 2022, it soared to $3.63 billion. Experts predict that by the end of 2026, Snapchat’s revenue could hit an astonishing $5.9 billion.

Clearly, advertisers are drawn to Snapchat’s potential, making it an opportune platform for businesses to explore. To harness the full potential of Snapchat ads, you need the right strategies in place; otherwise, you risk squandering your investment.

To assist you on your Snapchat advertising journey, we’ve compiled a list of the ten most effective strategies to consider in 2023. These tactics are designed to maximize your return on investment (ROI) and help you make the most of Snapchat’s advertising capabilities.

1. Define Your Advertising Goals

When embarking on your Snapchat advertising journey, the first crucial step is to define your advertising goals. Snapchat offers three distinct advertising goals, each dictating how your ad will function. It is imperative to establish your objectives clearly to tailor your Snapchat ads effectively.

Snapchat Ads GoalSource

On Snapchat, you can choose from three primary advertising goals:

  1. Awareness: Opt for awareness if your aim is to enhance your visibility on Snapchat. This goal allows you to introduce potential customers to your services and products. Additionally, it serves as a valuable tool for launching announcements about upcoming features and can even guide users to visit your local storefront.
  2. Consideration: Consideration is the ideal choice if your goal is to persuade users to contemplate your brand. Under this goal, you can educate users about your company, foster the generation of new leads, increase engagement with your content and video views, amplify website traffic, and heighten app installations.
  3. Conversions: If you intend to motivate users to take specific actions, such as purchasing your products or availing your services, the conversions goal is the most suitable. It empowers you to guide users seamlessly toward performing these desired actions.

By selecting the appropriate advertising goal, you set the stage for crafting Snapchat ads that align precisely with your overarching objectives, maximizing the impact of your campaigns.

2. Know Your Target Audience

While Snapchat boasts millions of users, attempting to reach every single one is not an effective strategy. Success with Snapchat ads hinges on precisely defining your target audience. This approach ensures that your ads are seen by individuals who are most likely to have a genuine interest in your products or services.

When it comes to knowing your target audience, you should be familiar with their location, age range, gender, education, income, and marital status. You can even get more specific by targeting people based on their ad and profile engagement and the mobile app actions they have taken.

Snapchat even helps you find your current customers on their platform and interact with them directly or use their existing data to find people similar to them.

3. Choose the right ad format

Snapchat offers a variety of ad formats to suit different marketing objectives. For those new to Snapchat advertising, it’s advisable to begin with three fundamental formats:

  • Single Image or Video Ads: These are the simplest to create and are widely used on Snapchat. They provide an excellent entry point for trying out Snapchat ads.
  • Story Ads: Ideal for narrative-driven advertising, Story Ads allow you to tell a compelling story about your product or service. They are effective for showcasing specific features or creating a deeper narrative.
  • Collection Ads: If you have a catalog of products, Collection Ads are your go-to choice. They streamline product browsing and make the purchase process seamless.

Start with these formats to get a feel for Snapchat advertising. As you become more proficient, you can explore additional ad formats to diversify your campaigns and optimize their impact.

4. Run a Broad Data-Gathering Campaign

While the importance of laser-focused ad campaigns cannot be overstated, there’s also merit in maintaining a broad ad campaign. The primary objective of such a campaign is to collect valuable data that may elude you when you’re exclusively targeting a smaller audience.

Your broad campaign should run continuously, but with limited targeting parameters to stay within budget while maximizing the exposure of your ad to Snapchatters. This broad approach serves as a data-gathering foundation for your future campaigns. Think of it as the initial step in your marketing funnel, where you gain insights into which audience segments respond most favorably to your ads. Subsequently, you can refine and narrow down your campaign strategies based on this acquired knowledge.

5. Use Snap Pixel

Have you ever wondered what actions users take on your website after engaging with your Snapchat ad? This knowledge is pivotal in optimizing your ad content and landing pages to encourage desired actions. This is precisely where Snap Pixel comes into play.

Snap PixelSource

Snap Pixel is a JavaScript code that you seamlessly integrate into your website. Once implemented, it enables you to track and measure the effectiveness of your Snapchat ad campaigns. Snap Pixel diligently records a range of user actions and events, including:

  • Page views
  • Product views
  • Add to cart actions
  • Initiation of the checkout process
  • Completion of purchases

The data garnered through Snap Pixel empowers you to gauge the effectiveness of your ad campaigns accurately. It allows you to attribute conversion events to the corresponding ads, providing valuable insights into campaign performance.

Moreover, this data enables you to construct custom audiences, facilitating follow-ups and re-engagement efforts with users who may not have completed their desired user journey. Snap Pixel serves as an indispensable tool in fine-tuning your advertising strategies on Snapchat.

6. Choose the right bidding strategies

While Snapchat allows you to start with a Snapchat ads cost budget as modest as $5 per day, it’s essential to consider scaling your budget if you’re serious about achieving substantial results. Determining the right budget can be a challenging aspect of running Snapchat ads. Fortunately, Snapchat offers various bidding strategies to assist you in this regard. Here are some key bidding strategies to maximize your ROI:

  • Auto-bidding: This strategy empowers Snapchat to set the bid for you based on your specified budget and target audience. It streamlines the bidding process, ensuring efficient resource allocation.
  • Target cost: With this approach, you set your desired target cost, and Snapchat strives to run your ads while adhering to this cost threshold. It offers predictability and cost control.
  • Max bid: By specifying the maximum bid for your ads, you inform Snapchat of the highest bid you’re willing to make. This strategy ensures cost discipline and prevents overspending.
  • Minimum ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): If your primary goal is to acquire new customers and maintain a minimum level of return on ad spend, this strategy is ideal. It allows you to balance customer acquisition costs with revenue generation.

7. Leverage Custom Audiences

Snapchat equips you with the power to target the right audience at the right time and in the right place. Randomly showcasing your ads to a broad audience is seldom effective. Custom audiences provide a systematic way to segment your target audience based on various criteria, simplifying the process of creating highly targeted ads with minimal effort.

Snapchat offers several types of custom audiences to suit your marketing needs:

  • Customer List Audiences: Constructed directly from your email list or device IDs, these audiences enable you to reach users already connected to your brand.
  • Lookalike Audiences: Snapchat analyzes your customer list and creates a new list of potential customers who resemble your existing audience, expanding your reach to similar individuals.
  • Third-Party Custom Audiences: Target Snapchatters based on their past purchase history or viewership behaviors, allowing for precise targeting.
  • Website Custom Audiences: This group comprises individuals who have previously engaged with your brand online, signaling their strong interest and intent.
  • Mobile App Custom Audiences: Accessible to app advertisers integrated with a mobile measurement partner (MMP), these audiences target users based on their interactions with your app.
  • Ad Engagement Audiences: Focus on Snapchatters who have taken specific actions on ads within your ad account or specific campaigns within your ad account.
  • Profile Engagement Custom Audiences: Segments are crafted from engagement with your Public Profile and organic content, further refining your targeting capabilities.

Leveraging these custom audiences empowers you to deliver tailored messages to precisely defined user segments, maximizing the impact of your Snapchat ad campaigns.

7. Create custom audiences

Snapchat gives you the power to reach the right people at the right time and in the right place. You don’t want to show your ads to random people. With custom audiences, you can systematically group your target audience based on various details. This allows you to easily create ads and target the right people with the least amount of time and effort.

Snapchat allows you to create various custom audiences which include the following:

  • Customer List Audiences: a list of users built directly from your email list or device IDs.
  • Lookalike Audiences: Snapchat will take a look at your customer list and will create a list of new potential customers based on your existing list.
  • Third-Party Custom audiences: Brands can target a highly specific group of Snapchatters based on their past purchase history or viewership behaviors.
  • Website Custom Audiences: This group includes individuals who have previously interacted with your brand online, signifying strong interest and intent.
  • Mobile App Custom Audiences: Accessible to app advertisers integrated with a mobile measurement partner (MMP) especially made for Snapchat app ads.
  • Ad Engagement Audiences: Target Snapchatters who have taken specific actions on ads within your ad account or specific campaigns within your ad account.
  • Profile Engagement Custom Audiences: Segments designed from engagement with your Public Profile and organic content.

8. Take advantage of reporting features

Snapchat provides essential data to help you gauge the performance of your ads. Navigate to Snapchat Ads Manager, where you can access reporting features to gain deeper insights into your ad performance.

Within Snapchat Ads Manager, key sections include:

  • Reports: Here, you can create and even schedule reports to gain a better understanding of how your ads are performing over time.
  • Campaign Lab: This section offers insights and recommendations to help you refine and enhance the effectiveness of your Snapchat ads.
  • App Measurement: Ideal for app marketers, this feature facilitates tracking of app installs and user engagement.
  • Conversions API: This tool allows for seamless data sharing across web, app, and offline sources, streamlining your data management.

By leveraging these reporting features, you can track the success of your Snapchat ad campaigns and make informed decisions to optimize their performance.

9. Exercise Patience with Ad Settings

Snapchat recommends running your ads for a minimum of 15 days, which is considered the exploration phase of your ad campaign. This timeframe allows Snapchat’s algorithm to discern the most effective delivery methods for your ads and identify the audience most likely to respond favorably. Avoid making hasty adjustments to your ad settings during this crucial phase, as it may disrupt the optimization process and limit the effectiveness of your campaign.

10. Conduct A/B Testing

A/B testing stands out as one of the most potent methods for refining your Snapchat ads and optimizing your return on investment (ROI). You might already have a Snapchat ads library, but through A/B tests, you gain valuable insights into which version of your ads performs best and how to further enhance your campaign’s effectiveness.

Snapchat A:B testSource

Snapchat offers the flexibility to conduct creative tests on an entire ad or specific elements within it. By systematically testing your ad campaign components, you can pinpoint the ad variations that resonate most effectively with your target audience.

Harness the power of Snapchat Ads

These ten Snapchat ads examples and strategies represent powerful tools at your disposal for elevating your Snapchat advertising game in 2023. Snapchat ads have the potential to be a game-changer for your business, but achieving success demands the right expertise, creativity, and data-driven approach.

While Snapchat ads hold tremendous promise, it’s crucial to understand how to wield them effectively. Fortunately, ShyftUp is here to assist you on your journey.

ShyftUp boasts the expertise and knowledge required for creating and managing highly effective Snapchat ad campaigns. Their specialization extends to aiding app owners, developers, and marketers in harnessing the full potential of Snapchat to drive growth for their mobile apps.

Discover the transformative impact ShyftUp can have on your business through Snapchat ads. Take the leap today and witness how they can dramatically enhance your success in the world of Snapchat advertising.