As a marketer, I’m always looking for ways to scale content creation.
Creating great content takes time, money and the right team.
I often times refer to the Cheap, Fast, Good equation.
Fast + Cheap ≠ Good
Good + Cheap≠ Fast
Good + Fast ≠ Cheap
Thinking back to my early days at Nikon and later Expedia, we struggled with quality creative at scale.
Sure, you’ll find one-off photographers or even travel bloggers who can support your content strategy.
But replicating this model globally gets time consuming and expensive.
When I first heard about Snapchat Spectacles, I was very skeptical.
Having worked on the launch of Nikon 1, I was afraid that Spectacles would have a similar delay between shooting and publishing.
If you’re using the Spectacles for travel footage, then you’ll need to consider that WiFi is not readily available when you’re backpacking in Southeast Asia or at any major sporting event or festival.
On a personal level, I’ve found that it’s fine to share your favorite moments, even if it’s not “in” in the exact moment.
If you’re a brand, having this delay is likely not an issue.
The Spectacles can be viewed as an easy way to create more content, which still needs slight editing before sharing.
For marketers, we all know that video is a great way to create a strong connection with your customers.
I’ve always been bullish on video, however I have yet to find a solution that can scale video efforts.
The end to end process of storyboarding, filming and production takes way too long.
As I’m personally experimenting with Snapchat Spectacles, I’ve began to adopt a different mindset for branded video content.
- It’s okay to sacrifice quality for scale.
If you’ve come from a traditional marketing background, then the focus has always been polished campaigns suitable for print, OOH and TV. Today, 50% of consumers find UGC more memorable than brand-produced content, so we need to rely heavily on our customers and their favorite influencers to create successful content.
Rather than focusing on quality, the key for brands is scale. And scale can only come from giving creative control to our customers.
Scale also has a direct impact on the business.
For example: Adding a video to a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%
- Empower your customers to create content for you.
Video has the power to create immediate connection with your customers and humanize your brand.
Yet, many of us still struggle to justify the costs for production budget and the resources to execute effectively.
One of the easiest ways to get started with video is empowering your customers to create content for you.
It may take some prizes or incentives to start, but UGC allows you to create content quickly. You’ll also see a nice bump in organic shares and WOM referrals as contributors are motivated to share your branded content.
My biggest piece of advice to other marketers is to create a branded contributor guide, which outlines what type of content you’d like customers and influencers to create. Provide specific examples of what works and what doesn’t work for your brand. The guide should be visual and not too prescriptive, so you empower the users without limiting their creativity.
A couple branded UGC Snapchat campaigns I love:
Lowe’s in a Snap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09nW0CubawE
Sour Patch Kids sour then sweet hijinks
- Test and double down on what’s working.
Using engagement data from Snapchat (opens and replies), you can quickly identify which types of content perform best. For more robust platforms like Facebook of Instagram, you can get even more sophisticated with your audience targeting and testing strategy.
For more tips on how brands can use Snapchat Spectacles, check out this post on Social Media Today.