SEO
What It Is & How It Works
I guess it’s true what they say about product marketing—it suffers from an identity crisis.
Because product marketing is closely related to some other roles in marketing, it’s not that obvious what product marketing is really about. That being said, once you learn what product marketers do, it’s impossible to imagine launching a successful product without them.
So let’s jump in and demystify product marketing. In this article, you’ll learn the following:
Product marketing is the process of bringing a product to the market and communicating its value both externally to the market and internally within the organization.
This includes everything from market research to product positioning to creating effective marketing initiatives focused on increasing a product’s adoption in the marketplace.
Straight away, I’d like to address one popular misconception about product marketing. Some of you may have seen a graphical explanation of product marketing.
The explanation is in the form of a Venn diagram, showing how this discipline shares some commonalities with product and sales departments. Well, this is not entirely accurate.
You see, product marketing is essentially a subdivision of marketing. It’s not as interdisciplinary as the Venn diagram depicts it to be. It’s not sales + product + marketing = product marketing.
Doing product marketing is basically doing marketing that’s focused on everything directly related to making a product successful in the market. And that responsibility has been a part of marketing since the conception of the four Ps of marketing (product, price, place, and promotion).
So as we go further and learn what kinds of activities constitute product marketing, let’s try to remember this:
The answer is quite simple: You can’t create and launch a successful product without product marketing. You can’t do that without knowing what to build and who to market the product to.
Moreover, if you want to stand any chance of success in the market, you need to know how to efficiently position and communicate your product’s value to create demand among your target audience.
All the things mentioned above relate to product marketing. So if you were to become a product marketer, become a product marketing manager, or hire one, what would the role entail? Let’s answer that too.
Here are some key areas of a product marketer’s role:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Market research | Among others: ‑Understanding customers’ needs and wants ‑Identifying opportunities in the market ‑Understanding the competition |
| Go-to-market strategy | Identifying what will be offered, to what market, at what price, how it will be offered, and what is required operationally to launch the product |
| Creating a positioning and messaging plan | -Determining the benefits that the product should be identified with ‑Determining how to catch the attention of the target audience and educate them about the product |
| Product communication (external and internal) | -Externally: creating demand for the product by communicating its features and benefits ‑Internally: product education and making sure external communication is consistent |
| Marketing collateral | Creating the collection of media used to support the sales of the product (e.g., sales brochures, knowledge base articles, data sheets, demos) |
| Gathering user feedback | -Understanding how satisfied users are with the product ‑Suggesting improvements in the product and how it’s delivered to the market |
| Product analytics | Understanding how users engage with the product, e.g., feature usage, points of friction, user retention |
| New feature launches | Delivering new features to the market and driving their adoption |
It’s also worth knowing that a product marketer doesn’t need to do all of those things. Those tasks can be divided in such a way that different product marketers within an organization will specialize in a subset of those activities.
On the other hand, at Ahrefs, much of what our marketing department does is product marketing. Yet only a handful of team members are engaged with the product enough to be known as “product marketers.”
To make things a bit clearer, this is what we (a company with over 70 people) expect from a product marketer:
Some things on that list are not exclusive to a product marketer in our marketing team. For example, most of us are involved in creating product-led content. However, a specific “mix” of those duties makes it a good fit for a product marketer specialization.
Here are some main steps product marketers usually take to bring products to the market and communicate them. Let’s describe the steps chronologically: before the product launch and after the product launch.
Pre-launch
This stage can be summed up with one concept: go-to-market strategy (GTM strategy). A GTM strategy is basically a company’s plan to introduce a new product or service to the market. Typically, product marketers own these strategies.
When you look at the steps within the GTM, you will see a few familiar activities listed in the table above. However, in a properly executed GTM strategy, these activities need to be arranged in order and supplemented with a few more points.
So here are the eight steps in the GTM process, along with the vital questions they help to answer:
- Identify your market (along with your competitors) – This is the product’s “environment” for growth. What opportunities are there? Who will you be playing “against”?
- Identify your customer – Who are you trying to sell to? How will your product make people’s lives better?
- Define product positioning and price – How should your product be perceived by the target audience? Are you offering more benefits for a lower price or maybe more benefits for a higher price?
- Define product messaging and core marketing tactics – What do you say to potential customers to sell your product? What marketing channels can you use to reach them?
- Define product distribution – How will a user access your product? Directly or maybe through distributors?
- Sync marketing, sales, and support – What do sales, support, and other marketing team members need from you to make this product a success? And what do you need from them?
- Determine the budget, time frame, and resources needed – Time, resources, and money: How much will the product launch consume?
- Define your success metrics – How will you know you have achieved product-market fit? How will you measure growth?
If you’d like to read more on the topic of GTM strategies, head over to this guide.
Post-launch
In other words, this stage includes everything that needs to be taken care of after you launch the product:
We just launched Ahrefs Webmaster Tools!https://t.co/WESA9JZDM7
We want ALL content creators to have the data they need to improve their websites – so we’re making some parts of Ahrefs FREE for everyone. Think of it as us picking up where GSC left off 😉
Please help to RT!
— Ahrefs (@ahrefs) September 22, 2020
Namely, after the product launch, product marketers will be involved in the following activities. (Note that they are ongoing activities and not necessarily performed in this order.)
- Internal and external product communication – A product marketer’s goal is twofold here: demand generation and product adoption. The first is about attracting visitors to the product; the latter is about helping users use product features to accomplish their goals.
- Product analytics – Product marketers don’t need to guess how users engage with the product. They can track this with analytics software (e.g., Mixpanel, Heap).
- Gathering user feedback – This is how product marketers can perform the important role of being the customer’s advocate. Knowing which remarks to prioritize and which to ignore is an art in itself. But it can lead to dramatic improvements within the product.
- Feature launches – Product marketers devise communication and coordinate feature launches using various marketing channels.
That’s about it when it comes to basic theory on product marketing and a product marketer’s role. Let’s see some examples of how all these can be put into practice.
We’ve said it many times before, and we’ll say it again: The single best advice we can give on product marketing (or marketing in general) is to invest in your product.
Make your product so good that people will be willing to recommend it to others. Make sure you have achieved product-market fit and never stop improving product satisfaction. It will make your job as a marketer a lot easier. Otherwise, don’t be surprised that none of your marketing efforts work.
The examples of product marketing tactics listed below have worked for us only because we’ve made sure Ahrefs lives up to its promise.
1. Blogging with product-led content
Here is a simple chart that perfectly illustrates our philosophy of doing content marketing:
It’s called creating product-led content, and it works like this: prioritize topics that score at least “1” on the business potential (BP) scale. In other words, the BP scale expresses our ability to illustrate the features and benefits of Ahrefs (our product).
In case you don’t know, Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset that helps marketers rank higher on search engines and get more traffic—even if they’re just starting out with SEO.
So as you can probably tell from our blog, we focus on SEO-related topics and more general marketing topics where we can showcase our product or explain how we approach a solution to a given marketing problem.
So, in practice, we do keyword research to identify topics we want to cover. In this process, business potential helps us sift through thousands of ideas to find ones that can help us do product marketing effectively.
Here’s an example. To show how people can uncover organic keywords otherwise hidden in Google Analytics, we’ve featured Ahrefs Webmaster Tools as one of the solutions.
This way, people searching for the solution in search engines can find our article and, hence, our product. This kind of content drives both product demand and product adoption; it generates traffic to our website and shows people how to use the product.
We use the same tactic in video content creation. Here’s the same principle but in the context of a different topic and a different part of our product offer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taU9P98zfjk
2. Product feature launches
We’re constantly working on making our product better than before. This means launching new features and data updates regularly.
In this area of our product marketing, we try to make sure our announcements are as visible as they can be. In order to do that, we communicate the product through various channels:
- Product blog
- Social media
- Email newsletter
- Digital advertising
- Facebook Insider group (exclusive for our customers)
- PR (for bigger announcements)
- Inside the product (example below)
For example, with the new keyword data update, our users can rest assured they’re looking at the biggest U.S. keyword data in the industry. Knowing this will help them make more confident SEO decisions. This information is great, and we added it in a big banner that is hard to overlook.
As we communicate with our target audience through so many channels using tailored messaging, we also need to coordinate tasks appropriately with multiple team members. And so each product update becomes more or less a product marketing campaign on its own.
Naturally, launching new features requires some internal communication too. We have a Slack channel for each newly introduced feature or update. This way, we keep everybody informed and provide a place to discuss new releases.
3. Community engagement
Some products gather a community around them. When that happens, brands need to take part in the conversation—whether through a community manager, product marketer, social media manager, or some other role—because that’s also an area of product marketing.
The goal here can be driving product demand:
Or driving product adoption:
Or just answering a question:
Pretty simple methodology. For every keyword in the database we see a page ranking for, we take the search volume and estimated CTR data to calculate the traffic coming from that term. It typically undercounts because we may not have some really long tail or unpopular terms.
— Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) January 6, 2022
All these are examples of product marketing done within a community. Communities like these are often self-sustaining but shouldn’t be left alone.
Product marketing’s role in this scope is to make sure the community gets accurate information and is aware of new developments relating to the product.
As a “by-product” of that, people get better at using the product. Hence, they’ll likely use it more and will be more likely to recommend it to others.
4. User onboarding
User onboarding (aka product onboarding) is a stage within the product adoption process. It’s when a user is actively introduced to the features of the product. It’s an important stage of the process.
This is because the messaging that made the user sign up for the product won’t be enough to make them know how to use the product. And only users who know how to use the product (but not necessarily all of its features) can become satisfied customers.
User onboarding typically refers to the first steps users take “inside” the product—a sort of “showing the user around.”
For product adoption to be successful, users need to understand the value of the product as soon as possible.
So the goal of the product marketer is to get users to the so-called “aha-moment” quickly and smoothly.
A tried and tested technique of user onboarding is to send automated email workflows, which are triggered immediately after the user signs up for the product.
There are different “styles” of doing this. We try to keep it short with only three messages and include the most important information inside the first.
An excerpt from our “welcome” email.
This email above shows the user that we’ve got their back and have prepared more than enough educational materials to show them how they can become successful, thanks to our product.
Since our product can be quite intimidating to newcomers, we also include contextual help in the form of tooltips. These tooltips explain how to use the different reports and the meanings of the metrics inside them.
5. Product education
Beyond user onboarding, we have “regular” product education and support. For us, it’s a stage where product adoption blends with generating demand because nearly all of our content is product-led content.
This means the same materials used for user education in one channel can be, at the same time, the materials that drive visitors to us through organic search.
For example, a paying customer looks for a step-by-step tutorial on how to build links to their site and finds this article on our blog. But another person, who is not our customer, accesses the same article through a search engine like Google.
Our guide to link building for SEO drives an estimated 2.2K organic visits per month. Data via Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.
This brings us to our knowledge base, another outcome of product marketing. Knowledge bases are so popular that they don’t need a special introduction. A knowledge base is a place where we aim to maximize product adoption as other companies do.
On a side note, it’s likely no product-led content marketing can substitute the good ol’ knowledge base.
Did someone say historical SERPs in Ahrefs? Sure, here’s how.
That said, product education for a set of tools like Ahrefs requires something more than letting users discover educational content through search. It needs an organized curriculum. This is why we built the Ahrefs Academy. It’s packed with helpful video tutorials and is completely free of charge.
One of the courses from the Ahrefs Academy. Everybody can learn how to use Ahrefs in a step-by-step, self-paced course.
6. Gathering user feedback
No matter how visionary your product is, user feedback is the key to building superior products. In fact, there is a popular notion that you should ship your product fast (even if it’s not perfect) just to learn if you’ve got a product that shows enough potential (see value hypothesis).
At Ahrefs, we gather feedback on our product in three ways:
- An always-on customer feedback management platform
- Agile, bite-sized surveys
- Interviews with customers (sporadically)
Let’s take a quick look at the first two methods.
For the first method, we use Canny. It’s an open platform that lets users share their ideas on improving Ahrefs, comment on those ideas, and vote on them. So not only can we learn about others’ ideas, but we can also know how many people share those views.
For the second method, we usually ask our community at Ahrefs Insider. Unlike Canny, this is a group (currently on Facebook) available to only paying users. We get important feedback through that channel, and we do listen to it:
On top of that, every two years (on the same day), we ask this question openly on Reddit:
7. Homepage design
Last but not least, let’s look at Ahrefs’ product messaging on the homepage. Creating a homepage that shapes brand and product communication is an art and science. It’s supposed to educate, entertain, and convert at the same time. And it’s also a part of a product marketer’s job.
Let me give the floor to Ahrefs CMO Tim Soulo, who made a video to explain how we created Ahrefs’ current homepage. Among other things, you’re going to learn:
- Why we expanded our communication to the “problem-aware” audience.
- How we decided to explain Ahrefs to newcomers.
- Why extending the customer journey on purpose is sometimes a good idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_GE_Hkx40U
Final thoughts
Honestly, it’s quite odd that product marketing creates so much confusion. After all, marketing a product can’t be done without product marketing. It even sounds quite self-explanatory. If you’re doing a good job at marketing, you’re probably also doing a good job at product marketing.
I have a feeling that some 30 years ago, product marketing would be called just “marketing.” It’s just that in recent years this set of marketing activities has been extracted from a bigger set and given an identity of its own. And it’s no wonder. Marketing has been burgeoning with specializations for years.
Does every marketing team need a product marketer? Sooner or later, probably yes. But does every marketing team need product marketing? Definitely.
Got questions or comments? Ping me on Twitter.
SEO
OpenAI Expected to Integrate Real-Time Data In ChatGPT
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, dispelled rumors that a new search engine would be announced on Monday, May 13. Recent deals have raised the expectation that OpenAI will announce the integration of real-time content from English, Spanish, and French publications into ChatGPT, complete with links to the original sources.
OpenAI Search Is Not Happening
Many competing search engines have tried and failed to challenge Google as the leading search engine. A new wave of hybrid generative AI search engines is currently trying to knock Google from the top spot with arguably very little success.
Sam Altman is on record saying that creating a search engine to compete against Google is not a viable approach. He suggested that technological disruption was the way to replace Google by changing the search paradigm altogether. The speculation that Altman is going to announce a me-too search engine on Monday never made sense given his recent history of dismissing the concept as a non-starter.
So perhaps it’s not a surprise that he recently ended the speculation by explicitly saying that he will not be announcing a search engine on Monday.
He tweeted:
“not gpt-5, not a search engine, but we’ve been hard at work on some new stuff we think people will love! feels like magic to me.”
“New Stuff” May Be Iterative Improvement
It’s quite likely that what’s going to be announced is iterative which means it improves ChatGPT but not replaces it. This fits into how Altman recently expressed his approach with ChatGPT.
He remarked:
“And it does kind of suck to ship a product that you’re embarrassed about, but it’s much better than the alternative. And in this case in particular, where I think we really owe it to society to deploy iteratively.
There could totally be things in the future that would change where we think iterative deployment isn’t such a good strategy, but it does feel like the current best approach that we have and I think we’ve gained a lot from from doing this and… hopefully the larger world has gained something too.”
Improving ChatGPT iteratively is Sam Altman’s preference and recent clues point to what those changes may be.
Recent Deals Contain Clues
OpenAI has been making deals with news media and User Generated Content publishers since December 2023. Mainstream media has reported these deals as being about licensing content for training large language models. But they overlooked a a key detail that we reported on last month which is that these deals give OpenAI access to real-time information that they stated will be used to give attribution to that real-time data in the form of links.
That means that ChatGPT users will gain the ability to access real-time news and to use that information creatively within ChatGPT.
Dotdash Meredith Deal
Dotdash Meredith (DDM) is the publisher of big brand publications such as Better Homes & Gardens, FOOD & WINE, InStyle, Investopedia, and People magazine. The deal that was announced goes way beyond using the content as training data. The deal is explicitly about surfacing the Dotdash Meredith content itself in ChatGPT.
The announcement stated:
“As part of the agreement, OpenAI will display content and links attributed to DDM in relevant ChatGPT responses. …This deal is a testament to the great work OpenAI is doing on both fronts to partner with creators and publishers and ensure a healthy Internet for the future.
Over 200 million Americans each month trust our content to help them make decisions, solve problems, find inspiration, and live fuller lives. This partnership delivers the best, most relevant content right to the heart of ChatGPT.”
A statement from OpenAI gives credibility to the speculation that OpenAI intends to directly show licensed third-party content as part of ChatGPT answers.
OpenAI explained:
“We’re thrilled to partner with Dotdash Meredith to bring its trusted brands to ChatGPT and to explore new approaches in advancing the publishing and marketing industries.”
Something that DDM also gets out of this deal is that OpenAI will enhance DDM’s in-house ad targeting in order show more tightly focused contextual advertising.
Le Monde And Prisa Media Deals
In March 2024 OpenAI announced a deal with two global media companies, Le Monde and Prisa Media. Le Monde is a French news publication and Prisa Media is a Spanish language multimedia company. The interesting aspects of these two deals is that it gives OpenAI access to real-time data in French and Spanish.
Prisa Media is a global Spanish language media company based in Madrid, Spain that is comprised of magazines, newspapers, podcasts, radio stations, and television networks. It’s reach extends from Spain to America. American media companies include publications in the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama. That is a massive amount of real-time information in addition to a massive audience of millions.
OpenAI explicitly announced that the purpose of this deal was to bring this content directly to ChatGPT users.
The announcement explained:
“We are continually making improvements to ChatGPT and are supporting the essential role of the news industry in delivering real-time, authoritative information to users. …Our partnerships will enable ChatGPT users to engage with Le Monde and Prisa Media’s high-quality content on recent events in ChatGPT, and their content will also contribute to the training of our models.”
That deal is not just about training data. It’s about bringing current events data to ChatGPT users.
The announcement elaborated in more detail:
“…our goal is to enable ChatGPT users around the world to connect with the news in new ways that are interactive and insightful.”
As noted in our April 30th article that revealed that OpenAI will show links in ChatGPT, OpenAI intends to show third party content with links to that content.
OpenAI commented on the purpose of the Le Monde and Prisa Media partnership:
“Over the coming months, ChatGPT users will be able to interact with relevant news content from these publishers through select summaries with attribution and enhanced links to the original articles, giving users the ability to access additional information or related articles from their news sites.”
There are additional deals with other groups like The Financial Times which also stress that this deal will result in a new ChatGPT feature that will allow users to interact with real-time news and current events .
OpenAI’s Monday May 13 Announcement
There are many clues that the announcement on Monday will be that ChatGPT users will gain the ability to interact with content about current events. This fits into the terms of recent deals with news media organizations. There may be other features announced as well but this part is something that there are many clues pointing to.
Watch Altman’s interview at Stanford University
Featured Image by Shutterstock/photosince
SEO
Google’s Strategies For Dealing With Content Decay
In the latest episode of the Search Off The Record podcast, Google Search Relations team members John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman did a deep dive into dealing with “content decay” on websites.
Outdated content is a natural issue all sites face over time, and Google has outlined strategies beyond just deleting old pages.
While removing stale content is sometimes necessary, Google recommends taking an intentional, format-specific approach to tackling content decay.
Archiving vs. Transitional Guides
Google advises against immediately removing content that becomes obsolete, like materials referencing discontinued products or services.
Removing content too soon could confuse readers and lead to a poor experience, Sassman explains:
“So, if I’m trying to find out like what happened, I almost need that first thing to know. Like, “What happened to you?” And, otherwise, it feels almost like an error. Like, “Did I click a wrong link or they redirect to the wrong thing?””
Sassman says you can avoid confusion by providing transitional “explainer” pages during deprecation periods.
A temporary transition guide informs readers of the outdated content while steering them toward updated resources.
Sassman continues:
“That could be like an intermediary step where maybe you don’t do that forever, but you do it during the transition period where, for like six months, you have them go funnel them to the explanation, and then after that, all right, call it a day. Like enough people know about it. Enough time has passed. We can just redirect right to the thing and people aren’t as confused anymore.”
When To Update Vs. When To Write New Content
For reference guides and content that provide authoritative overviews, Google suggests updating information to maintain accuracy and relevance.
However, for archival purposes, major updates may warrant creating a new piece instead of editing the original.
Sassman explains:
“I still want to retain the original piece of content as it was, in case we need to look back or refer to it, and to change it or rehabilitate it into a new thing would almost be worth republishing as a new blog post if we had that much additional things to say about it.”
Remove Potentially Harmful Content
Google recommends removing pages in cases where the outdated information is potentially harmful.
Sassman says she arrived at this conclusion when deciding what to do with a guide involving obsolete structured data:
“I think something that we deleted recently was the “How to Structure Data” documentation page, which I thought we should just get rid of it… it almost felt like that’s going to be more confusing to leave it up for a period of time.
And actually it would be negative if people are still adding markup, thinking they’re going to get something. So what we ended up doing was just delete the page and redirect to the changelog entry so that, if people clicked “How To Structure Data” still, if there was a link somewhere, they could still find out what happened to that feature.”
Internal Auditing Processes
To keep your content current, Google advises implementing a system for auditing aging content and flagging it for review.
Sassman says she sets automated alerts for pages that haven’t been checked in set periods:
“Oh, so we have a little robot to come and remind us, “Hey, you should come investigate this documentation page. It’s been x amount of time. Please come and look at it again to make sure that all of your links are still up to date, that it’s still fresh.””
Context Is Key
Google’s tips for dealing with content decay center around understanding the context of outdated materials.
You want to prevent visitors from stumbling across obsolete pages without clarity.
Additional Google-recommended tactics include:
- Prominent banners or notices clarifying a page’s dated nature
- Listing original publish dates
- Providing inline annotations explaining how older references or screenshots may be obsolete
How This Can Help You
Following Google’s recommendations for tackling content decay can benefit you in several ways:
- Improved user experience: By providing clear explanations, transition guides, and redirects, you can ensure that visitors don’t encounter confusing or broken pages.
- Maintained trust and credibility: Removing potentially harmful or inaccurate content and keeping your information up-to-date demonstrates your commitment to providing reliable and trustworthy resources.
- Better SEO: Regularly auditing and updating your pages can benefit your website’s search rankings and visibility.
- Archival purposes: By creating new content instead of editing older pieces, you can maintain a historical record of your website’s evolution.
- Streamlined content management: Implementing internal auditing processes makes it easier to identify and address outdated or problematic pages.
By proactively tackling content decay, you can keep your website a valuable resource, improve SEO, and maintain an organized content library.
Listen to the full episode of Google’s podcast below:
Featured Image: Stokkete/Shutterstock
SEO
25 Snapchat Statistics & Facts For 2024
Snapchat, known for its ephemeral content, innovative augmented reality (AR) features, and fiercely loyal user base, is a vital player in the social media landscape.
While it sometimes flies under the radar – as other platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram tend to dominate the cultural conversation – Snapchat is an incredibly powerful marketing tool that holds a unique place in the hearts and minds of its users.
In this article, we’ll explore what you need to know about Snapchat, with insights that shed light on what audiences think of the app and where its strengths lie.
From user growth trends to advertising effectiveness, let’s look at the state of Snapchat right now.
What Is Snapchat?
Snapchat is a social media app that allows users to share photos and videos with friends and followers online.
Unlike other social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok – where much of the content is stored permanently – Snapchat prioritizes ephemeral content only.
Once viewed, Snapchat content disappears, which adds a layer of spontaneity and privacy to digital interactions.
Snapchat leverages the power of augmented reality to entertain its audience by creating interactive and immersive experiences through features like AR lenses.
Users can also explore a variety of stickers, drawing tools, and emojis to add a personal touch to everything they post.
What started as a small collection of tools in 2011 has now expanded to a massive library of innovative features, such as a personalized 3D Snap Map, gesture recognition, audio recommendations for lenses, generative AI capabilities, and much more.
Creating an account on Snapchat is easy. Simply download the app on Google Play or the App Store. Install it on your device, and you’re ready!
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Screenshot from Google Play, December 2023
25 Surprising Facts You Didn’t Know About Snapchat
Let’s dive in!
1. Snapchat Has 406 Million Daily Active Users
That number, released by the company in October 2023, represents an increase of 43 million year-over-year – a 12% increase.
Here’s a chart from Statista showing Snapchat’s user growth from 2014 to 2023:
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Screenshot from Statista.com, December 2023
And with 750 million monthly active users (MAUs), Snapchat is the fifth-biggest social media network in the world.
2. Users 18-24 Years Old Account For The Biggest Chunk Of Snapchat’s Audience
According to Snapchat’s own advertising data, the platform has 243.5 million users aged 18 to 24 – representing 38.6% of its total ad audience.
The second largest group of users are between the ages of 25 and 34, followed by 13-17-year-olds – proving that Snapchat is reaching young people around the world.
On the flip side, the platform isn’t huge with older users; people aged 50 and over account for only 3.8% of Snapchat’s total ad audience.
As a marketer, you can take a hint on what your campaign should focus on if you use Snapchat. As Snapchat’s own report puts it:
“From its inception, Snapchat has inherently created a frictionless space where Gen Z creatives can experiment with their identities, yet not have to feel like they’re ‘on brand’ in communicating to their close friend groups.”
3. Snapchat Reaches 90% Of The 13 To 24-Year-Old Population
It also reaches 75% of people between the ages of 13 and 34 in over 25 countries, according to Snapchat’s estimates.
In the US, 59% of American teenagers (between the ages of 13 and 17) report using Snapchat. This number amounts to roughly six in 10 US teens.
4. Snapchat Users Open The App Nearly 40 Times A Day
According to the company, this means people interact with their social circles on Snapchat more than any other social network.
In the US, about half of teenagers (51%) report using Snapchat at least once a day – making it slightly more popular than Instagram, but not quite as popular as YouTube or TikTok.
5. Taco Bell Paid $75,000 For 24 Hours Of The Taco Filter/Ad
To boost sales, Taco Bell launched the taco filter on Snapchat. Here’s what it looked like.
Today only: turn yourself into a taco using our @Snapchat lens. Because Cinco de Mayo. pic.twitter.com/P4KwLdFNFZ
— Taco Bell (@tacobell) May 5, 2016
The filter is humorous, relevant, and unique. Users adored it, and it got 224 million views.
That’s great, considering Taco Bell paid $75,000 for the ad – which actually proved to be a great investment for the exposure the brand received.
6. More Than Half (50.6%) Of Snapchat Users Are Female
In contrast, 48.7% of the platform’s global users are male.
While there is not a huge discrepancy between the demographics here, it’s helpful information for any marketers looking to put together Snapchat campaigns.
7. Snapchat Is The No. 1 App People Use To Share What They Bought
Is your brand looking to reach young social media users around the world? Snapchat could be the perfect platform for you.
People are 45% more likely to recommend brands to friends on Snapchat compared to other platforms.
They’re also 2X more likely to post about a gift after receiving it – making Snapchat a powerful tool for influencer marketing and brand partnerships.
8. Snapchat Pioneered Vertical Video Ads
Once a novelty in the social media industry, vertical video ads have become one of the most popular ways to advertise on social media and reach global audiences.
What are vertical video ads? It’s self-explanatory: They’re ads that can be viewed with your phone held vertically. The ad format is optimized for how we use our mobile devices and designed to create a non-disruptive experience for users.
You’ve definitely seen countless video ads by now, but did you know Snapchat pioneered them?
9. You Can Follow Rock Star Business Experts On Snapchat
Who knew Snapchat could be a powerful business tool? Here are the top three experts you should follow right now:
10. More Than 250 Million Snapchatters Engage With AR Every Day, On Average
Snapchat was the first social media app to really prioritize the development of AR features, and it’s paid off.
Over 70% of users engage with AR on the first day that they download the app – and, to date, there have been more than 3 million lenses launched on Snapchat.
11. People Are 34% More Likely To Purchase Products They See Advertised On Snapchat
When compared to watching the same ad on other social media platform, Snapchat proves to be an effective way to reach and convert.
12. Snapchat Is The King Of Ephemeral Content Marketing
Ephemeral content marketing uses video, photos, and media that are only accessible for a limited time.
Here are three reasons it works:
- It creates a sense of urgency.
- It appeals to buyers who don’t want to feel “sold.”
- It’s more personalized than traditional sales funnel marketing.
Guess who’s one of the kings of ephemeral content marketing? That’s right: Snapchat.
Consider that if it weren’t for Snapchat, Instagram Stories would likely not exist right now.
13. More Than 5 Million People Subscribe To Snapchat+
Snapchat+ is the platform’s paid subscription service that gives users access to exclusive and pre-release features on the platform.
Subscribers also receive a range of other perks, including options to customize their app experience and the ability to see how many times their content has been rewatched.
The fact that so many millions of users are willing to pay for special access and features to Snapchat should be a sign to brands and marketers everywhere that the platform has a strong pull with its audience.
Beyond that, the fact that Snapchat+ drew 5 million subscribers within just a year or so of launching is impressive on its own.
14. Snapchat Reaches Nearly Half Of US Smartphone Users
According to Statista, approximately 309 million American adults use smartphones today.
Snapchat’s ability to reach such a considerable portion of US smartphone users is notable.
15. Snapchat Users Spend An Average Of 19 Minutes Per Day On The App
That’s 19 minutes brands can use to connect with people, grow brand awareness, and convey their message.
16. Snapchat’s Original Name Was Picaboo
In fact, Snapchat did run as Picaboo for about a year.
17. Snapchat Was Created After 34 Failures
Snapchat creators Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Frank Reginald Brown worked on the Snapchat project while they were studying at Stanford University.
After 34 failures, they finally developed the app as we know it today.
18. Snapchat’s Creators Had A Major Falling-Out Before The App Was Released
Frank Reginald Brown was ousted from the Snapchat project by his friends.
Although no one knows the real story, Brown claims Spiegel and Murphy changed the server passwords and ceased communication with him a month before Snapchat was launched.
19. Snapchat Downloads Doubled After The Launch Of The Toddler & Gender Swap Filters
Users downloaded Snapchat 41.5 million times in a month after the release of these filters!
20. Mark Zuckerberg Tried To Buy Snapchat
Snapchat’s owners refused to sell Snapchat to Zuckerberg (even though the offer went as high as $3 billion!).
21. Snapchat’s Mascot Is Called Ghostface Chillah
The mascot was inspired by Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang Clan – and when you consider that the app was once called “Picaboo,” the ghost logo makes more sense.
Apparently, Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel has said that he developed the mascot himself and chose a ghost based on the ephemeral nature of Snapchat content.
22. Facebook And Instagram Borrowed Ephemeral Content From Snapchat
As we mentioned above, we have Snapchat to thank for Facebook and Instagram Stories, which have since become integral to the social media experience.
Snapchat also pioneered the use of AR filters, which were adopted by Instagram and paved the way for the filters that dominate the world of TikTok today.
23. 75% Of Gen Z And Millennials Say Snapchat Is The No. 1 Platform For Sharing Real-Life Experiences
Social media is all about authentic moments and human connection – and social media marketing is no different.
With such a large number of young people preferring Snapchat over other platforms for sharing their life experiences, marketers should follow suit.
Find ways to share behind-the-scenes moments with your team and company, and emphasize the humans behind the brand.
24. Snapchat Users Have Over $4.4 Trillion In Global Spending Power
That’s nothing to sneeze at.
25. In 2022, Snapchat Generated $4.6 Billion In Revenue
It is currently valued at over $20 billion.
Looking Ahead With Snapchat
Snapchat’s ephemeral content, intimacy, and spontaneity are strong points for everyday users, content creators, and businesses alike.
Marketers should keep a keen eye on emerging trends within the platform, such as new AR advancements and evolving user demographics.
Those looking to reach younger audiences or show an authentic, human side of their brand should consider wading into the waters of Snapchat.
By harnessing the power of ephemeral content and engaging features, brands can effectively use Snapchat to grow their brand awareness, engage with audiences on a more personal level, and stay relevant in the fast-paced world of digital marketing.
More resources:
Featured Image: Trismegist san/Shutterstock
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