Pinterest & Snapchat Offer two Fresh Advertising Platforms for your Brand

We all know that having an active social media presence serves to promote your business and allows you to engage with your customers and prospects. But while Facebook and Twitter are often the two social networks that get the most attention from brands, Pinterest and Snapchat have introduced paid advertising offerings that provide different angles for your business to leverage.

Introducing Pinterest promoted pins

Pinterest is rather unique in that it’s a highly visual social network which allows users to create stunning visual collections (boards). However, Pinterest is often overlooked by brands but why? After all, at the last count Pinterest boasts more than 70 million users. Furthermore, the majority of its user base are women – some 80% in fact.

Therefore, if your business/brand uses a lot of visual content and your target audience are predominantly women, Pinterest could represent a great opportunity for you. Plus, with the announcement of promoted pins, there has never been a better time to get interested in Pinterest or Pinterested! (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Promoted pins are Pinterest’s paid advertising offering and operate on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. They allow you to promote specific pins based on set criteria that you stipulate. For example, you can choose to target certain demographics, specific locations and even different types of devices.

The best part is that you only pay when somebody actually clicks through to your website from your promoted pin. There’s also no need to worry about spiraling advertising costs as you are able to set daily budgets and duration for every campaign.

There are, of course, a number of rules that advertisers must follow, but these are run-of-the-mill and to be expected.

Promoted pins are still in beta and currently only available to select US-based businesses. However, it’s inevitable that they’ll be rolled out across the board in the future and will present another advertising platform for your business utilize.

Snapchat Advertising is upon us

Ephemeral messaging application Snapchat may not seem like a lucrative platform to focus your marketing efforts on, but don’t dismiss it just yet. Especially as, the start-up – which has been valued at $10 billion has now opened up its gates to advertisers.

With some 100 million active monthly users – 71% of who are under 25 – Snapchat presents quite an opportunity for brands who want to get their marketing in front of millenials (that’s generation Y for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term).

The announcement that Snapchat would start rolling out paid ads was made on its blog last week. The company said that US-based users would see an advertisement over the weekend and judging by the online buzz that definitely was the case.

Snapchat wanted to emphasis that its ad offering would not detract from the user experience that people have come to love using its app. Ads will only appear in the Recent Updates section and never in personal communications (chats).

Snapchat’s decision to roll out paid ads shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, they need to justify their huge price tag and the company’s own blog post states that their reason is simply to make money.

However, they further added: “We want to see if we can deliver an experience that’s fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted”. A statement that’s quite ironic considering that the first ad to be displayed was for Ouija – a horror movie by Universal Pictures.

Pinterest’s promoted pins and Snapchat’s paid advertising may not yet be available to UK businesses but they almost certainly will be. Will you be utilizing them?