3 Best Practices For Q4 Snapchat Ads

Usually in the shadow of Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat can be a powerful addition to your advertising efforts. We asked Pilothouse’s resident Snapchat Ads expert, Grayson Rudzki, for 3 best practices that you can use to add fuel to your Q4 fire 🔥

Focus On Story Ad Placements

Be sure to test all ad placements, but you’ll likely end up dedicating most resources to the ‘Only User Stories’ ad placement.

While it has a higher cost per swipe up (CPSU), it also has way higher intent. “Most of my daily budgets are story placements,” says Grayson.

They are tragic if done wrong (they're more pricey) so iterate and test lots. To avoid Snapchat Story Ad tragedy, Grayson recommends the following:

• Give your Stories a narrative arc (pun intended)...
• Have one story lead into the next...
• Summarize the key benefit of the video in the caption (so they’re not waiting for the punchline)...
• UGC selfie videos tend to work best...
• Split test tons of tile card copy and images...

Get momentum on these before Q4 and nail down winners.

Spend More Now To Unlock Conversion Events

Unlike Facebook and Instagram, where you can use conversion events right away, Snapchat requires you to ‘warm up’ the pixel, first.

In order to get access to certain bid types (e.g. sign ups, add to carts, purchases), you must be driving at least 50+ attributed conversions over a rolling 7-day period. 

So Grayson recommends allocating more budget to your Snapchat ads now so that you can unlock all your pixel events before Q4. 

(Afterall, the last thing you want is to start a Snapchat campaign one week before Black Friday, and you can’t optimize for purchases 😬)

“You’re not running Snap ads for performance until you have the purchase goal unlocked imo,” Grayson says.

Find out more about Snapchat’s pixel events here.

Use Snapchat To Get Leads. Use Facebook To Close ‘Em.

Snapchat is relatively cheap to build your audience, but it can be costly to convert. Focus on using it to generate leads that you can later convert with email, SMS, and Facebook retargeting. 

Build these lists now. 

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