The Best Snapchat Marketing Strategies in 2025

Snapchat has grown beyond being the star of ephemeral content (the disappearing “Snaps”).

The social platform’s great features and steadily growing user base have made it a marketing goldmine for brands.

Snapchat has around 453 million daily active users, with the biggest percentage of users (62.1%) being young people between 18 and 34 years old. These young people have rapidly growing spending power, and at least 85% of their purchasing choices are influenced by social media.

Therefore, if you are not embracing Snapchat marketing, you are missing out on successfully reaching these audiences with Snapchat’s signature fun, creative, and immersive content. But how do you ensure your Snapchat marketing content stands out in users’ crowded feeds? This article will explore five key strategies you should follow.

Create short how-to videos

To effectively implement Snapchat marketing, your content must keep up with Snapchat’s fast pace. It should not only capture and retain users’ attention but also provide clear value in seconds. Short how-to videos are one of the most effective ways to do this.

How-to content allows you to engage users through informative content that builds brand credibility and offers real value to viewers. It is also a powerful way to showcase products in action without it coming off as overly promotional.

Your how-to videos can offer quick tutorials, step-by-step guides, and creative hacks around your products. For instance, a beauty brand can create quick tutorials showing how to use products effectively or how to achieve certain results, as shown in the Beauty Fix example below.

But what if your brand only offers services?

In this case, you can create short videos with useful tips and hacks on topics relevant to your niche. For instance, if you provide social media marketing services, you can offer unique insights on topics with high virality potential, like how to trigger more organic growth if you buy Instagram followers.

Use Snapchat’s native editing tools, such as filters, overlay text, music, voice effects, stickers, and AR lenses, to make your video content more interactive. It’s also important to include a clear CTA that encourages immediate action.

You can use the Swipe-up feature or a clickable CTA that leads to a page with more information or a product page where users can easily add a featured product to their shopping carts.

Snapchat users have various types of content at their disposal and can be a bit “swipe-happy”. This means you only have a few seconds to get your target audience’s attention.

So, make sure to include a strong hook in those first seconds to stop the user in their ‘scrolling tracks’.

Take advantage of user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) allows real customers to share their unique experiences with your products. This type of content can humanize your brand and make it feel more relatable. It also provides indisputable social proof to potential customers, which helps to build trust, boost engagement, and ultimately drive customer loyalty.

UGC can take many forms. It could be a happy customer sharing a snap of your product in action, a fan recreating one of your how-to videos, an unboxing video, or someone posting a funny video with your branded lenses.

The key to growing your UGC collection is to actively encourage your fans to keep creating organic content around your brand. Create engaging Snapchat challenges, run giveaways, and ask your audience to share their snaps using a branded hashtag, custom filters, and branded lenses. That’s what brands like Nike do.

Also, monitor your branded hashtags and AR lenses. You can then engage with the creators in their comments or repost the Snapchat content on your account. This will show your loyal customer base that you recognize and appreciate their effort, encouraging them to keep creating more authentic UGC.

Get familiar with new Snapchat features

To grow your brand successfully through Snapchat marketing and retain your competitive edge, you must stay on top of the newest features and trends. The more familiar you are with the latest tools, the easier it will be to run creative Snapchat marketing campaigns that stand out.

Snapchat lenses remain one of the platform’s most powerful features. The app continues to roll out AI-powered Lenses that can create various effects, like generating movie-poster-style images from selfies or applying artistic Snapchat filters.

For Snapchat Plus subscribers, advanced AI Lenses can transform Snaps into AI-generated videos with themes like “Raccoon,” “Fox,” and “Spring Flowers,” as shown below.

Your brand can also enjoy Snapchat’s new Sponsored AI Lenses. This feature uses Snapchat’s proprietary Generative AI technology to let users visualize themselves in creative and engaging scenarios related to a brand. The tool can lead to higher engagement and virality.

Brands like Uber and Tinder are some early adopters of Sponsored AI Lenses.

Besides the lenses, you have other key features like My AI chatbot, an AI-powered conversational tool integrated directly into Snapchat. Recent updates have given the tool more contextual awareness and better problem-solving skills. It can now translate menus in different languages, identify plants, and interpret traffic signs.

Other popular features include the stickers, Bitmoji wardrobe options and reactions, Snap Modes, and custom Snapchat themes.

Localize your promotions

While global campaigns have their own space on Snapchat, localized promotions are ideal if you are targeting audiences in specific geographic areas. Localized promotions will feel personal and relevant to your target users, and are therefore more likely to drive stronger engagement and higher conversion rates.

Snapchat’s location-based tools make it easy for you to reach users with hyper-relevant content tied to their geography, culture, or real-time events.

For example, geofilters and location-based AR lenses let you create content that only appears in specific cities or neighborhoods. These lenses are ideal if you are hosting special events, offering exclusive local discounts, or have a store opening.

Snapchat also offers location-based targeting, which lets you tailor your marketing ads by region. This feature allows you to show different products, services, or promos depending on where your audience lives.

You can define your target audience segments by including parameters like countries, regions, cities, postal codes, and even precise latitude and longitude coordinates.

In addition, Snapchat recently expanded its location targeting to include users who live, work, or have recently been in a selected area. This means your brand can reach more relevant audiences and potential customers whom you would have otherwise left out if you only targeted their static residential locations.

Keep testing and analyzing

Snapchat moves fast! Trends are constantly evolving, audience preferences shift, and the platform rolls out new features frequently. Therefore, keep testing and analyzing your strategies to ensure your Snapchat marketing efforts reach their full potential.

Regularly track your content performance on the Snapchat Ads Manager for paid campaigns and the Audience Insights tool for your brand’s public profile. These tools help you track how the different types of content you share perform, which will help you understand your Snapchat audience better.

Some of the key metrics you should monitor include views, viewers’ completion rate, click-through rates, location and device data, ad engagement, and conversion rate.

Once you know what’s working and what’s not, don’t be afraid to try new approaches and adjust your Snapchat marketing strategy for better results.

Conclusion

Snapchat offers brands a unique opportunity to connect with audiences in a more personal, relaxed, and memorable way.  The key is implementing the best strategies to ensure your brand stands out.

The strategies include creating short how-to video content, using UGC, staying updated on new features, and localizing promotions. Finally, continuously test and optimize your campaigns to align them with the shifting consumer preferences.