A new partnership between Snapchat, the third most popular social media platform in the world, and Foursquare could prove beneficial to pizza restaurants looking to build their brand with millennials and their kid siblings.
Under a new deal, Snapchat advertisers will be able to capitalize on Foursquare’s “Place Shape” data—which maps 87 million places, including businesses, restaurants and bars—to create geofilter campaigns with highly targeted parameters. For example, a pizza chain could create a geofilter for all of its locations or narrow it down to just one store in, say, Houston, Texas. In the past, brands have had to target broader spaces (such as an entire shopping center) or events (a music festival, for example) with Snapchat’s location-based ads.
Geofilters are colorful graphics that overlay photos and video taken by Snapchat users in a certain location. Snapchat regularly creates its own filters, but it also lets businesses and organizations design their own geofilters that Snapchat users can only access in a certain location. (Scroll down to view our Snapchat tutorial with PizzaTV's Jac Bedrossian.)
Pizzeria marketing expert Bruce Irving explains how to get started on Snapchat here.
“Now that Snap [Snapchat’s parent company] has purchased our Places, they’ll be able to give Snapchatters better, more relevant geofilters and allow their advertisers more flexibility and creativity when they purchase geofilters,” writes Mike Harkey, Foursquare’s VP of business Development, in a blog post.
“Consider a surf brand,” Harkey continues. “Now that we’re powering Snapchat geofilters, the company could offer branded geofilters at a chain of surf shops or at every beach in the U.S. Or a soda company may now purchase geofilters across all fast-food and convenience-store locations. This opens up whole new categories of venues for Snap’s database, so Snapchat could offer geofilters pegged to places like parks, farmers’ markets or speakeasies, all based on Foursquare venue shapes and our extensive categorization of places.”
Pizza restaurants can use Snapchat to target a younger clientele. It’s the most popular social media platform for teenagers and trails only Facebook and Instagram in overall popularity. More than 60% of smartphone users between the ages of 13 and 34 communicate with Snapchat, and more than 150 million Snapchatters use it every day. Twenty-eight percent of teens say Snapchat is the most important social network, followed closely by Instagram.
All submitted geofilter designs have to first be vetted and approved by Snapchat, with no set timeline for the review. Designs could include your pizzeria’s logo or slogan, images of a pizza slice or a mascot. When a Snapchat user takes a photo or shoots video at your pizzeria, he or she can swipe on your geofilter before sending it out to friends.
In addition to using geofilters, here are six ways to make Snapchat work for your pizza restaurant:
1. Ask your customers to send you some creative snaps (rated PG, of course) and award free pizza to the most creative one.
2. Use photos and videos to show what life is like behind the scenes at your pizzeria—sort of a “day-in-the-life” series. Show employees making dough in the morning, prepping for the dinner rush and closing shop at the end of the business day, including hitting the lights and saying good night.
3. Ask your delivery drivers to take snaps and post them while they’re delivering pies around town.
4. Attend a local high school sports even and post real-time updates of the score for those customers who couldn’t make it to the game.
5. Use Snapchat snaps to review other businesses in your community in a fun, positive way. Give your fellow business owners some positive word-of-mouth, and ask them to do the same for you.
6. Partner with local businesses on a Snapchat takeover—they take over your Snapchat for one day and you take over theirs.
