Snapchat is super simple to use and can be a great way for businesses to give people an inside look into their company. So, when I read that Snapchat recently released a new feature to allow businesses to create on-demand geofilters, I was super excited to jump on the bandwagon.
A Snapchat Geofilter is basically a stamp put on your photos based on your location. See some examples below:
A client of mine, U See It, has a college tour coming up this week, so I immediately got to work to set up a filter for the tour. I designed the filter (see images below), and then I got to work submitting it to snapchat for their approval process.
Snapchat's blog said prices for on-demand geofilters start at $5, and the pricing is based on the duration and the geo-fence. I first started out with making the filter available at the University of Florida Campus on the 24th of March, and immediately I encountered some issues with the on-demand filters:
PROBLEM 1: THE GEO-FENCE HAS TO BE UNDER 5,000,000 SQUARE FEET.
This is great for a small event in one location, but the UF Campus is much larger than that. I had to settle for making the filter only available at the stadium/union.
PROBLEM 2: IT WAS GOING TO COST OVER $3,000 TO MAKE THE FILTER AVAILABLE FOR ONLY 3 HOURS
Snapchat's blog says pricing for on-demand filters starts at $5. I figured the pricing would vary, but I, in no way, thought it would cost thousands of dollars to make the geo-filter available on one campus for 3 hours!
Long story short, we are not going to be using on-demand GeoFilters from Snapchat for the upcoming U See It tour. I am upset that I couldn't deliver this awesome brand awareness product to my client for his upcoming tour, so I started to do some digging, and I discovered another problem that Marketing Land encountered when using an on-demand filter.
PROBLEM 3: THE GEO-FENCE WAS COLLIDING WITH ANOTHER EVENT AND THEREFORE THEY COULDN'T USE THEIR FILTER.
This means even if you create a filter and get it approved it may still not be available during your event!
I am disappointed with my experience attempting to use Geofilters so far! I do plan on using GeoFilters in the future for some other clients, and hopefully we can get somewhere in the realm of the $5 pricing that Snapchat mentioned when they released this feature.
Related Posts
Use Hashtags!
You've seen hashtags at this point, but that doesn't mean that you know how to use them properly for your marketing. So I wanted to take a second to explain it for you!
Forming Habits
Most people don't properly use social media for their business because they feel too overwhelmed to make it a part of their routine.
Planning Ahead
I'm getting ready to head to a seminar in Vegas this week, and I've been working to make sure I can stay on track for my social media and for the social media accounts that I manage as well.