I’ve heard it said plenty of times, and it always sounds something like: “If only I could go back to the days when AdWords were 5c CPC and Facebook posts got 80% organic reach, things were so much easier then”. Right now, we can (but only for a moment).

Crazy-efficient ad numbers and huge social numbers are possible in the early days of branded social – when a network is just emerging from its teens-only days and stretching its legs as a grown-up channel. It’s in those early days that most advertisers still haven’t made a strong shift and the audience is highly engaged, so there’s a ton of attention without a lot of competition for the content space.

It’s all possible right now on Snapchat.

We just introduced custom, on-demand Snapchat Geofilters for any kind of event. Click to find out how you can get your own.

There are still people out there who are treating Snaps like a kids’ toy, which I find incredible. Remember when Facebook was “only for college kids” and Instagram was “just pictures of peoples’ lunches”? I get it, it’s inconvenient to always have to pay attention to the next thing, and to have to re-develop content plans when the existing ones are just starting to feel comfortable. But at some point I’d think that they’d get tired of being left behind.

That’s where we are right now with Snapchat. We last weekend we ran a test for a client: 5 nights of sponsored geofilters with five different designs. Here’s what happened:

That works out to an average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of $4.55 and an average CPE (cost per engagement) of $0.26.

Anyone buying media on social channels right now will tell you that those numbers are bananas.

But that’s not the best part. The best part is that we’re showing up in an unexpected place, where attention is ultra-high right now, so those impressions are not similar to the type of banner-like ads that we scroll by thousands of times per day. People are paying attention.

Even better, when we talk about CPE on Facebook, it’s Likes and Comments. On Snapchat we’re talking about people telling our story to their friends organically. Does it create direct conversions? Probably not, but damn is that a fantastic way to show up for people in an authentic way.

Here are a few chunks of knowledge that we’ve picked up along the way for anyone thinking about trying a geofilter for her/himself:

  1. Make it fun
    The more fun that it is, the more likely people are to use it. Throw in a goofy hat that people can selfie, a in illustrated caricature in the footer, get creative.
  2. 1 message only
    This is true of all adverting, but especially in geofilters: Respect the micro-attention spans. “Welcome to____” or “Home of the ____” are as much copy as you should be using. The best filters communicate through the art and stick to a single noun for the copy.
  3. Consider the story
    “Why would anyone want to share this?” If you don’t have a solid answer, then back to the drawing board
  4. Make sure that you submit at least 24hrs in advance
    The submit page tells you that they’ll review and place your ad within 1 business day, and in every case so far they’ve been even more responsive than that. The customer service is awesome, but small details can be missed that require you to re-submit and restart the process. If it’s important that the filter goes up at a certain time, then definitely push them the ad at least 3 days in advance to be sure.

Want to try it out but don’t have a professional graphic designer and/or media buyer sitting next to you? I do, so I figured that I would spread the love:

Get Your Own Custom Snapchat Geofilter