Necessary Vocabulary:
- geofilter – a geofilter is a Snapchat filter that is targeted to people within a certain location
- geofencing – creating digital bounds around a geographical location that you plan on targetting people within digitally
- filter finding – the process of browsing all available Snapchat filters before posting
On-Demand Geofilters
Towards the end of June this year, Snapchat released ‘On-Demand Geofilters’ allowing users to create sponsored geofilters directly through their app. This incentivized more people to get involved creating geofilters. With about 5 minutes and $5.99 to spend, anybody could make a geofilter. This was mostly geared towards normal users but did end up playing a semi-significant role for marketers as well.
How does it affect marketers?
Great question. For marketing, the go-to method of geofilter creation is the Snapchat website. The site offers a geofilter template that can be used to create a Snapchat filter entirely from scratch on 3rd party programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Since more users have been creating geofilters for non-marketing events, people have been getting more familiar with ‘filter finding‘ (the process of browsing all available Snapchat filters before posting). Since Snapchat charges for Geofilters based on location, date, and duration, and not for a number of times the filter is used – this means you will be able to get more impressions at the same price.
So, Are They Worth It?
The short answer is it depends.
The long answer is that it depends on where you end up after going through my flowchart.
The way that I calculate whether or not Geofilters are in my clients’ best interest is by running it through this custom flowchart:
If you were able to land yourself at the ‘You’re ready to start marketing with your custom Geofilter!’ then yes, custom geofilters are a great marketing tool and definitely worth investing in!