A year after Instagram launched their near-Snapchat-clone, “Instagram Stories”, it’s proven to be the favorite among marketers.
Business Insider reports, “We have clients proactively asking us to do more on Instagram Stories every week,” said Ben Kunz, SVP of marketing and content at media agency Mediassociates, whose clients include HP, Marriott and Black and Decker among others. “I can’t recall a similar conversation related to Snapchat.”
Ken Sterling of EVP and Marketing Director of Bigspeak Speakers Bureau adds, “We like the idea of sending instantaneous photos and short videos, and the editing and filter capabilities that Snapchat offers, but ultimately we determined that our clients aren’t on Snapchat and that using it as a marketing tool was not worth the ROI. Instagram on the other hand, was another story.”
Many companies are expressing similar sentiments about Snapchat vs Instagram. In the minds of marketers, Snapchat is reverting back the niche audience it was created for: Millennials and Gen Z’ers. Logistically, it makes more sense for a company to double down their marketing efforts on a platform they already have an established presence on. Plus Instagram offers greater functionality and deeper targeting and analytics than Snapchat.
According to Instagram, half of the platform’s business users produced an Instagram Story last month. The platform also cites encouragingly that “one in five organic stories from businesses get a direct message.”
While Snapchat may have introduced the idea of immediate story sharing on social media, Instagram has perfected it. Instagram may have some advantages though. They’ve been able to watch Snapchat to what works and what doesn’t work in social story sharing. Not to mention, Instagram has the support from Facebook’s massive infrastructure and data.
In the battle of the social media ‘Stories’ Instagram emerges as the clear platform favorite among marketers–at least for the time being. In the world of tech and social media, platform favorites can quickly. So, maybe we shouldn’t count Snapchat entirely out just yet.
