Snapchat. Facebook & Instagram stories. Live videos.

These are collectively called ephemeral content, rich media which is only available for a short time. It’s gaining in popularity, and for good reason.

As a marketing strategy, ephemeral marketing taps into FOMO, the fear of missing out. It’s meant to cause an immediate reaction from the user or viewer (such as a purchase or sign up, or sharing of the content). This sense of urgency is super effective with the right content.

Other benefits of ephemeral marketing? It increases marketing reach, is easy to create, the “standards” of instant content are lower (images don’t need to be high res, for example), it increases user engagement, it’s popular with millenials, it requires less effort than other content, it’s quick, and it can increase your brand loyalty by allowing your target audience to see the inner workings of your brand or company.

So what works for ephemeral marketing?

• Storytelling.
• Contests or posts encouraging user-generated content (such as their own ads or images).
• Videos.
• A clear call-to-action.
• A clear purpose behind the post.

These strategies are effective regardless of which social media platform you’re using. Stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll explore approaches for Instagram stories.