4 Ways to Market With Selfies

Selfies—self-snapshots shared online—have become a cultural mainstay (remember Ellen DeGeneres’ “selfie that broke the Internet” at the 2014 Academy Awards?) Now, smart small business owners are learning how to market with selfies to help grow their businesses.

Young adults, in particular, are addicted to selfies. In a Vouchercloud survey reported by MarketWatch, about one-third of adults aged 18 to 30 admit that most of the photos they look at on their phones are of themselves. Sixty-three percent use pictures of themselves as their phone wallpaper.

But what matters most for businesses is that selfies get shared a lot. A whopping 94 percent of respondents say they regularly send selfies to friends and family. In another study, nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of adults admit having used selfies to brag about their purchases. In fact, bragging has led to the rise of the “wealthie,” a selfie where the user poses with luxury-logo shopping bags or high-end products to show off. Between one-third and one-fourth of Millennials have taken a wealthie.

How can you take advantage of the selfie craze to help spread the word about your small business? Here are 4 ideas.

1. Hold contests. It doesn’t have to be a big deal; a weekly drawing for a free meal at your restaurant, $20 gift card to your retail store or ecommerce site, or free manicure at your salon will get people—especially young people—snapping away.
2. Theme it. Tie selfies into a promotion, product or season. Encourage people to take selfies wearing the new summer outfit they bought at your online boutique, showing off their car after your company detailed it or putting together their Halloween costumes.
3. Join in. Post your own selfies on your business’s social media accounts, and get employees to share theirs, too. Encourage customers to comment or post their own selfies.
4. Tie it in. Of course, you want to get the benefit from selfies by tying them in to your company even if customers post them on social media instead of your site—or on their own social accounts instead of yours. Ask customers to use your business’s social media handles and/or hashtags when posting selfies related to your business. You can also create special hashtags for a promotion or event.

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