How to Use Snapchat to Promote Your College (5 Examples)

The younger generations, especially Gen Z, are redefining how they communicate and engage with brands.

Unlike the generations before, these digital natives have grown up with smartphones, social media, and instant messaging connectivity.

Therefore, to reach and connect with them, colleges must adopt marketing strategies that are not only authentic but also resonate with their unique worldview.

This is where Snapchat comes in.

Snapchat is not just a photo and video-sharing app; it’s a platform that encourages creativity and genuine self-expression.

With over 443 million daily active users, Snapchat provides a powerful way for colleges to engage prospective and current students alike.

For the Snapchat generation, colleges must highlight their stories, achievements, and programs through AR Lenses, Filters, Stickers, Bitmoji, and music.

This makes Snapchat an ideal platform for colleges to build meaningful and authentic connections.

In this post, we’ll explore how colleges can use Snapchat to boost student engagement and drive new applicants with actionable campaign ideas and examples.

Quick Takeaways

• Snapchat’s appeal: Ideal for connecting with younger, highly engaged audiences through innovative and visually-driven content.
• Marketing Objectives: Colleges can align Snapchat campaigns with specific goals, such as increasing awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, and promoting enrollment.
• Engagement tactics: Use geotags, AR lenses, filters, student takeovers, and Spotlight to showcase campus life and community connections.
• Ad Features: Leverage Snapchat’s unique ad formats like Geofilters and Snap Ads to boost awareness and attract prospective students.
• Targeted Strategy: Implement a full-funnel ad approach with precise audience targeting and exclusions to deliver relevant content.

Understanding Snapchat’s Audience

Snapchat’s audience is predominantly young, making it a goldmine for colleges looking to connect with Gen Z and younger Millennials.

More than a third of Snapchat users are in the 18—to 24-year-old range, a key demographic for higher education recruitment.

Therefore, if you want to reach this tech-savvy, highly engaged audience, Snapchat is an invaluable tool.

The platform’s popularity continues to grow.

According to Statista, Snapchat's user base is expected to increase by 27% over the next four years, reaching over 779 million by 2028.

This growth reflects Snapchat’s ongoing relevance and appeal, especially among younger audiences who value authentic visual communication.

Moreover, Snapchat’s audience is also diverse.

The platform has a virtually equal gender distribution, with 49.1% of global users identifying as female and 50% male.

Beyond demographics, Snapchat users are active consumers. Compared to other platforms, people are 35% more likely to purchase items advertised on Snapchat.

For colleges, this means Snapchat is not only a place to promote programs and events but also a channel to inspire prospective students.

Moreover, these crunching numbers show that Snapchat can reach prospective students at all stages of the admissions process and even influence their final decision.

5 Examples of Successful University and College Snapchat Campaigns

Snapchat is a platform where you can showcase your university’s fun and creative side.

It encourages thinking outside the box, setting it apart from other social media channels.

The golden rule is to keep your content fresh and versatile. Experiment with styles, formats (video vs. image), and lengths.

Here are some examples of how universities and colleges use Snapchat in different ways to help inspire your content strategy.

1. Kent State University

Kent State University used Snapchat’s features to create an innovative campaign to drive student applications.

Using Augmented Reality (AR) technology, the university designed an interactive lens that placed a graduation cap on users’ heads, allowing them to shake the tassel by moving.

This playful experience connected emotionally with prospective students while prompting them to tap and apply directly to the university on their mobile devices.

To complement the AR lens, the campaign included Snap Ads targeting the same audience.

This dual approach increased reach across the platform while geo-targeting focused efforts on regions where most applicants were likely to come from.

The AR lens achieved a cost per sign-up 24% more efficiently than the university’s goal, making it a great Snapchat student recruitment strategy.

2. University of Michigan

Through Snapchat, UMich experiments with innovative strategies to reach target demographics, prioritizing audience engagement as a key metric.

The platform has also enabled them to collect user-generated content, build a vibrant community, and extend the reach of their social campaigns.

One initiative is their “doodle stories,” where followers can screenshot and draw on Snaps featuring iconic campus elements like the Cube or campus squirrels.

Additionally, UMich has leveraged Snapchat to extend existing campaigns, such as the #AskUMich initiative.

Using Snapchat’s chat feature, they addressed questions and concerns from incoming students, offering advice and building rapport.

This approach highlights the university’s ability to humanize its brand and develop genuine connections with its audience.

3. Clemson University

Through the Snapchat spotlight feature, Clemson creates short, engaging video content that showcases campus life, events, and the university's unique culture.

Snaps and comments submitted to Clemson University’s Spotlight feature on Snapchat are public.

Other users can share these Snaps on and off the platform, increasing their visibility and reach.

Additionally, Snapchatters can "Remix" Spotlight Snaps, adding their creative twist to the content.

For example, they could take a Clemson-themed Snap and layer their reaction or edits over it, driving engagement and showcasing the university's community in an interactive way.

4. University of Florida

The Gators Blue Cap lens by Florida Gators is an example of how Snapchat filters can engage a university’s audience and promote school spirit.

This custom lens allows Snapchat users to wear a blue cap branded with Florida Gators insignia virtually.

In addition, the interactive features might include animations or actions tied to movements, such as sparkling effects when activated.

5. Brown University

Brown University’s Snapchat utilizes geotags to show its diverse community and expand engagement.

To drive engagement, the universities invited students to submit photos with geotags of their current locations, highlighting the global reach of its network.

This approach not only creates a sense of connection among students, alumni, and prospective applicants but also generates organic content that reflects the university's worldwide presence.

Featuring geotagged submissions on their Snapchat profile increases Brown’s visibility, blending user-generated content with authentic storytelling.

How to Create a Snapchat Marketing Strategy

Snapchat is a place to show the human side of your education brand, whether through user-generated content or behind-the-scenes Snap.

However, before creating a marketing strategy for your college, you must build a solid understanding of your audience and how they interact with your institution and the world around them.

1. Consider the demographics of prospective and current students
2. Know how students engage online and what they like to do in the digital space
3. Analyze who and what shapes your students’ choices and what inspires them to take action

While there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for growing your college’s Snapchat visibility, successful marketing strategies often rely on creativity, data-driven insights, and a student-focused approach.

1. Setting Campaign Objectives

First and foremost, goal-based bidding on Snapchat is important for colleges because it helps them focus their advertising budget on specific objectives.

For example, they can aim to get more students to enroll, sign up for events, or become more aware of the college.

As a result, colleges can run more effective marketing campaigns and reach a better audience on a platform that many students use.

Here’s how you can set goal-based bidding by objective for your colleges:

Objective	Setting	Performance Goals
Awareness and engagement	None	Impressions, Clicks, Shares, Video Views (2-15 sec), Story Opens
Promotion of events	Promote campus events	Event Sign-ups, Clicks, Awareness
Website traffic	Website traffic campaign	Landing Page Views, Page Views, Web Conversions, Clicks
Lead generation	Lead generation from campaigns	Leads Collected, Pixel Sign-ups, Story Opens
App promotion	App installs and engagement	App Installs, App Opens, App Purchases, Clicks
Student applications	Conversion goals	Application Submissions, Form Completions
Re-engagement	App/email re-engagement	In-App Events, App Re-opens, Clicks, Landing Page Views
Enrollment campaigns	Website conversion goals	Drive enrollments, App Sign-ups

In the chart above, each performance goal corresponds to specific campaign types and tools to maximize success. Therefore, each measurable objective will guide the rest of your strategy.

2. Understand Your Target Audience

Snapchat is a preferred platform for Gen Z and Millennials.

However, each target audience category has subcategories that let you narrow down your target audience even further.

Here are the different targeting options to connect with your ideal audience:

• Standard targeting: Choose based on location and demographics.
• Predefined audiences: Reach Snapchatters by their online and real-world interests and behaviors.
• Custom audiences: Upload a contact list or create a pixel custom audience.
• Lookalike audiences: Find more people similar to your best customers.

That said, every college targets a specific demographic with unique needs, characteristics, and qualities.

Therefore, your marketing plans should address the interests and preferences of prospective students to engage and attract them.

3. Develop a Strong Brand Voice

Prospective students and their families want to know what your college offers, what values it upholds, and how it stands out.

Therefore, as an education marketer, start by clearly defining your institution's mission and vision. Then, ensure that your name, logo, and marketing materials communicate the essence of your college's identity.

For this, colleges can benefit from partnering with a higher education marketing agency to develop a consistent and impactful brand identity.

To maintain consistency, colleges can utilize a range of online design tools to create and manage visual assets, ensuring that all materials—from brochures to digital ads—reinforce the institution's identity.

Also, colleges must provide brand guidelines for users who want to post content on Snapchat.

4. Leverage Snapchat Features to Create Content

Snaps are designed to disappear, but there is a lot you can do to elevate a simple image or video to make it engaging.

Therefore, Snapchatters probably have the shortest attention spans out of any social media audience.

Here are the Snapchat features and tools to engage users:

• Snap ads: Short, engaging video ads that appear between user stories.
• Lenses and filters: Custom filters and AR lenses to make your brand interactive.
• Story ads: Snippets of branded content in the Discover section.
• Spotlight: Promote user-generated content featuring your brand.

5. Track Online Traffic and Behavior

For colleges advertising on Snapchat, implementing the Snap Pixel is essential.

It captures data on how prospective students interact with your website after viewing your content on Snapchat, helping you understand campaign performance and optimize accordingly.

With Snap Pixel, you can use goal-based bidding to target specific actions like registration or application submissions.

Additionally, you can create Pixel custom audiences to retarget website visitors, moving them from interest to enrollment.

6. Nurture Students Throughout the Enrollment Journey

When rolling out promotional content on Snapchat, begin with a general awareness campaign with limited targeting to reach a broad audience.

This approach helps gather impressions and understand how prospective students engage with your content.

After these initial snaps, analyze engagement to move prospective students from awareness to consideration and enrollment.

This strategy optimizes the college marketing funnel: awareness campaigns for broad exposure, consideration campaigns to educate and engage, and conversion campaigns focused on securing enrollments.

Snapchat Campaign Ideas for Colleges and Universities

Apart from the features listed above, Snapchat offers a creative way for colleges and universities to connect with prospective and current students.

Here are a few engaging campaign ideas:

1. Cross Promotion

Collaborate with student influencers, alumni, or partner organizations to expand your reach.

For example, feature a student ambassador taking over your Snapchat account to show their daily campus experience. This not only promotes your institution but also builds a sense of community.

2. Provide an inside look at campus life

Give prospective students a glimpse of what it’s like to be on campus.

Share behind-the-scenes content of dorm tours, classroom setups, or campus traditions.

Additionally, highlight exciting events like game days, cultural festivals, or art shows.

This approach helps prospective students imagine themselves as part of your community and builds emotional connection.

3. Q&A Session

Host live Q&A sessions where current students, professors, or admissions officers answer questions from prospective students.

This interactive approach helps clarify concerns, provides useful information, and builds trust.

How to Use Snapchat Ads to Increase Enrollment for Your College or University

The Snapchat community is worldwide and deeply engaged — making it an excellent platform for colleges to achieve their enrollment goals.

With Snapchat ads, you can reach a global audience and drive meaningful results.

That said, Snapchat’s self-serve advertising platform is designed for colleges of all sizes. It allows you to see how prospective students interact with your ads and discover new audiences.

With a minimum daily spend of just $5, you can connect with trendsetters who influence behaviors and conversations with full-screen digital ads that inspire engagement and action.

Advertising on Snapchat enables your college to:

1. Drive deeper engagements with prospective students
2. Reach the majority of millennials and Gen Z
3. Be where prospective students are the most active
4. Create an ad in minutes

Getting started on Snapchat is easy—just create a Snapchat account and open an ad account, and you’ll be ready to run ads.

1. Snap Ad Manager Simplifies College Promotion on Snapchat

While known for creativity, Snapchat has introduced the new Snap Ad Manager, making social media advertising more accessible for colleges.

This platform allows easy purchase, optimization, management, and monitoring of ads without technical expertise. Now, colleges can easily create campaigns on their own terms.

Additionally, Snapchat launched a Mobile Dashboard for viewing ads and analytics on mobile devices.

2. Engaging Students with Unique Ad Formats

If you're figuring out how to promote your college on Snapchat using ads, the Ad Manager platform offers different formats, allowing you to choose the best fit for your campaign goals.

To start with Snapchat ads, geofilters are great for awareness and reach.

So, geofilters are images or graphics that users can overlay on their photos or videos, enabled within specific geographical boundaries, like your campus.

Moreover, Snap ads are ideal for recruiting students.

These ads can be up to ten seconds long and appear in various places on Snapchat. They generate high engagement, with two-thirds played with audio, making them effective and impactful.

To inspire action, you can use add-ons like:

• App Install: Link to app installation pages.
• Long-form Video: Play an extended version of your ad.
• Web View: Open a mobile webpage from your ad.

Snapchat's authentic content and user engagement make it a valuable tool for reaching prospective students.

3. Easily Create Snap Ads In-House with Snap Publisher

Create Snap Ads with Snap Publisher has made creating designs easy for your college and university.

This user-friendly, browser-based tool lets you create engaging ads by importing promotional videos and images, trimming horizontal videos to vertical format, and adding motion to still photos.

Additionally, you can also use pre-made themes and perform A/B tests.

Moreover, Snap Publisher works seamlessly with Snap Ad Manager, enabling schools with various marketing budgets and capabilities to create and manage ads.

4. Effective Snapchat Ad Targeting Options

Similar to Facebook and Instagram's targeting capabilities, Snapchat offers a suite of targeting options to maximize campaign impact.

With that, colleges can target prospective students based on a location accessible to everyone within the specified area.

Snap Ads provide additional targeting options:

• Demographics: Gender, age, location.
• Device Information: Mobile OS, wireless carrier, Wi-Fi/cellular data.

Another unique targeting option is the Snap lifestyle category. Colleges can choose from 60 interest categories, such as “Adventure Seekers” or “Do-It-Yourselfers.”

This is particularly useful for niche programs (e.g., targeting “Console Games” for a video game design program).

In addition to this, here is the key data that colleges can utilize:

• Snap audience match: Use current email lists or mobile advertising identifiers.
• Lookalike audiences: Target users with similar characteristics to your existing contacts.
• Snap engagement audiences: Retarget users who have interacted with your ads previously.

Furthermore, utilizing these targeting options ensures you reach the right prospective recruits, making your Snapchat campaigns more effective.

5. Pricing Options for College Advertising

Snap Ad Manager makes advertising on Snapchat more accessible by eliminating the requirement for minimum ad spending.

Colleges no longer need to spend thousands, making Snapchat college advertising more feasible.

Snap Ad Manager offers two main pricing structures for Snap Ads:

1. Cost-per-mille (CPM): Bid based on how much you will pay to display your ad 1,000 times.
2. Goal-based Bidding: Bid on how much you're willing to pay for someone to swipe up on your ad. You’re also charged on a CPM basis, but Snapchat will focus on users likely to engage with your content.

As for Geofilters, the prices are determined based on factors like the size of the Geofence, the date, duration, and location. Some Geofilters can cost as little as $5.

6. Measure and Analyze Your Snapchat Marketing Campaigns

Snap Ad Manager is a full-service platform that allows you to purchase, run, design, and measure the success of your Snapchat ads.

Here's how you can monitor your campaigns directly within Ad Manager:

• Viewability: See how many times and for how long your ad was viewed.
• Reach: Track how many users saw your ad and their demographic info.
• Resonance: Assess user opinions through in-app polling and partner data.
• Reaction: Measure the impact on actions like enrollment using partner data.
• Verification: Check how many times your ad was served.

In addition to the browser-based Ad Manager, you can use the mobile dashboard to view campaign reports, change ad status, and share creative ads from your mobile device.

So, if your college already engages with students organically on the platform, adding Snapchat ads can enhance your strategy.

With Snap Ad Manager and Snap Publisher, you can efficiently manage your advertising campaigns from start to finish.

Conclusion

To conclude, Snapchat is one of the best platforms for connecting with a younger, highly engaged audience.

From leveraging geotags to showcasing global community connections, and utilizing student takeovers, filters, AR lenses, and Spotlight, colleges can engage prospective students.

In addition, leveraging geotags to highlight local connections and showcasing global community interactions can captivate international prospective students.

Not only that, but utilizing student takeovers, live Q&A sessions, and polls creates a great opportunity to engage audiences.

Furthermore, the platform's innovative ad formats, such as Geofilters and Snap Ads, offer powerful tools for awareness campaigns that can highlight events, campus life, and more.

On top of that, implementing a well-structured full-funnel ad strategy with precise audience targeting ensures that content reaches the right people at the right stage of their enrollment journey.

Additionally, Snapchat’s low-cost advertising options and untapped potential make it easy for colleges to connect with current and prospective students.

To maximize success, it’s important to continuously refine your strategy by analyzing insights from audience behavior.

Lastly, starting your Snapchat marketing efforts today can help you tap into a generation eager for genuine and meaningful connections.