Snapchat Geofilters: A Complete Guide

Snapchat geofilters are location based graphics that you see in certain locations when using Snapchat. If you are a regular Snapchat user than its very likely that you have seen these filters.

But did you know that you can create and submit geofilters to Snapchat yourself? That’s right… users can now submit geofilters to Snapchat for events, parties, business meetings or just for fun.

In this guide, we are going to talk about why you should use Snapchat geofilters and how to add them to Snapchat.

Why Use Snapchat Geofilters?

Snapchat geofilters are quite new but I believe they will be huge in the next couple years. Creating a custom Snapchat geofilter can:

• Build brand awareness
• Increase ROI
• Find new customers in your area
• Create a memorable event

Geofilters are an amazing new way to build brand awareness for an insanely cheap price. Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has had massive success with Snapchat geofilters, touting that he once spent $62.98 on a geofilter and received over 229,000 views from it. That came out to $0.27 CPM (cost per thousands views).

With this type of ROI, many small and large businesses have started to jump on the Snapchat geofilter train.

Another reason to use Snapchat geofilters is because they make parties and events memorable and fun. They are getting very popular with weddings, networking events, holiday parties, happy hours, charity events, trade shows and anything else that has a location and a timeframe.

Types of Snapchat Geofilters

Currently, there are two types of Snapchat geofilters that you can submit to Snapchat…. Community and On-demand.

Community Snapchat geofilters are for artist and designers who want to create a free geofilter for their community, university, street or other public location. With community filters, you can wait up to 6 days for a decision on whether your Snapchat is approved or not.

On-demand Snapchat geofilters are for businesses or individuals who want to create a filter for an event, business or a specific location. These geofilters cost money and are usually approved or denied within hours.

Submitting Snapchat Geofilters

Submission Guidelines

Snapchat is known to be pretty picky about their geofilters and theirs quite a large submission guideline page. Make sure you adhere to these guidelines as closely as possible so you don’t waste a ton of time re-submitting geofilters. Here is a short list of the most important guidelines to adhere to:

• Geofence should only cover the relevant area
• All graphics must be 100% original
• No logos or trademarks (community filters)
• No photographs
• No hashtags
• Don’t cover up too much of the screen
• Files should be 1080px wide by 1920px high
• File size should be under 300KB and saved as a transparent .PNG
• Provide a good description of your event or filter

Snapchat Geofilter Pricing

Pricing for Snapchat geofilters is based on the square footage you select and the length of the event. Currently, Snapchat charges $5 per 20,000 square feet, per hour. Generally, a small building or house will cost you around $10 and a corner block or stadium could cost anywhere up to $300 depending on the length of the event.

Making a Snapchat Geofilter

Designing Snapchat geofilters must be done in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. If you do not have one of these tools then you are out of luck and I would suggest hiring a Snapchat Geofilter Designer to design and submit your Snapchat geofilter.

If you do possess one of these tools then you can create a Snapchat geofilter yourself if you would like. Snapchat provides templates for both Illustrator and Photoshop that have the size and layout all setup.

When we design our Snapchat geofilters, we always use Illustrator because it allows you create seamless vector designs that look stunning and professional.

Remember to adhere to all of the submission guidelines when designing your Snapchat filter. Here are some quick tips to remember when designing your custom Snapchat geofilter:

• Test your filter with a few different photos to make sure your text and graphics are view-able on all type of lighting.
• Don’t cover up more than a third of the screen or Snapchat will reject it.
• Make sure your design is 100% original

Submitting a Snapchat Geofilter

Now that you have the perfect Snapchat geofilter, its time to submit it to Snapchat.

Head over to the Snapchat geofilters page and choose the type of Snapchat you would like to submit. If you don’t have a Snapchat account it will make you create one. Make sure you use a email you check because they send you information about your geofilter throughout the process.

Step 1: Upload Your Design

Once your account is created, choose upload design and you can choose your .PNG geofilter design.

This is a great point to stop and make sure that your design is laid out correctly. Use the scale provided by Snapchat to make your image smaller or larger if you need to. When you are happy with the layout and design of your geofilter, click Next.

Step 2: Choose Your Event Dates

You will then be directed to a screen to choose your dates and times for your event. Keep in mind that the longer your event, the more money it will cost.

Select the date of your event, the start/end time and double check it because once you submit it, you can’t change the date/time.

Step 3: Choose Geofilter Area

Now comes the fun part… Choosing where you would like your geofilter to show up. To get started put in the address of your event in the search box at the top of the Google Map. This makes it easier to pinpoint where you want your geofilter to show up.

When you have found your event location, simply choose ‘Draw Fence’ and draw a fence around the location you wish to show your Snapchat filter. Remember that the fence doesn’t have to be a rectangle… It can be literally any shape you want. We like to draw fences right outside the line of the event space so that costs are lower and you get the whole event space.

Step 4: Payment

When you have completed choosing an area to show your filter, its time to make a final review and pay for your geofilter. As you can see from our example, a 25,000 sq. ft. area with a 4 hour event only costs us $5.00 USD. For the amount of views your Snapchat will probably get, that is a great investment with potentially high ROI.

Create a name for your geofilter (should be descriptive) and choose your filter type. Enter in your payment details and take one last look to confirm everything is good.

Once you submit your Snapchat Geofilter you will get a confirmation from Snapchat that they have received it and are currently reviewing it.

It may take a few times for them to approve your geofilter as they are very picky about filters. If you are having too much trouble getting a design approved, try using a Snapchat Geofilter Design service that will create a stunning geofilter as well as submit it to Snapchat.

Viewing Snapchat Geofitler Success

Once your event has ran, you are able to view the amount of times your geofilter was used and how many times it was viewed. I am sure in the future Snapchat will have more reporting metrics that give a little more information about the event but its still really cool to see the results.

Here is an example of some metrics from a Wedding Snapchat Geofilter we did. As you can see from only 86 uses of the filter, we received over 6,000 views of the filter.

The success of this type of marketing strategy isn’t just from showing the Geofilter at the event but all the followers viewing Snapchats of your event goers.

Wrapping Up

Currently, this method of marketing isn’t widely known which makes it an amazing strategy to grow brand awareness on the cheap. We believe that soon, this marketing strategy will be flooded with spammers and competition which will increase the prices and difficulty of submissions.

If you aren’t currently using Snapchat geofilters for your events, I highly suggest doing it now before the market is too saturated. We provided an affordable service for designing amazing and memorable Snapchat geofilters as well as taking care of the whole process of submitting them to Snapchat. If you are interested, check out our Snapchat Geofilter Design page to see what we can do for you!