Social Media Marketing for Mobile Apps: Why & How to Use It

Imagine that your application is more visible and engages more with your users, at the same time, you can do this with less money, sometimes, no money and less effort. I can hear your question, ‘How can it be?’.
Number of apps available in leading app stores by June 2016 are nearly like this:

• Google Play contains 2.200.000 apps
• Apple App Store contains 2.000.000 apps
• Windows Store contains 669.000 apps
• Amazon App Store contains 600.000 apps
• Blackberry World contains 284.500 apps

In the best case scenario, your application is only one application in 2 million apps. Do you know there are 2.000.000 species of living creatures living in oceans, seas, lakes and rivers not only fish I am talking about all species? So increase your designation probability but it is not enough, also, you have to engage your application with users. You can do both by building a social community. That is your question’s answer ‘Social Community’.

Importance of Social Media Marketing for Mobile Apps

Let’s look at the significance of social media marketing statistically.

• Of the 7.2 billion people on earth, 3 billion have Internet access; 2.1 billion are active on social media; and 1.7 billion use social networks from a mobile device.
• The number of worldwide social media users is expected to reach 2.5 billion by 2018
• 52% of online adults now use two or more social media sites.
• 90% of young adults—ages 18 to 29—use social media (compared to just 35% over 65). Fully a third of millennials say social media is one of their preferred channels for communicating with businesses.
• A significant 68% of marketers surveyed analyze their social media activities.

By these statistics, we can understand that social media network is an important way for promoting your application. If you want success, you need to try all ways, moreover, social media networks are easier and cheaper choice than other promoting ways, and nearly all of big brands are using social media effectively.

5 Ways to Increase Your Social Visibility with Organic Efforts

1- Post regularly and timely

The regularity of sharing post is an important way to increase your social visibility and engagement with users because if users come across with your posts regularly, your memorability will increase and you can show what are you doing, now. Share posts about your application. Sharing posts about your application sometimes is not enough so you can share other posts about daily developments which comes to users’ notice. Posting timely is important as posting regularly. Find right time to share posts. It has to parallel the period when your app’s users are active on social media. Some tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, etc. can help you to share your posts regularly and timely because these tools give a chance to manage multiple social media networks from one place. These tools help you to post, read responses, read statistics and help you do much more things on the social media platform.

2- Give Rewards to Increase Your Downloads and Your Social Presence

Rewards increase your application favorability. Traditional ads like video ads, banners, etc. are not a good method because we know that lots of time we skip ads and we are not interested in them. However, giving rewards to users notice and a study proved that %84 of users prefer rewards over traditional ads. Rewards include discounts, coupons, cash back, gift cards, etc., so rewards increase user excitement, your apps’ downloads and engagement between your applications and users will increase.

Image Source: blog.kiip.me

3- Use Facebook and LinkedIn Groups to Share Your Content

Using Facebook or LinkedIn groups which relate to your application and share their posts which are exciting for group members is a way to increase your social visibility. If users click the link, they will explore your application. You will have a chance to make your application known by users interested in your apps high probability in addition to that LinkedIn is more professional than Facebook. That means the quality of the contacts you will get for any business-related content is much greater than those from Facebook.

4- Do Real-Time Marketing to Answer Questions and Get Feedback

Real-time marketing is marketing that depends on daily popular events, new trends… While the popularity of social media is increasing, the method of marketing is changing. The relevance of people using social media actively is the trend. If you follow daily popular events, new hashtags and use them effectively, you will be closer to users and real-time marketing on social media is the best way to contact the users or followers of your app. When you contact your app users or new users directly, you can answer questions and get feedbacks point-blank and without delay.

5- Tell Your Story, Not Your Product Directly

We are human beings, and we are interested in stories more than materials. We do not need a material, when we do not know the story, where it comes from, and why we need it. If you are not sure why we need shoes, you do not need them. So, another strategy is ‘tell your story, not your product directly’.
Your story should include:

• The reason your app came to be
• What motivates your team to wake up and come to work every day
• How your product came to be?
• What types of users find value in working with your app and why?
• A transparent view of the people behind the app
• A relationship-building tool
• Subtler than you realize
• A concept that underscores your entire web presence
• Something that your whole team, at organizational levels, embraces
• A look into who you are as a team

3 Ways to Increase Your Visibility with Social Ads

1- Facebook Ads

Facebook is a huge potential for mobile marketing with over 1.71 billion monthly active users and has 1.57 billion mobile active users. Moreover, %70 of mobile users is active daily. That means Facebook has nearly 1.1 billion daily active users and Facebook users are increasing every second.
Its huge usage is not the only reason to prefer Facebook app ads. Let’s look at the important ones.

• It provides perfect segmentation options that help your app reach the right audience.
• It is cost effective for cost per installs. You can quickly increase your downloads with costs lower than other social media platforms, like Twitter and Instagram.
• If you also need to increase the retention rate of your app, Facebook provides ads that drive engagement for your current users. So don’t think about how to fix the retention problem with a lower cost.
• Facebook Insights help you understand how well your ad performs on Facebook. Both during and after the ad campaign, you can find the main metrics to benchmark with your KPIs. You can also easily create and benchmark for different versions of your app by analyzing the results.
• If you choose Facebook App Install Ads correctly, you increase your downloads with lower costs. And that means you rank higher in app stores with lower

There are some useful practices for Facebook ads.

• Segment your audience by using Facebook analytics
• Use positive words which are impressive for users like ‘free’ or ‘win’
• Use numbers and statistics to make persuasive your texts
• Be creative and choose CTA other than Install Now and Download
• Use mobile device images
• Check your ads performance with different versions of Facebook ads

If you want information about how can you create Facebook app ads, look at this article.
You can also use Facebook retargeting ads in order to engage with your current users. Retargeting is a cookie-based technology and type of online advertising that provides you keep your trademark in front of bounced traffic after they leave your website. Here are some best practices for Facebook Retargeting:

• Create ads for your audience which are relevant to your app users’ interests.
• Arrange show time-frequency your ads to avoid annoying consumers
• Keep your ads fresh and exciting to increase attention
• Your ads should be well branded
• Have an excellent network reach

If you want to learn more about retargeting, find this article. 

2- Twitter Ads

Twitter has nearly 313 million active users in September, 2016, so another huge social media platform is Twitter, and 80 percent of users are on mobile devices. This means it is a very big opportunity for mobile app advertising.
Let’s look at the fundamental benefits of Twitter.

• Twitter has own ad platform to help app developers promote their apps.
• You can promote your app, and the mobile user can click the install button, and they are instantly taken to the app store on their mobile device so they can download the app right there. No extra steps required.
• It has flexible targeting You can choose a promoted account, which appears above non-promoted accounts in the “Who to follow” list.
• Twitter provides you 3 ad types.
  • Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users or to spark engagement from their existing followers.
  • Promoted Accounts suggest accounts that people don’t follow and may find interesting. Promoted Accounts help introduce an even wider variety of accounts people may enjoy.
  • Promoted Trends began as an extension of our Promoted Tweets platform, and are now a full-fledged product in their own With Promoted Trends, users see time-, context-, and event-sensitive trends promoted by our advertising partners. These paid Promoted Trends appear at the top of the Trending Topics list on Twitter and are clearly marked as “Promoted.” They will also occasionally show within users’ timelines.
• No text limit on images

Here are some important practices about app advertising on Twitter.

• Choose creatives which are related to your ad concept
• Show the problem, not your exact solution
• Convince people by using social proof
• Choose the best CTA related with your audience
• Do not use over 2 hashtags and mentions in your ad
• Do not use stock photos. Instead, prefer screenshots of your app
• Segmentation is important for increasing conversion
• Find the best ad for your app and your audience by using A/B testing

3- Instagram Ads

Let look at Instagram statistics for 2016 to understand Instagram is useful for advertising or not.

• Instagram now has 400 million active users
• Over 60% of users log in daily, making it the second most engaged network after Facebook
• 30% of internet users are now on Instagram
• 8% of brands are on Instagram. By 2017, this is predicted to rise to 70.7%
• If we only look at the top 100 brands in the world, 90% have an Instagram account
• Engagement with brands on Instagram is 10 times higher than Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 times higher than Twitter

I think you are convinced that Instagram is useful for advertising and are ready to view the advantages of Instagram ads.

• Use of the terrific targeting plan of Facebook
• An engaged stream of users
• Instagram comprises the younger class who are known to be app lovers with some becoming real-time Instagram junkies
• Native style advertising
• High Conversion Rates
• Provides 3 ad types: Photo ads, Video ads, and Carousel ads

Let’s look at practices which are necessary for app advertising on Instagram.

• Increase conversion by using new CTA format of Instagram
• Capture attention and increase visibility by way of video ads
• Use unique and high-quality visuals that express yourself
• Answer the questions and comments on time and carefully
• Use contrast colors in your visuals to attract your audience.

Here is more information on How to Drive App Installs with Instagram Ads.

Final Thoughts

To make visible your application, social media is a pathway for achievement. Posting timely and regularly, sharing content by using social media groups, giving rewards, doing real-time marketing, using social media network ads and retargeting are important alternatives for increasing your app’s visibility, engagement and its advertising. This is because we can understand that social media networks are a huge piece of our life when we analyzing statistics.