Today, social media is completely incorporated into our everyday lives. Be it world news, internet trends, community-building, personal life updates – one way or another, we connect with each other around the world. This worldwide social networking also proves to be a great way for app marketers to promote their newest product. In the following, we will show you what advantages you can gain from implementing social media marketing strategies and list some of the most effective ways of promoting your mobile or web app.
What is social media marketing?
After you have created your application, you can choose from a number of options to grow your audience. One of those options is to promote your app on different social media platforms. Via social media, you can find and engage with your target audience, build a brand presence, and boost your product’s turnover. With an astonishing 4.48 billion people using social media, who are active on an average of over 6 different platforms, it is absolutely advisable to consider leveraging those platforms for the promotion of your app.
Generally, you can divide social media marketing into two forms, these being organic marketing and paid marketing. In the former, you utilize the free resources available to you, such as building your own social media profile and creating content. In the latter, you draw from paid services, such as paid advertisements, sponsorships, and influencer marketing to increase your product’s visibility and drive revenue.
The advantages of social media marketing
Diving into social media marketing rewards you with a range of benefits. By being actively present on sites like Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, you can increase the trustworthiness of your application, and thus raise the number of interactions between your app and audience.
Social media enables you to directly engage with your user base. Every update you post, users can react to and comment on. You can use that function to increase your levels of customer support and user engagement by doing one of the following three things:
- Respond to positive comments and thank them for using your product.
- Apologize to those who wrote a non-constructive negative comment.
- React to constructive criticism and thank them for their feedback.
Further, by joining groups specializing in entrepreneurship and app development, for example on Facebook or LinkedIn, you are able to build professional connections, increase your product’s visibility, and gain qualitative feedback. You can even utilize the groups to discuss your app’s features and upcoming updates.
How you can promote your mobile or web app
Having discussed the advantages that come with an efficient social media marketing strategy, it is now time to showcase some of the most effective ways of promoting your app. While it is always a nice idea and a good first step to approach your friends and family and ask them to try out your app, this option has its limits. Instead, it is wise to draw on the aforementioned forms of organic and paid social media marketing strategies. The following options will ensure that your product develops an active user base and achieves revenue.
Organic social media marketing strategies
Organic strategies involve using the free tools and resources that are available to you on the respective platforms. This includes building a profile page for your product and regularly posting updates as well as interesting content for your audience.
In addition to that, you can utilize user-generated content (UGC) – pictures, videos, or written reviews made by consumers of your product. Reposting and engaging with this content is a simple, yet efficient way to stay present on the platform. Further, it will show your audience that you value their input and want to engage with them.
Paid social media marketing strategies
If you are ready to invest in paid social media advertising, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google all offer app installation advertising services, leading users that click those ads directly to your app store listing or website. Here, it is important to know who your target audience is and what type of content they would click on so that your ad campaigns reach the right people, and your investment pays off.
Facebook and Instagram Ads
For example, if you are looking to advertise your product on Facebook or Instagram, you would focus on visual advertisements, which will consist of either image-posts, 15-second-long Facebook or Instagram Stories (image or video), or video posts with a length of up to 1 minute. Remember that you should always provide a quick link to your product’s website or app store listing on every advert you post.
Google Ads
Another viable option presents Google Ads, which offers a wide variety of advertising services. The first one being text-based ads, where Google Ads builds on the use of Cookies and keywords to display your product’s page as a search result on Google. Here, you can briefly present your product’s special features in a few words or attract users with good ratings and special offers, depending on the type of advert you chose. Further, you can choose to create image ads, which will then be integrated by Google onto different websites.
With YouTube Ads being part of the Google Ads ecosystem, you have also the option to put out video ads that will be played by YouTube either before, after, or during a video. You can choose between skippable and unskippable ads with varying lengths, though the ad needs to be a minimum of 12 seconds long, and it is recommended to keep it under 3 minutes.
Social Media Creatives
Before you invest in these advertising campaigns, you should take a minute and think about the types of social media creatives you want to present. Creatives are content ads in image and video format that advertise your product, with every type having a different advantage.
You could choose, for example, to create an ad containing a shot of your product with a text element, e.g. a USP to make your app stand out from others. You can couple that with adding product images that contain testimonial text elements, i.e. short positive reviews, which can attest to your product’s quality.
Again, you can and should leverage UGC and implement them in your ad campaign – here, it is important to ask them for permission to use their image or video for your advertising, and to keep in mind the respective copyright laws in mind when doing so. The big benefit you gain from this is the change of perspective on the product. As a brand, you make certain promises to your customers regarding your product’s services and features. Having real customers confirm these promises greatly increases your credibility.
In this context, you should note that following a study, a staggering 79% of people say that UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions, compared to a mere 13% of people that are convinced by brand-created content. Which types of creatives you use is dependent on the platform you want to place them on.
Influencer Marketing
Apart from advertising campaigns provided by the respective social media platforms, you can also gain huge traffic by promoting your app through influencers. Here, it is important to consider a few factors. These include the type of influencer you want to promote your app with. How many followers do they have? How engaged is their audience? Do they actively like, comment and react to the influencer’s content? How regularly do they create content? And, most importantly, what kind of content do they create? To run a successful influencer campaign, it is crucial that the influencer’s audience matches your target group.
You can choose, whether you want to invest in one big influencer to promote your app or several micro-influencers. Either way, by promoting your app through influential people, your brand will for one, gain more trust. For another, this campaign will help you generate more new customers and installs, which in turn can be used to increase your upsell by using retargeting ads in your marketing campaign to, for example, promote a new upgrade of your product. You see, it is possible to combine multiple social media marketing techniques to create a viable strategy, though every strategy needs to be tested thoroughly.
In conclusion
Promoting your new product will be the next big step, and particularly on social media, you have a great many options to choose from and a multitude of factors to consider. Every platform performs differently, depending on the type of application you want to promote. An advertising campaign that works on Facebook might not work as well on Instagram and vice versa. Until you find the right platform or platforms on which you can scale your advertisements, you need to perform many testings and evaluate the results.
Naturally, this can be a difficult task and seem overwhelming at first. Therefore, if you have any questions regarding social media marketing, or if you need someone to create a suitable marketing strategy for your new product, feel free to contact us. We at Fintory provide a wide range of services ensuring that your new product will be seen by as many customers as possible.
