How to promote your app using paid social media

Using paid social media to promote your app is a brilliant way to grow your business and build your brand. The likes of Facebook has so much power over people’s daily lives. That’s why it is the ideal place to promote yourself through ads. Here’s our beginner’s guide to creating killer ads to get people to download your app.

Register your app with Facebook

Make sure to register your app as a Facebook Developer. This will give you access to incredible data so you can see precisely how your Facebook ads are effecting your app downloads and events. It all gets very techy so the best way to do this is to pass on the instructions link to your App Developer. All you need to do is pick your key events, what you want to track/measure, such as app install, app launch, add to cart, in-app purchase etc… The more data the better right? Then let your developer know all the events you want your app to track.

Set up your Facebook campaign

When setting up your Facebook campaign make sure to select the ‘App Installs‘ objective, so your ad will show to people most likely to download and engage with your app. Once you’ve created your first campaign you’re going to need to create additional campaigns for each App Store/Google Play/Windows Store/Amazon App Store/where your app is available to download. After you choose the app/platform you want to promote, Facebook will automatically select the specific mobile devices and operating systems for that platform. For example, if you pick the App Store, Facebook will only show your ads to people using an IOS (iPhone/ iPad/ iPod) device. This will be under placements for you to double-check/change. Structure Tip  Create different campaigns for each App Store instead of having all of them under one Facebook campaign. This way you can still target and personalise the ads to your different audiences. An example of the structure: Campaign: Google Play Store

• Young Audience Ad Set
• Parent Audience Ad Set
• Lookalike Ad Set

Campaign: App Store

• Young Audience Ad Set
• Parent Audience Ad Set
• Lookalike Ad Set

Create unique Facebook ads

Most importantly you need to remember your audience will only see your ads on a mobile phone, your ads need to be mobile phone friendly.

Text

Make your text concise and relevant. Highlight your solutions, benefits, features, or any new user promotions that will encourage and back up your app. Try and keep your text to 3/4 lines and use an emoji or two. Think like the customer – How far are they going to read?

Creatives

It’s no secret that videos perform a lot better than static images, but that’s doesn’t mean images are out of the question. Your creatives should stop people scrolling and compliment your brand and your app. Tip: Often, people skip past Facebook and Instagram ads because they know they’re an ad. Try to create an ad that doesn’t look like a typical ad… Can you have someone holding and talking to the camera selfie-style instead of in a studio, a tutorial, a style guide etc?

Call to action

Add a CTA Button to make it clear what the users next steps should be. ‘Use App, Download, Install Now’ don’t try to deceive the users to think they aren’t going to download an app or you’ll end up paying for clicks that aren’t going to convert.

Learn more about how to promote your app on social media

Meta offers dozens of free courses to help you, and they have articles specifically about App Installs. We also have another blog about tracking your Facebook Ads Performance in Google Analytics which will help you with this process. Overall, using paid social to promote your app is a great way to reach more people. It seems to happen more rapidly than organic reach, which is a huge benefit. Try using Facebook ads to gain more engagement and reach for your business. We hope this helps! Written by Alice Mutch