We have already pointed out the importance of using social media to spread the word about your app, and that was mainly a money-free way of increasing your reach toward your targeted audience.

Paid advertising, on the other hand, is incredibly effective and efficient if you wish to expose your software to potential customers. There are multiple potential advertising platforms for mobile apps.

  • Facebook Ads — There are numerous targeting options with Facebook Ads, and many apps use it. 
  • Promoted Tweets — People’s feeds can show promoted tweets if most of your audience is on Twitter.
  • App Store Search Ads — The fact is that over 60% of app downloads come from searches on both Apple and Google app stores.
  • CPI Ad Platforms — You can attract more installs and signups instead of just clicks using these platforms.
  • Google Universal App Campaigns — This tool is mostly useful because it uses machine learning technology. 
  • Cross-Promotion Networks — These networks are great if you want to use an app to promote others, especially for mobile games

As with any paid advertising campaign, you need to consider who your audience is and where you can best reach them. Then, once you’ve chosen the right platform(s), you need to figure out how to find relevant users using the different targeting options on the platform(s) you’ve chosen. 

There are app campaign options on Google, Twitter, and Facebook/Instagram, so those are the best places to start.

Some tips for gaining the most out of your paid ads

All of the previously listed social media platforms provide both app install ads and app engagement ads. The sole setup of the ad campaign works the same on all of these platforms.

However, we would like to point out a few things you should be mindful of when creating your campaign.

When it comes to Facebook ad campaigns, there is a wide range of targeting options that you can very efficiently use to your advantage.

Target audience

You can set up your targeting audience based on many parameters, including:

  • Custom audiences – which allows you to target existing customers or leads
  • Location – which allows you to target by location (city, state, country)
  • Gender – which allows you to target by gender (male or female)
  • Interests – allows you to target by interest (such as fitness, entrepreneurship, fashion, literature, or any other interest aligning with your business)
  • Behaviors – allows you to target by past behavior, such as someone visiting your website, previously using your services, and other parameters.
  • Connections – allow you to be targeted by people who already like your page or have connections that did.

Optimizing your target audience will allow you to get the most out of your campaign and deliver it to the right people. 

With your audience in mind, other things to consider are the following: 

  • Type of paid ads, 
  • Written copy, and
  • The visuals follow it.

Type of ads

As previously mentioned, there are a few types of different ads and formats that you can use for your benefit, for example, boosted posts on the platform, targeted ad campaigns, for example, the app install and engagement campaigns, and finally, the paid promotional content on the platform (side articles, sponsored content and similar).

Before even engaging with any other step of the promotion process, you should first consider your campaign goals and objectives, select the type of ads, and coordinate the content accordingly.

Make use of retargeting and serial ads

According to an infographic by Invespcro, the average CTR for retargeted ads is around 0.7%, which is significantly higher than the 0.07% average CTR of regular display ads. Retargeting ads can hugely impact abandoned shopping cart rates, as they encourage previous visitors to go back to your site and complete the purchase.

The same goes for the series of ads, which can target the same audience who has previously interacted with your business to engage more with the content or, in this case, your app.

Please remember that if you're running an app engagement campaign, you can choose between conversions and traffic as a secondary objective.

Copywriting and CTAs

Upon deciding what type of paid ads you want to target, what's important to consider are the visuals used in your campaigns and the written copy following those visuals. 

Your copy should be informative, engaging, aligned with the campaign's theme, truthful, and reflect the tone of your brand. Remember that you are writing for your target audience, and adjust your copy accordingly.

Keywords and SEO are also important factors to consider when putting together a copy for your post, however, do not go overboard with the word stuffing; otherwise, your copy will lose authenticity and truthfulness. Ensure to include only the most relevant keywords to your product/business.

If you are including multiple ads in your campaign, you should try to keep consistency with your writing and CTAs and stick to one CTA per ad. Otherwise, you might confuse your audience and create a negative impression of your campaign.

Visuals

When it comes to visuals for your paid ad campaigns, you should stick with high-quality images or videos that reflect the content of your promo campaign. 

Another thing to remember is the format and size of your images and videos. Ensure to include the correct size for the multimedia to the size of the ad and device showcasing it.

Optimize your landing page

In order to track the results of your campaign and the impact it's producing; your ads need an exciting destination they are leading to. In this case, that destination would be your landing page. To get the most out of your campaign and provide a worthwhile experience for your audience, prepare and optimize your landing page before launching it. Make it easy for them to get to the content you're promoting in your ad, and give them a clear way to find more content that fits the context.

Review your results regularly

To ensure that your campaigns are producing the desired results; you must review your results regularly. In order to do so, you should keep an eye on a variety of KPIs and metrics, including

  • The quality score
  • Click-through rates
  • Social media activity
  • Impressions
  • Reach
  • Cost per conversion

Upon reviewing your metrics for the given time period, make sure to tweak and adjust them accordingly, to make sure you are getting the best results for the proposed campaign budget that you might have at the moment. If you are unsure, you can always resort to A/B testing and adjust according to the results of the conducted testing.

App Stack