Noa Gutterman

by Noa Gutterman | Social Advertising

Looking for additional marketing channels for a mobile app? Look no further. Running an efficient and optimized Facebook ad campaign can help you gain users and grow your brand awareness. However, competition is tough, and the costs can be high. Understanding how your goals fit within Facebook’s advertising options can help you run successful campaigns that drive long-term growth for your app.

Ad Types

There are many different types of Facebook ads available to marketers. But, for mobile apps, install and engagement ads are of the utmost importance. Use install ads to increase user acquisition. Use engagement ads to improve retention and increase brand awareness.

Before you start spending any money promoting your app, you should be clear on what you’re looking to achieve – what are your goals? Your first campaign should be geared toward learning about what works and testing ideas in this initial phase.

Define Your Audience

It is critical to develop your user personas before you start advertising. Facebook offers unparalleled ad targeting features, but without user personas, you won’t be able to utilize these features to their fullest potential! Take advantage of surveys, interviews, and user feedback sessions to develop detailed profiles of the types of users you want to go after.

If you don’t know who you’re looking to target with your ads, you’re going to risk losing money. You’re essentially paying to acquire users who ultimately will not be high lifetime value customers.

  • Custom audiences allow you to target specific users based on personal information, like email address or phone number. As an app marketer, you can upload lists of user data to the Facebook platform to best reach or exclude certain groups of users from marketing campaigns. Custom audiences are the most effective when you segment users by type. i.e. sign-up date, geolocation, gender, etc.
  • Lookalike audiences give you the opportunity to expand on the custom audiences you’ve already uploaded to your Facebook ad account. This targeting feature allows you to find large groups of Facebook users whose behavior most closely resembles your seed list. The larger the seed list, the less accurate Facebook’s targeting capabilities will be, so it’s important to test a variety of seed lists and lookalike audience sizes to find the best fit for your app.
  • Detailed targeting includes demographics, interests, or behaviors, and is best used in combination with custom audiences and lookalike audiences. You should plan to use detailed targeting to expand on things you’ve identified in your user personas and to increase granularity in your targeting.

Choose Your Creative

Your ad creative is critical to driving conversions. No matter how great your targeting, a poorly designed ad will cost you in the long run.

  • Body copy and headline: Keep your ad copy short and to the point, while explaining your app’s unique value propositions.
  • Call-to-action: The CTA button for app install ads is relatively simple – the best option for most app marketers is “install now.” However, feel free to experiment with other CTA options—and even test including the CTA in the ad copy or headline itself.
  • The importance of video: video ads are critical for advertising anything, both for prospecting and for remarketing on video views. Also, videos are an incredible long-term investment for any app. Not only can they be used on Facebook to demonstrate your app’s USPs, but they can also be used to demonstrate specific product features and highlight the user experience and interface. Furthermore, marketing videos can be used on your Apple App Store and Google Play Store app listings, in email marketing, and as a part of your app’s onboarding process.

If you are looking to market your app to gain users, increase brand recognition, or promote sales, Facebook is a great place to start. Targeting, ad copy, ad type, and creative all play a key role in creating high-performing, effective Facebook ads. Contact Metric Theory to learn more!

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