We recommend doing all of those, but what we\u2019re focusing on today is paid search on social media, namely on Facebook. Thanks to Facebook’s massive user base and nearly endless advertising options, many app developers see serious success with their ad campaigns on the platform.<\/p>\n
What to Do Before Creating Paid Ads for App Installs<\/h2>\n
Before you spend any money on Facebook ads for your app, look inward first. Clean house and make sure your app is really up to snuff.<\/p>\n
We recommend the following to help position yourself for winning campaigns later on:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Create a seamless on-boarding process.<\/li>\n
- Identify the actions of top users.<\/li>\n
- Encourage in-app engagement.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Create a seamless on-boarding process.<\/h3>\n
Before you spend money on ads or make a push for mass downloads, your app needs to have a seamless on-boarding process. If potential users are intrigued by your ad and download the app but never use it, you\u2019ve lost a lot of potential already. The ideal on-boarding process is simple and intuitive and encourages the user to engage more with the app.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Identify the actions of top users.<\/h3>\n
If your app has active users already (congrats!), take a look at your most frequent users and try to find out why they\u2019re power users.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How do they use the app? How often do they use the app? Does the time of day or certain life events change how often they interact with your app? How long do they spend in your app?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Answering these questions (and making changes in the app based on your findings) can help make the app experience more enjoyable for every user.<\/p>\n
Encourage in-app engagement.<\/h3>\n
Let\u2019s say you have a social media app for music lovers; let\u2019s also that your power users all have 7-10 friends on the app. One could assume that they interact with the app so often because these 7-10 friends are also on the app.<\/p>\n
One way to grow engagement could be encouraging new users to invite their friends. If you know that power users who interact within the app all have a certain number of friends also on the app, you should encourage all users to invite more friends so that every user has that X number of friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you know that power users engage in X number of conversations through the app, you should encourage users to converse more. If you know that power users share X number of songs on your app, encourage all users to share their favorites more often.<\/p>\n
It comes down to looking at what your power users are doing and trying to get all users to do those things too.<\/p>\n
Once you feel comfortable with your on-boarding process and have set up your app to encourage the most engagement, you\u2019re ready to start thinking about launching a paid search campaign.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Facebook App Registration and Engagement Tracking<\/h2>\n
Inside Facebook, you will need to make sure you have your app setup with a Facebook Developer<\/a> account. You must register your app and install the necessary information from the Facebook SDK for iOS<\/a> and Android<\/a> to track engagements before you ever consider paying for ads on Facebook\u2014no exceptions!<\/p>\n
The Facebook SDK for both Android and iOS will you help you build more engaging apps and ultimately get more installs for your app.<\/p>\n
Building Your Facebook App Install Campaigns<\/h2>\n
Now that you have your on-boarding in a good spot, you\u2019ve engaged with current active users to drive growth, and you have everything squared away with your Facebook for Developers account, you can now start building out your Facebook marketing strategy.<\/p>\n
In our scenario where you\u2019ve built a social media app for music lovers scenario, let\u2019s imagine that you\u2019ve acquired a list of emails for music lovers from another venture outside of the app. You can use that list of emails for your Facebook campaign.<\/p>\n
Custom Audience List<\/h3>\n
With a Custom Audience list, you can create a campaign that targets these music lovers\u2019 emails directly through Facebook. Not all email addresses will match a Facebook account but considering the amount of Facebook users, the majority will. That makes this list a great jumping-off point and gives you a good base to start with in understanding your audience.<\/p>\n
From there, you should create a lookalike audience of this email list. Facebook will create this list by trying to match as much of the available information on the email you list you loaded in to other Facebook users. These audiences help you from targeting people who may not even be interested in the app right out of the gate.<\/p>\n
Facebook Targeting Options<\/h3>\n
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