4 Ways Your Business Can Benefit From Having a Mobile App

They’re in all of our pockets now, aren’t they?

I’m talking, of course, about mobile devices. And the core functionality of those devices (other than making phone calls, I’ve been told) is to run a whole host of applications that serve nearly every imaginable purpose.

Businesses from all corners of the world, offering a ridiculous range of products, have begun migrating from the physical world of handing out leaflets, printing advertisements, and hanging billboards, to the mobile realm. And you should too.

Now, I know what you might be thinking:

Our business doesn’t need a mobile app to sell products to our loyal customers!

And maybe that’s been the case in the past. But if you want to prepare for the future and start seeing the massive benefits right out the gate, you’ll need a mobile app.

Not so easily convinced? Then here are 4 ways (and then some) that your business will reap the benefits of creating a mobile app for your customers.

1. Provide More Value to Your Customers

Business is all about reciprocation. You offer a product, the market opens their wallets with their demand, right?

Maybe you’ve sat down with your employees and tried to nail down the best way to encourage more of this wallet-opening engagement from your customers. You want to increase their interaction with your business to promote sales, of course, but you also want to provide a level of value for your customers that they can’t get anywhere else.

One way to do this is create a loyalty program within your app. It would work like this:

The more customers interact with your business and product, the more points they collect, which can in turn be used for great deals on the products they already know they want.

Starbucks uses their mobile app to their advantage by offering rewards exclusively to app subscribers, which then motivates customers to buy coffee (And other delicious snacks) from them. They’re even more ahead of the curve by allowing their users to pay directly from the app, speeding up the whole transaction process.

starbucks loyalty program

If you already have a program like this in place – great. You can incorporate it into your mobile app, digitizing the entire process, making data on their purchases available to you instantly. If you don’t have one, get on it, fast.

And when your customers see their points adding up in real time (rather than having to send in points in the mail or wait until they can access your website to enter them manually), they’ll be impressed and more enticed to follow up on their purchases in the future.

Build a profitable mobile app in less time and at a lower cost than traditional solutions with BuildFire
GET STARTED WITH BUILDFIRE

2. Build a Stronger Brand

One of the most important things a mobile app offers to consumers is awareness of and communication with your brand. And through that regular interaction with your target market, you’re fostering trust.

The more your audience trusts you, the more likely they’ll be to listen to later sales pitches and even commit to your brand. With an app, you’ll demonstrate to your users why they should trust you by showing (rather than telling) what your brand stands for.

In the same way as distributing fridge magnets, calendars, and other random memorabilia with your company logo on it has served in the past both as advertisement and assistance, mobile apps strengthen your brand and educate your customers.

That’s why so many businesses across all the major sectors are developing strategies for mobile apps. Check out this data from the Red Hat Mobile Maturity Survey 2015:

industry processes

This is more than you can shake a stick at. Everyone is getting on board.

3. Connect Better with Customers

Customer service isn’t just about face to face communication between smiling sales associates and customers anymore.

Since 2.6 billion people now have high-powered mobile devices within arm’s reach at all times, the true game-changer in customer service is now mobile apps.

Why?

Firstly, your app won’t be merely a human being, subject to mood swings and poor performance.

And, through a solid mobile presence, you’ll always know you’re presenting to the customer the same face – an interface geared specifically to provide them with the best experience of studying and deciding whether they want to buy your product.

In fact, the vast majority of marketers see their apps as a means to primarily improve customer service.

brand mobile presence reasons

Without sounding creepy, your business is always with your customer. (Okay, maybe there’s no way around that one.)

But think about it. If a person hears about your app in the middle of the night and wants to get information ASAP, all they have to do is turn on their device and download your app. Later, when a thought pops into their head that they should buy your product, they can do it immediately, without having to wait for regular business hours when normal human beings are awake.

So, if customer service is one of your top priorities (like it should be), mobile apps are the answer to raising customer satisfaction across the board.

4. Boost Profits

When customer satisfaction increases, sales typically do too. In fact, according to SalesForce, 70 percent of buying experiences are influenced by how customers feel they’re being treated.

The more interested and pleased people become with your product and your business, the greater consumer demand will grow. And let me assure you, if you have a product your customers can’t wait to get their hands on, that demand is going to provide you with some serious returns.

That’s where the mobile app comes in like none other. But it’s important to keep costs low while you’re developing it.

Sure, you should have a website with a responsible design that can adapt to any of the various mobile devices there are now. This eliminates the necessity of having a frustrating, secondary “mobile” site to manage. But if you launch a mobile app in addition to your responsive website, you’ll boost sales while enhancing the customer experience.

According to Techcrunch.com, 35.4 percent of Black Friday sales last year were completed on mobile devices. That’s up from the 16 percent they were just a few years ago, according to 2012 IBM Holiday Benchmark Reports.

Dominos App

When Domino’s Pizza created a mobile app for ordering delivery or in-store pickup of their food, they saw an ecommerce rise of 28 percent in half-year pre-tax profits in the UK alone. And I know I’d rather use their app than actually call the store.

In fact, mobile devices now account for 52 percent of their online orders.

Are you seeing a trend here? If you aren’t using a mobile app that encourages more purchases while making it easier and more exciting for your customers to press the “buy” button, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of change from an ever-growing market.

Build a profitable mobile app in less time and at a lower cost than traditional solutions with BuildFire
GET STARTED WITH BUILDFIRE

Other Benefits of a Mobile App

If these points haven’t solidified in your brain the necessity of a mobile app, there are still more reasons to consider adopting a mobile app strategy to encourage more customer engagement and satisfaction.

  • Inform users of new products and offers
  • Stand out from the competition
  • Reach out to younger demographics
  • Sync users’ email and social media accounts

And if you structure it correctly, you can receive a ton of analytics on exactly how people interact with your app. These range from the average time a user spends looking at your app, to the amount of money you make from every purchase.

mobile app benefits

Another point to think about is location data. Apps are now, more than ever, providing their creators with location data on their users. If you were to apply this to your business, you could learn when and where people were purchasing your products most often, or which parts of the world are most interested in your business.

Once you finally decide to develop your app, it may simply start out as a portal to the same options you’ve made available on your company website. But it has room to evolve into so much more. Eventually, you might even rely on your app to inform you as to the new directions you can take your business to continue confidently into the future.

mobile maturity

If your business were to continue operating without this functionality, you might be left in the dark on these data while your competition takes advantage of it to skyrocket their sales and expand their businesses.

The Bottom Line

90 percent of companies plan to increase investment in mobile apps in 2016. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll be left behind your competitors.

app investment

And no, a mobile app may not save your business, but it is a sure way of securing a strong presence in your industry. Instead of being some abstract concept of a brand your customers appreciate, that they imagine has a headquarters in some faraway city – you’ll be right in their pockets. Your logo will be placed on their mobile phone screens by default.

Just make sure you promote your app after it launches.

The convenience factor coupled with the undeniably cool element of new, rapidly evolving technology will place your business on the forefront of your industry. And hey, don’t you want to pull your device out of your pocket and play around on something you helped create?

Does your business have a mobile app? Why or why not? Share your thoughts below in the comments section!

Ignite The Gears Podcast: Engagement and Social Media Marketing


Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review our podcast on iTunes, click the link below.BuildFire iTunes Podcast

With us today is Warren Whitlock, a digital business development strategist, and the leader of a consulting group at Social Media Team Management. Below you will find short actionable summaries of what we talked about in the episode.

Be sure to listen to the episode so you get the full picture before you start to implement these strategies. Here’s to your success!

 

The meaning of our work

Take a step back and think deeply about what it really means to be in business. At its core, you are catering to humanity’s basic desires. You are developing strategies and ideas that align your product/ service as the solution to their problems.

Yet we still make the mistake of thinking that if we just push something hard enough into our customer’s face that they will want it. We need to step out of this mentality and realize that the true way to win over a customer is not through constant bickering. It is through useful, engaging, catered, and thoughtful service.

Do what you can to help people

If you do not already do so, go get involved in your local community. Use the skills you were given and shape them to address the issues of a local charity, church, restaurant, school, club, etc. You will be surprised to see just how much you know and how much of an impact you can make by bringing in an outside perspective.

While you may be tempted to push your own goals and stories, this is a great way for you to expand your tool-sets, build meaningful relationships, and develop your community.

Don’t interrupt your audience

Interrupting your audience and trying to sneak in your product is an old school method of getting people to buy. Stop getting in the way of your customer by constantly “reminding” them to buy your product or sign up for your newsletter.

Remember that your customer is there on a mission. Instead of getting in their way, make an effort to walk alongside them.

Get to know what they are really looking for

You can do this by analyzing the various ways your customers interact with your website. The following are a few suggestions:

  • Run an analysis to see how your customers navigate through your site.
  • Track your customers to see where they walk in and where they drop off.
  • Time how long they spend on your website
  • Monitor the amount and the type of content they went through
  • Take note of the most popular pages and the least popular page.

Know what your audience is saying

If somebody out there says that your product sucks or that your product is amazing, you need to know exactly who that person is and why they are saying that.

There is nothing better for your brand than customers who are happily promoting your product to all their friends, family, and co-workers. You know you are doing something right when people put their own word on the line to promote your cause.

Likewise, there is something seriously wrong if your customers are angry, hurt, and disappointed by your product or the way they were treated. A dissatisfied customer will spread word of their dissatisfaction like wild-fire and you never know how many bridges they can burn in the process.

Take care of your customer

If your customers are dissatisfied, make sure you address their problems. The best thing you can do is immediately solve their issue but if you don’t have the solution yet or are unsure of the best way to go about it, let them know.

Transparency is a great way to built trust with your customers and it is definitely better than giving them a vague answer with no promise at all. There is a huge amount of pressure to get everything right on the first try but the reality is that we are going to make mistakes and find ourselves in situations where we are unsure.

Even so, there is never an excuse to leave your customer behind. After all, they are the real reason you are still in business.

Reward your customer for promoting

Giving away free products or discount codes can get expensive really fast. But doing something as simple as sending a shout out to someone on twitter for posting about your product, or replying to their comment on Facebook will go a long way.

This lets your customers know you are actively listening to their concerns and that you value their opinions.

Use social media as a way to listen

Social media is a stage on which people express themselves. If you really want to get to the heart of what your audience needs, wants, and thinks then you should be taking a step back and listening here. Remember that social media is a platform on which you get to engage your customers.

Ask them questions and give them content to talk about. The best kind of marketing on social media is not blasting your audience with messages, it is getting them to talk to one another on the things you offer.

Find a tribe to get other people involved

For the most part, your customers will be more trustworthy of complete strangers on the web than to you. That’s because those outsiders have little to no vested interest in how well the company performs.

They instead promote the company for the value it brings to their life. These are the types of followers you want to grow and reward.

If you see a tribe starting to grow in your community, start by giving them a name. Interact with them and find out why they love your brand. Encourage them through social media and set up a system to reward them

Give your customers a name

People love being part of something greater than themselves. Having a name to rally behind unifies their cause and gives them a shared identity. Whether it be a shared love for your product or a shared love for your company’s vision, this group rallies together as a family.

Use Google alerts

With Google alerts, you can get all the information being shared about a specific topic, keyword, or industry. You simply type in your interest and Google will send you notifications of any websites, articles, blogs, or research that match your interest.

This is a great way for you to keep your ear low to know when anyone mentions you, your product, and your company.

When hiring, take care of the ones you do not take in

Say you put up applications for several jobs in your company and 10,000 people apply. Then out of those 10,000 you only really consider 1,000 for the second interview and eventually you decide to only hire 10 people. As an employer, you should be making sure the other 9,990 applicants feel appreciated for their efforts.

You never know when you might come across them again, but if you do, you want to make sure they valued your input and are thankful for the direction you led them in. By making the rejection a satisfying experience, you lay the foundation for what can be a life-long advocate of the business.

Respond to all your emails:

If someone has put in the time to sit down and write you an email, you owe it to them to write them something back. If it has been longer than a week you need to go back and tell them you are sorry. Then pick up where you left off and continue the conversation.

Till next time…

We hope this podcast episode has given you valuable insight into listening to your customers and tips on how to engage with them. As always, we are committed to your success and we believe in your mission.

8 Instagram Tips for Small Businesses

What’d you see the last time you scrolled through your Instagram feed?

If you’re like me, you were bombarded with selfies, pictures of delicious-looking food, videos of people’s pets, and inspirational quotes.

And probably not too many interesting posts from small businesses.

The sad fact is that lots of small businesses aren’t even on Instagram. Often, they either don’t want to learn how to use it or they don’t think it’ll help them improve their business.

But they’re wrong. Instagram can help your small business succeed.

And that especially applies if your ideal customers are anywhere from 12 to 25 years old. Just take a look at how popular the app is with that audience:

age graph

But even if you’re marketing to an older demographic, Instagram is worth your time. After all, at 4.21%, brand engagement rates highest on Instagram. That’s right – it beats both Twitter and Facebook.

So, let’s talk about several ways you can use Instagram for your small business to effectively to engage with your audience and get better results from your social media marketing efforts.

1. Find, follow, and interact with your ideal customers

Finding your ideal customers on Instagram isn’t too difficult. The first thing you should do is look at the accounts who are following businesses similar to yours – if they’re following them, then they’re probably going to be interested in what your business has to offer too.

For example, if you’re a fitness guru who sells online weight loss courses, you’d want to follow some of the people who follow popular fitness gurus. If you’re a marketing agency, you’d want to follow some of the people who follow popular marketing agencies.

You get the picture.

Now, don’t get me wrong – not all of the people you follow will follow you back. But some of them will, and there’s a good chance they’ll engage with you if you’re posting the right content.

Then, you can start interacting with those people by commenting on their photos, liking their photos, and even sending them direct messages.

But keep this in mind:

If you spam people or write generic comments that aren’t tailored to fit the photo/account you’re commenting on, you’ll just hurt your brand and annoy people. Take the time to really form a genuine connection with your audience, and your efforts will eventually pay off.

2. Create content that appeals to your target audience

You know your target audience, but do you know what kind of content will make them engage with your brand on Instagram?

If not, it’s time to start researching. Take a look at your competitors’ accounts, and figure out which kinds of photos get the most engagement there. Of course, you don’t want to steal those photos, but you can certainly use them as inspiration when you’re creating your own posts.

If you’re not sure what kind of content to post on Instagram, here are a few ideas:

  • Behind-the-scenes videos
  • Inspirational quotes
  • Employee selfies
  • Blog post images
  • Product sneak peeks
  • Product arrangements

Try several (or all) of these, and see what gets the most engagement. Then, you can change your posting strategy based on what your audience likes best.

3. Fill out your bio strategically

Instagram isn’t LinkedIn – it’s much more casual. That means there’s no need for you to write a stuffy, boring bio full of business jargon.

Instead, opt for a more lighthearted feel to humanize your brand. Think about your ideal customer, and write your bio in a way that appeals to them.

As far as formatting, you can use emojis, vertical spacing, and other tricks to help your bio stand out from the crowd. Just take a look at this bio:

make your bio noticeable

See how Lime Crime uses vertical spacing and emojis? Their bio formatting looks much more interesting that it would if it were just a boring sentence about their company.

I’m not saying you absolutely need to use emojis or vertical formatting. Think about your target audience and what they might like to see in your bio, and take a look at what you most successful competitors are doing. From there, you can make an informed decision about how to format your bio.

Tip: While it’s good to be creative in your bio, you shouldn’t sacrifice clarity for the sake of creativity. Make sure your bio states what your company does in a way that allows the people who view your profile to immediately understand it.

4. Post high-quality photos

Don’t worry – you don’t need professional photography skills or even a good camera to pull this off. All you need is your iPhone camera.

Here are a few DIY photography tips you can use to improve your photo quality:

  • Use natural light to your advantage. If you’re shooting outdoors, try to take the photos in the late afternoon when the lighting is best. If you’re indoors, just open up a window (or your blinds) and you’ll be good to go!
  • Don’t use the front facing camera if you can help it. Using the back camera on your smart phone will often result in higher-resolution photos.
  • Edit your photos. Do not (I repeat, do NOT) use the default filters included in the Instagram app! Instead, download a photo editing app and make a few adjustments until your photo looks like it was taken by a professional.

If you’ve got an iPhone and would like to learn how to use it to take amazing photos, check out the iPhone photography school blog. It’s full of tips that’ll help you boost the quality of your photos!

5. Use hashtags

When you’re using hashtags, think about what words your target market might be searching for that also apply to your photo. For example, if you’re running an entrepreneurship blog and posting inspirational quotes to your Instagram account, you might try using hashtags like #entrepreneur and #mondaymotivation.

Whatever industry you’re in, use the Hashtagify tool to research and determine the best hashtags to use for your business and target audience. When you type in a tag, you’ll get other tag suggestions, like this:

use of hashtag

Experiment with different hashtag combinations and see which work the best. As long as your hashtags are relevant to the photo you’re posting and your target audience, they should be fine.

A word of warning:

Don’t overdo it with your hashtags. If you include 15+ hashtags every time you post a photo, you’ll look spammy and desperate, which will hurt your brand. Trust me – that’s not worth any amount of likes.

So, how many hashtags should you use?

Try sticking with 3 to 5 hashtags per post. That way, you can include enough hashtags to drive engagement but not so many that your account looks ridiculous.

6. Offer discounts

If your small business is an eCommerce store, you can get new followers and keep existing followers around by offering exclusive discounts on your Instagram account.

All you need to do is create a graphic that shows the discount percentage and discount code (you can easily do this using Canva), then explain how to use the code in your caption.

But you don’t have to be an eCommerce store owner to use this tip. Get creative, and figure out a way to offer exclusive discount for the products and/or services you offer.

7. Make sure your feed is cohesive

To create a strong brand on Instagram, you need a cohesive feed. Ideally, your pictures should stick to a similar color scheme (if you have a brand style guide, use it), and you should use the same filter and/or editing process for each photo you post.

Let’s take a look at a good example of a cohesive Instagram feed. It belongs to YouTuber Anastasjia Louise:

instagram cohesive feed

You can see that she sticks to a dark theme, and her pictures are mostly black and white. As a result, her feed is visually appealing and you immediately get a strong sense of her personal brand when you look at it.

But you don’t necessarily need to stick to a dark theme like her. Think about your audience and what types of photos are most likely to appeal to them. Then, create a cohesive feed by using a photo editing app like Afterlight or VSCOcam to create a custom editing process.

When you use one of these apps and edit a photo the way you like, edit all of your other photos that way too. This is one of the most important steps when you’re trying to create a cohesive feed.

You’ll also want to share the same kind of content consistently – that way, your audience knows what to expect (and they know it’ll be something they like!). Just make sure you monitor your results when you post and adjust your strategy based on which types of photos are getting the most engagement.

8. Craft some killer copy

Don’t underestimate the power of your copy when you’re writing captions for your Instagram posts. Those captions can be the difference between 1 like and 1,000 likes, so take your time while writing and make sure whatever you put there is good.

Also, keep in mind that Instagram captions can help you build your brand. If your brand is edgy, write something edgy. If your brand is positive and uplifting, write something positive and uplifting.

Whatever you decide to write for your captions, tailor the messaging based on your brand and target audience, and you’ll see better overall results from your Instagram marketing efforts.

In Conclusion

Just like anything else, the results you get from your small business Instagram account will depend on how much effort you put into it.

Follow the tips outlined here consistently, and you can feel confident knowing that you’ll soon see your following begin to grow. Keep it up, and who knows – Instagram marketing might just become one of your most powerful methods of connecting with new customers!

Which of these tips will you use to start improving your Instagram marketing efforts? Share in the comments section!

How to Write Content Your Audience Cares About

Just about every writer has experienced it.

That nerve-wracking moment when you share a blog post, crossing your fingers in the hopes that it’ll help drive traffic to your website.

But then…

Nothing.

You wait and wait, and your blog post doesn’t get one single comment. No shares on social media either.

You dig a little deeper, look at your Google Analytics account, and realize no one has viewed the post at all.

And you’re devastated. All of that hard work feels like a waste of time because you didn’t get the results you wanted from your blog post.

Now, a lot of writers might give up after going through this a few times, but not you. You’re curious to learn how you can improve your blog posts so they drive traffic to your site, help you build a better brand, and establish you as an authority in your industry.

The answer?

Write content your audience cares about.

And that’s doesn’t just apply to blog posts – it applies to everything from website content to whitepapers, and it’ll make all the difference in the results you see from content marketing. So, let’s talk about a few strategies you can use to figure out what specific content your audience wants to read and write content that meets their needs.

Create marketing personas, and reference them during brainstorming sessions.

Marketing personas are simply fictional representations of your target audience members. They should include a picture that represents your target audience member and other things like:

  • Demographics
  • Job title
  • Salary
  • Goals (both in business and in life)
  • Challenges
  • Educational background

You may also want to include other information (political preferences, career path, etc.) depending on the kind of content you’re creating and who you’re targeting.

Either way, if you don’t already have marketing personas, it’s time to create some. Today.

You can get the information you need to create personas by looking through your current customer data (start using Google Analytics for this if you aren’t already), taking surveys, or interviewing your customers and prospects. If you choose to perform interviews, use this list of questions as reference.

Your final persona might look something like this example from Buyer Persona Institute:

image1

Once you’ve got your personas (you’ll need one for each ideal customer group you’re targeting), keep them handy every time you create content. Then, before you write something, you can ask yourself these important questions:

Will my content resonate with this target audience member? What benefits will this person get from reading my content?

If the content won’t resonate with your target audience and they won’t benefit from it, change the topic you’re writing about to something that is relevant and beneficial.

Tip: Keep in mind that not all of your content necessarily needs to appeal to all of the audiences represented in your marketing personas. For example, you can create two separate lead nurturing emails if you have two different target audiences and tailor each email to fit the correct persona. By doing so, you’ll see better results from your marketing efforts because all of your content would be more targeted.

Send a survey to your current email list.

If you’ve been in business for a while, you probably have a decent-sized email list of customers you send blog posts, newsletters, and other information to. (If you don’t have a list, read this post to learn how you can start building one up!)

But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can’t use email for other things too. What I’m talking about is customer surveys.

That’s right – using this method, you’re going to figure out how to write content your audience cares about by simply asking them.

Seems like common sense, right?

It is, but far too few businesses are using this method to their advantage. Don’t be one of those businesses.

All you need to do is send your email list an email that asks this question:

“What is the #1 obstacle you’re facing in business today?”

Of course, word it in your own way, and elaborate on why you’re asking the question so you’ll improve your chances of getting lots of responses.

But wait….

Why are you asking your audience that particular question?

Simple. Once you know what challenge they’re facing, you can create content that helps them learn how to overcome that challenge.

Let’s go over an example.

Say you’re running a consulting business, and you specifically offer consultations to freelancers so they can learn how to make good money at their craft. You ask your email list the question above, and a lot of people answer like this:

“I don’t know how to set good rates because I’m not sure how to calculate what I should charge.”

With that knowledge, you could create content that helps them overcome that challenge, like:

  • A freelance rate calculator
  • A blog post that shows the average rates for different types of freelancers
  • A downloadable resource that explains how freelancers can set a rate that works for their cost of living and financial goals

See how that works?

And you can bet that your audience would find that content useful since they’re the ones who pretty much asked for it in the first place.

So, start surveying, and use your most popular answers to create content your audience cares about. You’re sure to see a better response when you know you’re giving them exactly what they’re asking for.

Look where your audience hangs out online to see what questions they’re asking.

Maybe you skipped over that last tip because you don’t have an email list. That’s okay – you can write amazing content that targets your audience even if you don’t have a list right now.

How?

Figure out where your audience is discussing their pain points online, and start hanging out there.

Now sure how to go about that?

Well, let’s say you’re a real estate agent, and your primary target audience is home-buyers. You could look around on the Real Estate SubReddit to see what questions home-buyers are asking.

After looking through lots of posts there, you could easily come away with ideas for content. The key is to write content that addresses their concerns.

For example, maybe you’d see someone asking about the best way to buy a house while selling their current home. And maybe you’d see someone else asking about the best way to find a good realtor. And someone else asking what they should watch out for when looking at a potential home.

BOOM – you’ve got 3 ideas for blog posts right there:

  • How to Buy a New House While Selling Your Current Home
  • 10 Tips for Picking the Right Real Estate Agent
  • 10 Red Flags to Look for When You’re Buying a New Home

Not too difficult, right?

And all it takes is a little bit of digging to figure out where your target audience is bringing up their concerns online. Here are a few ideas for places you should consider looking:

  • Online forums – Reddit isn’t the only forum to consider. See if you can find any industry-specific forums that are popular among your target audience members.
  • Facebook groups – Join Facebook groups that are popular among member of your target audience. Then, you can look at what they’re posting there to get inspiration for your content.
  • Twitter – Start following your target audience on Twitter and looking up popular hashtags within your industry. Not only will you be able to get good content ideas – you’ll build your social presence online too!

And here’s a bonus tip for you:

Type “forum:yourtopic” into the Google search bar. Not literally, of course – you’ll want to switch “yourtopic” for the topic you’d actually like to find a forum about. Then, when you hit search, Google will show you a list of popular forums where people are discussing that topic.

Use Buzzsumo.

Buzzsumo is a free tool you can use to come up with content your target audience will be interested in. It looks like this:

buzzsumo

See that little white box at the top of the screenshot?

That’s where you type in the topic you’re interested in writing about. Then, you’ll see popular content that others have written about that topic (including social share amounts). You can use the information to brainstorm your own similar topics – just make sure you avoid copying anyone else’s content too closely.

In Conclusion

If you want your content to drive real results for your business, you need to be strategic and make sure everything you write is relevant to your target audience. Period.

But even when you’re doing everything right, you can’t expect overnight results – content marketing is a long process that doesn’t provide much instant gratification.

Don’t give up, though. Keep writing that amazing content that gets your target audience talking, and you’ll eventually find yourself landing more clients than ever… all because you took the time to understand and address their needs.

It might take weeks. It might take months. It might even take years. But you can bet that the time and effort you put in will be well worth it.

Which of these strategies will you use to write content your audience cares about? Share your favorite in the comments section!

 

18 Essential Metrics to Measure Your Digital Marketing

Depending on where you are in your marketing journey, digital marketing is either a voodoo-like superstition or a teachable science anyone can master. If you’re in the former camp, you’re probably struggling to master your metrics; measuring results is the difference between wishful thinking and actual return on your marketing investment.

To be sure, there are literally hundreds of numbers, statistics, and analytical combinations you could track to give you insight into your marketing efforts and customer behasvior, and not every metric is relevant to your marketing plan. That said, there are a few key metrics in three broad categories (traffic, conversions, and revenue) that are universally applicable to judging your digital marketing success.  Here are 18 important digital marketing metrics to watch.

BONUS: 18 Essential Metrics to Measure Your Digital Marketing Get My Bonus

Traffic Metrics

8191245592_65e5bbd144_z

Image via Flickr by BlueFountainMedia

1. Total Site Visits

This is the big-picture number you should monitor and track over time to give you a rough idea of how effective your campaigns are at driving traffic. This number should grow steadily over time; if it drops month to month, it’s time to take a hard look at your marketing channels to identify the problem.

2. Traffic by Sources or Channels

This is useful for segmenting your traffic sources to pinpoint which ones are over and underperforming in your overall marketing campaigns. In general, you should break these down into the following four channels/sources:

  1. Direct Visitors – These are the ones who come to your website by typing your URL into their browser.
  2. Organic/Search – These are visitors who arrive at your site based on a search query.
  3. Referrals – These visitors arrived at your side from a link on another website or blog.
  4. Social Media – If you have a social media presence (and who doesn’t?), you’ll want to measure the visitors who arrive at your site from your social media platforms. Social traffic also gives you some general insight into the overall effectiveness of your content marketing and other digital campaigns, as well, since social traffic is a good indicator of engagement and awareness.

3. Number of New Visitors versus Number of Return Visitors

This is an important distinction to track; return visitors give you an indication of the usefulness and quality of your content—whether it’s “sticky” enough to attract multiple visits. Tracking this ratio week over week and month over month shows you how your new content is performing. For example, if you have a high ratio of new visitors to return visitors compared to a previous month, it’s an indication that new content is doing its job driving traffic, but the rest of your website doesn’t meet the needs of these new visitors.

4. Interactions Per Visit

This is a more detailed analysis of your website traffic, but it yields actionable insight if you know how to interpret it. You’ll want to look at variables such as how many pages a user visits, how long they stay on individual pages, and what they do on each page (leave a review, for example).

Don’t confuse interactions with conversions, although the ultimate goal is to have your interactions lead to more conversions such as downloads, subscriptions, purchases, etc. An analysis of your interactions per visit gives you the opportunity to discover which activities and behaviors are keeping visitors on your site and what you can do to encourage more of them.

4a. Time on Site

This is a corollary to interactions per visit and gives you insight into the level of interest and engagement of your website visitors. This is a good all-purpose indicator of how well your site is performing, since visitors who spend a lot of time on your site are finding useful content. Visitors who spend a lot of time on your site are also most likely to be your most committed customers; knowing where these visitors spend their time interacting with your site helps you optimize content for these customers to increase their lifetime value.

5. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the number of people who visit your site and leave right away without performing any meaningful action. A high bounce rate can point to several flaws in your digital marketing: Poor campaign targeting, irrelevant traffic sources, weak landing pages, etc.

If you have an e-commerce site, your bounce rate is synonymous with the abandonment rate and this usually indicates problems with your checkout process. Is pricing transparent? Do you load people up with last-minute offers? Spend some time evaluating how to improve the checkout experience.

6. Exit Rate

This is a helpful metric, especially for websites that have a multi-page conversion process. The exit rate differs from the bounce rate in that the exit rate measures the number of people who left the site from a particular page as a percentage of all people who viewed that particular page. This helps you identify drop-off points in your conversion process so you can optimize accordingly.

7. Mobile Traffic

Mobile-Phone-Search-Share-2013-2015-768x457

Mobile Share of Organic Search Traffic

With the rise of mobile dominance in content consumption, it’s almost negligent not to track your mobile visitor metrics so you can understand your mobile customers and increase your conversions. Here’s what you need to know:

  1. What percent of your traffic is mobile?
  2. What devices and browsers do they use?
  3. Where are they coming from (direct, organic, referral, social, etc.)
  4. What content are they consuming?

Finally, you should take a look at your site speed because slow load times actually affects pretty much every one of your mobile marketing metrics, from SEO to conversions.

8. Cost Per Visitor (CPV) and Revenue Per Visitor (RPV)

These broad measurements give you a simple formula for the profitability of each marketing channel: If your RPV exceeds your CPV, you’re on your way. These numbers also help shape your budgets for certain types of paid campaigns.

Take AdWords, for example. Imagine that for a particular month, you attributed 10 sales with a value of $15,000 to your AdWords campaign. During that same period, AdWords generated 1,000 visitors to your site. This means that your RPV for your AdWords campaign last month was $15 ($15,000/1,000=$15). This gives you a hard ceiling ($15 per visitor or less) for your marketing budget in this channel before you start losing money.

Your CPV is calculated by dividing your total investment in a particular channel by the total number of visitors it generated. You should run these numbers for each of your traffic sources (search, social, email, etc.) to give you a rough basis to measure success for each channel.

BONUS: 18 Essential Metrics to Measure Your Digital Marketing Get My Bonus

Conversion Metrics

7460432496_a36106b720_z

Image via Flickr by SEOplanter

9. Total Conversions

One way to define conversions is the number of anonymous site visitors who become digital records in your CRM or marketing database, whether by making a purchase, downloading an asset, or subscribing to a mailing list. This is the number your financial department will be most interested in, the ultimate measure of success for a marketer. Low conversion rates are indicative of any number of problems, from poorly designed websites to unattractive offers.

10. “Micro” Conversion Rates

Pretty much all marketers track overall, or “macro” conversions, but to really drill deep into your mobile marketing metrics, it’s a good idea to track conversions at the campaign level, or “micro” conversions, to ensure that these smaller KPIs are contributing to your overall marketing strategy.

For example, if you have very high conversion rates pushing a new lead magnet such as an e-book, but an extremely small number of leads move to the next stage of the funnel, you’ve got a problem. Even though this campaign is posting good metrics, it’s really not advancing your overall marketing goals, and tracking these micro conversions can help you identify the source of the problem.

11. Conversion Funnel Rates

Rand Fishkin, the “wizard of Moz,” considers these metrics one of the three most important overall for digital marketers. He defines them as “knowing the percent of potential customers that make it through each step of a given conversion process, and which channels or behaviors predict that they’ll make it further.” Inherent in this is a deeper understanding of how each stage of the funnel affects your ultimate ROI and where to direct your resources.

12. Click Through Rates

Measuring click-through rates (CTR) is essential for email marketing and paid ad campaigns. For PPC campaigns, a higher than average CTR can dramatically decrease your cost per click (up to 50 percent on AdWords, for example), while a lower than average score can drive costs through the roof (up to 400 percent higher on AdWords).

13. New/Unique Visitor Conversions versus Return Visitor Conversions

The way a new visitor interacts with your website is very different from the way a regular visitor behaves. For many marketers, tracking these numbers yields useful information for reducing your bounce rate and increasing your return visitor rates, conversions, and customer lifetime value through upselling and marketing automation, for example.

14. Cost Per Conversion

Depending on how you define conversion, this can be called cost per lead, cost per referral, etc., but the overall metric is extremely important, because it ultimately determines your margins. Why? A high cost per conversion can turn a high conversion rate into a negative if the costs are so high they drop your net income too much.

15. Lead to Close Ratio

This is a simple metric to compute: Divide your total number of leads by your total number of sales/closes. Although this is more a measurement of your sales efficiency—and you’ll want to investigate a low close rate—you’ll also need it for your marketing ROI projections.

Revenue Metrics

16. Value Per Visit

This isn’t necessarily simply a revenue metric; it’s actually tied to your interactions numbers. It’s also a difficult value to quantify, because your visitors add value every time they come to your site or read your blog (think page views and traffic for cpm advertising). Obviously, in e-commerce, tangible value is added when dollars are spent on a purchase, but intangible value is also created if a customer leaves a review or shares a product on social media.

Many marketers assign an arbitrary value to these customer actions and then calculate a total value, including purchases, for a set period of time. They then divide that number by the total number of visits to arrive at a VPV metric.

Tracking this metric over time gives you insight into how successful you are at getting customers to perform a certain value-added action, such as writing a review, leaving a comment, socially sharing, or otherwise interacting with your site.

17. Cost Per Acquisition

Cost per acquisition (CPA) differs from cost per conversion because CPA is all about revenue; this metric kicks in once someone becomes a paying customer, the Holy Grail of marketing. CPA tells you exactly how many marketing dollars you have to spend to get someone to open his wallet.

Sometimes it’s tempting to focus on metrics like cost per click, which you must track in paid campaigns, but it’s a short-sighted metric. Imagine you’ve developed a new PPC campaign and it seems to be performing well—CTRs are up from previous campaigns and your CPC is lower.

But then you track revenue and discover you’ve only acquired three or four paying customers, meaning your entire marketing spend on that channel added virtually nothing to your bottom line. In this case, your campaign metrics look great, but your CPA is astronomical. Your CPA keeps the big picture always in focus.

18. Return on Investment (Real and Projected)

This is the ultimate measure of your marketing success: Are your marketing technologies and efforts profitable and delivering results to your bottom line? Here’s where your lead-to-close ratio comes into play to help keep you on track. If you’re spending $25 per lead and your closing rate is 25 percent, it costs you $100 to acquire a new customer. If your average customer value exceeds that amount, you’re in the black on projected marketing ROI.

Depending where you are on the digital marketing spectrum, you may or may not want to formally track each of these metrics, but doing so will give you a pretty accurate view of how you’re doing, what channels are effective, and where your efforts need improvement. Ideally, you’ll get into a rhythm that lets you easily identify trends and variances—and make rapid adjustments to ensure a steady stream of leads and paying customers.

12 Experts Share Mobile App Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

You finally did it. You spent countless hours perfecting your app and you have just launched it into the marketplace. So, naturally you should be expecting millions of downloads and money flooding in…right?

After all your app has all the right widgets and looks amazing. Plus, you invested a good amount of money and time into it. So why is your app barely getting any downloads? Well, it could be that your app is not being marketed the way it should be.

We reached out to 12 professionals and asked them for their Mobile App Marketing tips for Small Businesses. We believe their strategies will guide you towards the levels of success you are looking for.

1. Paul Manwaring

Design & Marketing Consultant
https://outsprung.com/
“I have found a couple things extremely helpful while working with a few startups and their apps”

Twitter/Facebook Ads:
Being able to hyper target users of these 2 social media platforms you can really find the perfect leads. For instance we had an app allowing users to find the best food at lunchtime in London.So we were able to target users in specific areas of London, during the hours of 11am-2pm (the busy lunch hours and when people might be looking for some food or just using their phones during their break).

Influencer Marketing:
Great way to get your app in the eyes of your audience. I’m an influencer myself in a sub-genre of music. I have been asked by manufacturers of DJ equipment, speakers, audio production software simply because I have a large following of exactly the type of people they want to target. It’s very powerful to get a good review from someone who lives and breathes the niche you are trying to break into.

2. Richard Kelleher

World’s first Marketing Sociologist

When it all starts
Marketing your appstarts before the approval process by iTunes and Google for your app. It should start at the onset of your app development.

Start with Focus Groups
You need to reach out to the old-fashioned marketing tools to market your app. Start with a focus group of your customers. What features do they need on their app? Where do they hear about the apps they install on their
mobile device?

Location is key
What publications do your customers read (including online ones) that you need old-fashioned public relations for? A good press release placed on TechCrunch or Mashable is like 30 years ago of getting your press released placed in the New York Times and Washington Post.

Utilize your platform to the fullest
I have a saying – Think tap, not touch – throughout the process. People touch their computer, tap their mobile device.

Do not cram everything in
You need to utilize the cloud to serve your application. Associated Press app takes about two or three minutes to download. Too much information. Web design focused, not mobile. Thirty seconds is death to a mobile app loading. Don’t try to be everything to everyone via an app. That’s the problem with websites and why they were abandoned by consumers for mobile apps.

Richard’s Final Words of Wisdom
Think of your mobile app as the sales brochure from last century. Too few people use the tap to call feature available in most app design.

3. Katie Meurin

Director of Marketing
https://www.zco.com/
@KatieMeurin

Build up your credibility
For a new developer, their marketing goals should be centered around building new reviews.If you spend a lot of money on marketing before you build reviews you will send visitors to a new listing without the credibility of seeing other reviews. I usually recommend a grassroots approach – start with your friends, family, colleagues. Maybe throw an app launch event and ask everyone to review there.

Get a business card
If you don’t already have business cards for your company, you need to. Building up your online presence is important but don’t forget who is actually behind every computer, people.

Build up credibility anywhere you go
Carry around a business card that asks people to review, give it to everyone you meet. Adding a simple line asking people to review your app will let people know that you value their opinion. The reviews will not only help you establish credibility with visitors but also with the app stores, so they will show your app more in search results and you will get more organic downloads.

4. Brady Christensen

Co-Founder
www.BookPrimo.com

Words of wisdom:
Most people are looking for a magic-bullet to market their mobile-app. They’re crossing their fingers and hoping that the answer to their marketing problems issomething like “Use Adwords!” “Do SEO”, etc. Well here is the closest thing to a magic-bullet I can give you

Know your audience:
Who is the ideal person to download and use your mobile app? Once you know that, find out where they hangout online.

Here is an example:
You own a fitness app that helps increase strength on the big lifts like bench press, squat, and dead lift. You do some research and you learn that your audience is young men, ages 18 to 25 that want to build muscle and strength. You would start by advertising on pages that cater to that demographic. You also found out that your customers are heavily involved with Stronglifts 5×5 workout routine, a workout routine highly recommended for beginners. You now know to position yourself with Stronglifts 5×5 to start bringing in even more of your ideal customers. You would then contact the creator of stronglifts 5×5 and negotiate an agreement for an advertisement, facebook mention, or newsletter blast.

The bare minimum
For anyone who is just getting started, I would highly recommend, at the very least, running very targeted ads on Facebook to people who meet your criteria.

5. Jonathan Poston

President
www.Yiveo.com

Seven ways to promote your app:

  1. Improve the visibility of your mobile app through ASO (app store optimization)
  2. Circulating it around your established network (email, social, website, etc.)
  3. Advertising it on social media
  4. PPC-Google AdWords
  5. Posting a press release
  6. Applying for app awards,
  7. Internal incentives to download and keep the app (retention is a huge problem) might include a freemium model

6. Bob Bentz

President
ATS Mobile

The right tools, for the right game
While app store optimization is certainly important, marketers must not rely solely on promotion within the stores to maximize downloads. There are over two million apps in the stores and finding a particular app is similar to finding the proverbial needle in the haystack, despite the best ASO efforts”.

Know the game and play it right
It is not easy to get consumers interested in downloading another app on their mobile phone when smartphone users are already using an average of 26.7 apps per month, according to a Nielsen study. Too often, a company spends all of its money on developing an app and does not reserve any money for marketing the app. That is a rookie mistake. Don’t make it.

Develop a marketing plan
A company needs to have developed a structured marketing plan in advance of the release of the app. It needs a plan to tell existing customers and prospects good reasons why they need the app and where the app can be downloaded. It needs to evaluate all of its current marketing channels to determine which would be best for promoting an app.

Find the right platforms
Facebook, for instance, would probably be better for facilitating app downloads than outdoor advertising since a social media user is likely on her mobile phone already as opposed to a driver who is hopefully not on his phone. Google AdMob might be the best place since it enables an app marketer to advertise within other apps that consumers have already downloaded.

Facebook Ads
There is no doubt about the power of creating buzz on social media for an app launch. It is an important part of the initial publicity required. And, nobody does app marketing better than Facebook which earns a significant part of its ad revenue from brands pushing app downloads.

Advertise outside the web
Of course, internet advertising is not always the best source for app downloads. If the app has a huge budget, it may very well be television that results in the most downloads. *Game of War* did a great job of promoting its app with eye catching Kate Upton and Mariah Carey as the stars of the commercials.

Be in the spotlight
Acquisition costs will not always be high priced efforts like the television advertising for *Game of War*. Publicity is a major driver of new app downloads so use press releases and other public relations efforts to get the word out. Include a social media blitz as well. The ROI provided by public relations efforts will likely result in the best ROI of any of the promotional efforts.

Spread the word, fast.
When marketing an app, it is absolutely critical to get off to a quick start to break through the supply of apps in the app store. If an app is buried below thousands of others in the rankings, it is going to be difficult to get found. Therefore, app marketers must get the word out quickly about the app by using a high level of growth hacking or a large advertising budget in an attempt to gain a featured listing and benefit from organic downloads. Downloads beget more downloads thanks to the viral effect of the purchase and the improved ASO.

Advertise on mobile apps
Research from Localytics found an added bonus to advertising apps. App users that were acquired as a result of being discovered via a mobile ad network were more likely to come back for multiple uses on the app than those that found it from an organic search on the app store. This is likely due to the fact that the ad creative has done a good job in pre-selling users on the benefits of the app and that the advertising was highly targeted.

Encourage Sharing
The viral effect of apps is an important phenomenon to take advantage of. An app should encourage existing users to share the app with friends or on social media. (Think Candy Crush.) This is a great way to take advantage of the viral publicity that a mobile app can provide.

Add your app URL to your content marketing
Another great way to drive traffic to an app is to find the URL of the app download in the iTunes or Google Play listing for the app. Keep in mind, this is not the URL for the business, but the URL that is used by the app stores. Then, when the business does content marketing on its own blog or on external sites, it can link to the app store URL listings. The goal is
to get multiple rankings on the search engines for the app. Those rankings might be the page on the business website that promotes the app download and the app stores’ direct URL’s for the download.

Go International
For iPhone and Android apps, there are multiple countries where the app can be listed. If an app makes its money on advertising, there is no reason not to list the app in all countries, especially populous countries like China and India. The Apple App and Google Play stores are available in over a hundred countries so it makes sense to be listed in as many of them as necessary. Of course, if the app has an ecommerce element to it, this may not be practical.

Be present in multiple stores
There are many secondary Android app stores and therefore many places where an Android app can be marketed. Amazon, Kindle, Nook store from Barnes & Noble, AppBrain, and GetJar are a few alternate places where an Android app can be marketed in addition to its logical home base in the Google Play store.

Measure your CPI and advertise wisely
There is a defined cost to acquire app downloads and it is measured by a Cost Per Install (CPI) index. The CPI per vertical market varies, but according to Fiksu, it averages $2.98 per user in 2015 and it is rising every year as businesses expand their use of mobile advertising, thus driving CPI costs up.

7. Alice Williams

Online Content Contributor
Business Bee

Bring on the hype
Generating excitement via social media is a must*. SMB’s should plan out a social media campaign that starts approximately 3 months before the app is released. In doing this, the SMB can tease out information regarding the app to build awareness and market it in a cost efficient manner.

Create a Launch Event
Another way to generate excitement and build community relations is to throw an event to announce the launch of the app. The SMB can invite notable members of the community, bloggers and social media influencers to generate buzz and to try and attract members of the local press (which is fantastic PR for the SMB and their app)

Include your app in your emails
A way to help market the app without much extra work is to be sure to include information about the app in any email communications the SMB sends out to customers and to of course have a dedicated email announcing the app when it is live.

8. Steve Hatmaker, Jr.

Digital Marketing Strategist
@stevehatmakerjr

Start Today
One of the best ways to guarantee marketing success for your mobile app is to begin today. Most small business get involved in marketing the app when it is too late, or even worse, they completely over looking any kind of marketing.

Know your competitive edge
After you complete your marketing research for your ideal audience, you need to discover your apps unique selling proposition. What makes your app unique? Why is it better than your competitors?

Optimize your app
Also, it is very important to optimize you app for the App Store. This includes optimal use of keywords in your app name and description.

Take your time
Try to avoid the rush to get your app out immediately, you have a better chance of getting press coverage if you have an advanced target release date.

Design the perfect press kit
Be sure to offer sneak peeks and teasers such as screenshots of your app, video promo, and blog post. People love visuals. Start giving them insight and build buzz long before the apps launch.

The power of email
Be sure to send out emails, tweets, and Facebook post to your current customer list. Never underestimate the power of an email.

Build a microsite
Build an enticing microsite just for your app. Keep it updated with fresh content about your app.

Spread the word
Contact sites like App Advice (https://appadvice.com/appnn), Macworld (https://www.macworld.com), and 148 Apps (https://www.148apps.com). These are popular sites that have large audiences and can help spread the word about your app. As soon as it releases, write these sites and ask for a review.

Ask for reviews
Ask customers for reviews after your app is released.

9. Marin Perez

Content Marketing Manager
kahuna.com

Solve your customer’s problem, not your own.
First off, make sure your app is actually solving a problem. Many businesses feel like they have to create an app because everybody’s doing it but an app strategy isn’t a one-time project, it’s a long-term program. Because of that, make sure it fits with your business goals.

Use all your tools
Make sure you leverage every single touchpoint you have with the customer to promote the app. Many brands will promote their app on the website, on social, on email and on other digital platforms but don’t ignore your other connections with customers. If you’re a brick-and-mortar, use your in-store signage or your receipts to promote your apps.

Leverage your communication channels

Finally, don’t forget to leverage the communication channels you own to get the most out of your app. Brands will likely use paid media to acquire new app users and it’s important to get those users over to channels you can control like email, push notification, in-app messages and more. From there, ensure you’re delivering personalized and relevant communications to your users across every channel.

10. Boni Satani

Inbound Marketer
Panamaxil
https://twitter.com/bonirulzz

Six ways to promote your Mobile App

  1. Add a link of your app on your existing website
  2. Offer a Free Recharge/ Coupons to encourage users to download your app
  3. Guest post on the relevant website and in a way promote your app via
    author bio
  4. Encourage your existing users to promote the app by offering them some
    incentive
  5. Optimize your App title and Description around relevant keywords
  6. Ensure that your app is indeed adding value to users

11. Joe Franklin

https://www.franklinmarketingcommunications.com/

Focus on the Rankings
When marketing a mobile app the, it’s important to focus first and foremost on ranking. The app market is chaotic, and if your app isn’t ranked high enough, it won’t be discovered. It can be tempting to lean on ad networks that will promote your app through other apps and banners, and while this may work, it can also be costly.

Develop a Social Media Strategy
I recommend that my cash-strapped clients focus first on social media. Regardless of size, every mobile app company should have a social media strategy in place – it increases brand reach and can help drawn in the right audience for your app. It can also be a powerful communication tool between the app developer and end user, which can help keep reviews within the app store positive, thereby helping to increase rankings and visibility.

Keep an open line of Communication
If users can only complain about an app through its review process, developers are setting themselves up for failure. Keeping an open line of communication through social media fosters actionable feedback that helps with updates and cuts down on ranking-killing bad reviews.”

12. Brian Sparker

Head of Content Marketing

Be Refined by the Fire
The best tip I share with my clients is to monitor and manage your online reviews. Having a firm understanding of your customer’s feedback and pain points can make a huge difference for mobile apps as it allows a business to leverage customer feedback, track issues the customer may be having and identifying trends through data analysis and common phrases used in the reviews.

More to come…

We hope our experts have given you valuable insight into marketing your app. 

With these tips you are well on your way to getting your app to the right people at the best time.

As always we we are committed to your success and believe in your mission.

 

How to Run App Install Ads On Facebook

Do you want more app downloads?

Facebook could help you out.

With its humongous reach at 1.4 billion monthly users globally, Facebook is one of the go-to places for business owners and marketers when promoting anything. Whoever your targets may be, chances are, they are on Facebook. 

Have you been tapping this opportunity? The opportunity to reach thousands to millions of your ideal customers?

Don’t take my word for it, though. Here are some examples of successful app install campaigns on Facebook.

  1. Facebook app install ads helped Westwing get their app some traction with ~5000 installs at 270% return on their ad spend.
  2. mySupermarket didn’t only increase their app installs, they also expanded their community by getting a 2000% jump on their page likes.

Undeniably, Facebook knows how big of an asset they are to businesses and they constantly make measures to give app publishers and business owners opportunities to succeed.

So why not get on the program and take advantage of promoting your app on Facebook? Arguably the best reason to advertise on Facebook (aside from the 1.4 billion monthly users thing) is that they allow you to target customers as narrow as possible, given you know the profiles of your ideal customers—what they like, where they are, how old they are and other information that are unique to the subset you are targeting.

promote apps on facebook

Imagine if you can promote your app directly to the people who are sure to benefit from and be interested in your app. When you cast a wide net when marketing—throwing ideas to the way and seeing what sticks—you lose money.

All you need to start advertising your app on Facebook is a good handle on which types of people would be interested in your app and some money. And it doesn’t even have to be a lot of money.

Assuming you already have a Facebook account and just want to know how to start advertising, I put together a no-nonsense guide on how to get started with app promotion on Facebook.

Ready? Follow along.

Create a page

Log in to Facebook.

Click on the downward arrowhead on the upper right corner of the page. It will reveal a dropdown menu.

Click on Create Page. 

create a facebook page

Choose a category. If you’re going to promote an app for your business, choose the category that matches the closest to the nature of your business. If you’re a local business, choose precisely that.

If you want to create a page that’s just dedicated to your app, click on Brand or Product. It provides the choice of building an “App Page”. For this tutorial, let’s choose that and use BusinessApp as the app name.

Facebook Page Category

Depending on the category you choose, Facebook will ask for more information like a more particular category, the name of your business/app/product, etc. Then, it will ask you more information to build up your profile and your business identity on Facebook. It will ask you information about your customers and a photo.

After you fill everything up, you’re done. Your new page will appear next.

You can start creating the ad for your app now that you have a page.

Create an Advert Account

From your new page, click on the same downward arrow on the upper right corner of your screen. Click on Create Adverts.

how to promote apps on facebook

You will see this loading page:

loading

The next page will ask you to choose your objective for advertising. Choose Get installs of your app then paste your app’s App Store or Play Store URL. Name your advert campaign.

Click Create Advert Account.

app promotion advert facebook

The next page will ask you to choose your country and the time zone you’re in.

create advert account

Click Set Audience & Budget next.

Define your target audience

Before you we go into modifying the settings for your ads, I just want to emphasize that the next step is for your first advert set and not the ads yet.

For this particular example, the campaign is to Get installs for your app. Now we will create an advert set which is the umbrella under which you can create multiple ads. 

The first step in creating an advert set is defining your target audience. Here is the page:Facebook ad targeting

The first thing you’d be asked to configure is the platform of your app. In this example, I chose iOS.

The next configuration is for the OS version. For example, if your app only works for iPhones with iOS 8 and above, choose 8 as the minimum operating system. You don’t want to be wasting your budget showing ads to people who can’t use your app.

Configure whether you want to show ads to people who are connected through cellular data and Wi-Fi, or exclusively Wi-Fi. Apple does not allow users to download apps that are more than 100mb over cellular data.

Also, consider that those who are on data will probably have a slower connection and limited bandwidth. For this reason, choose Wi-Fi only if your app size is close to or more than 100mb.

Then choose the age range, gender, and languages spoken of people you want to serve your ads to. It’s up to you to determine where and who your target audience is.

Generally, the more targeted your ads are, the better. If you know that certain cities will fare better than others, go ahead and target those cities.

However, you might be tempted to limit the age range setting based on your assumptions and even your initial validation. I suggest that you leave the age range broad for now. When the ads are run and the campaign starts collecting data, you will have a better idea which age groups deliver a lower cost-per-install (CPI). Then, you can set a narrower target age range.

Setting your budget and goals

Facebook ads cost money—but they work, that’s why publishers continue to run them. The success of your ad campaign relies on many factors but budget and goal-setting are arguably two of the most important next to how well you target your audience.

Budget

Choose between Daily budget or Lifetime budget.

If you choose daily, Facebook will only run ads within your daily cap. Don’t worry about Facebook running your well dry in the first few hours of the day. They make it a point to spread your spend throughout each day. Once the cap is hit, your ads will cease running and will resume the next day. If you choose lifetime, you only have to set the start and end of your campaign. Facebook will spread the ads evenly throughout the period you set.

budget facebook app promotion

Optimization & bidding

If you’ve run ads, whether for apps or something else, note that Facebook recently rolled-out major changes for optimization and bidding.

What to optimize for

For app install ads, you can tell Facebook to optimize ads either for app installs or link clicks. When you choose app installs, Facebook will show your ads to people who are likely to install the app you’re advertising.

If you choose link clicks, people who are likely to click will be shown your ad. If you’re very confident with your targeting and other factors like your app landing page, app description, and actual app function, going for link clicks makes more sense to you since clicks will have a high conversion rate if you know what you’re doing.

App installs are generally more expensive per conversion but it helps you test which way works. If a lot of people are clicking your ad but just a few are installing your app, you will have the chance to make some changes to your app landing page or listing without having to pay for the clicks that didn’t convert. Once you find the sweet spot, you can optimize for link clicks.

How much to bid

Understanding how ad bidding works can be a pain if you’re starting out. On a basic level, you need to know that ads which target the same audience go into auction—yours and other advertisers’. It’s an elaborate matter. But for now, this info is enough.

You can either choose to set a manual bid amount or you can let Facebook handle it for you. Facebook is generally trustworthy when it comes to handling your bids. Don’t think that Facebook is duping you out of your money. Going with auto-bidding is perfectly fine. Keep it simple at first. It delivers well.

When you get charged

You can either choose to pay per result (app install or link click) or by impression (when someone is shown your ad). Your choice will affect how often your ads get shown.

If you choose to pay per app install, use the manual bid option so you can let Facebook know how much you’re willing to pay for an install. If you choose to pay per impression, auto or manual both work.

Paying for link clicks doesn’t limit you—you can choose auto or manual bidding.

Nail your ad creative

After clicking Choose Advert Creative from the previous screen, you will now get the chance to “build” your ad creative.

Ad creatives are the actual ads that will get shown on Facebook. It’s the photos or video and the copy or the text you use for your ad.

How do you nail your ad creative? By knowing the people you cater to and making an add they will actually look at. It’s hard to gauge what they will all like, but you should at least know what can get your target audience’s attention.

You know what I’m getting at here! Know your audience. Know what they’ll actually relate to, what will pull their eyes in.

Ideas for photos

  • Best in-app screenshots which are shown on the screen of a phone. Show the phone to clearly shout that “this is an app!”
  • Photo still of people using the app or people experiencing what the app promises (example: AirBnB will show photos of people entering a new, quirky home)
  • Take advantage of Facebook’s carousel ad feature by using photos to show different features of your app
  • Check out ads from your competitors, app install ads and other well-performing Facebook ads

inside a phone facebook

Videos

While videos give you much more flexibility in terms of showing what your app can do, it is still a bit interruptive to Facebook users since the auto-play feature was released. It’s good that Facebook disabled the sound on auto-play. However, it is what it is, so better take advantage of this.

Take advantage of the first few seconds. Make the video visually appealing from the start. Do away with introductions. Use the first few seconds wisely as it will decide the success of your ad.

Copy—words matter

Visuals are powerful but that doesn’t mean that you neglect the text displayed with your ad.

As a straightforward guide, give the audience a summary of your app’s function. Keep it short but make sure it makes sense. It’s funny how much sense we lose when we try to be clever with words and fail at it. Catchy taglines (read: vague but WOW!) are awesome—if your app has already exploded in the market. For now, write an ad description that leaves nothing to doubt.

Don’t forget—the ad copy should be in a language and tone your target users understand.

Call to action or CTA

What’s a CTA? It’s that portion of the text where you tell your audience what it is exactly you want them to do.

It’s the text telling users exactly what you want them to do.

For games, CTAs use the word ‘Play’. For eCommerce apps, ‘Buy” or ‘Find the latest…’ are the best ones to include in your CTA.


Placing your order

After you complete designing your ad creative, you are now ready to run ads for app installs.


Monitoring your success

It is important that you monitor your success closely so you can adjust your ads accordingly. After your first batch of installs from ads, you’ll get an idea which people are the perfect fit for your app. From here, awesome tools to help you reach a better-targeted audience like Custom Audiences and Look-Alike Audiences will be made available to you.

The information from this post is enough for you to begin running ads. It’s just all up to you to start actually running them and improving your campaigns.

In a future post, we will tackle more topics on Facebook ads—so stay tuned.