Blog How to promote an app on social media

How to promote an app on social media

Alix Carman, Content Writer, Adjust, Jun 22, 2023.

Social media marketing allows app marketers to tap into a lucrative digital user base, connecting with their target audience and driving app adoption and engagement. Creating an effective social media strategy will enable targeted and personalized campaigns tailored to specific demographics, interests, and user behaviors across a variety of ad formats and organic engagements.

How to create a social media strategy step by step

Before taking these marketing channels by storm, you need to know how and why you want to form a social media presence. You can create a well-defined social media strategy by going through the following steps:

Define your social media KPIs to track: It’s essential that you define your purpose on social media before launching a campaign. Are you looking to promote your brand, build an active community, or generate leads?

A few KPIs for social media across these goals include volume of app installs, cost per install (CPI), engagements (likes, comments, shares, etc.), click-through rate (CTR), session volume or session length, in-app purchases, or retention rate of app users acquired through social media.

Target audience segmentation: Create marketing personas to help clarify your overall strategy. Remember that the personas will continue to develop over time. For best results, continually refine your segments based on fresh data. Hint: Adjust does this for you with our Audience Builder tool!
Embed value into your social media content plan: Assign purpose and intent to the core of all of your content–organic and paid. Consider how the content you’re planning to share will be useful and engaging to your audience, not just useful to your app. The value of your mobile content marketing needs to be in addition to your app’s services. You may consider establishing content pillars for your social media plan, wherein each pillar would represent a different value, purpose, topic, or theme.

For example, just because a user loves to play Pokemon GO doesn’t necessarily mean they need to follow that game on Facebook. However, if the user can see that the Facebook page is providing additional value like updates, tips, events, and competitions, they have the incentive to hit “like” and engage with that community.
Differentiate strategy by channel: Because no two social media channels are the same in their format, usage trends, audience, and purpose, you need a unique strategy for each app. For example, the way a brand uses Snapchat should absolutely differ from its presence on LinkedIn, which should again differ from its Twitter strategy. This is time-consuming, but well worth the investment of resources.

A few of the best social media apps to advertise on

Spreading ad investments across multiple platforms allows marketers to reach a broader spectrum of potential users. Each social media platform possesses unique features, demographics, and user behaviors, enabling marketers to tailor their campaigns effectively.

By diversifying ad spend, marketers can capitalize on the strengths of various channels optimizing their reach, engagement, and conversion rates. It helps mitigate the risk of over-reliance on a single platform and provides valuable insights into which channels yield the highest returns.

We’ve outlined a few key channels to get started.

How to create Facebook ads

Facebook remains the most-used social media platform with 2.96 billion monthly active users globally in January 2023. Plus, a whopping 98.5% of Facebook users access the platform via mobile phone.

Set up Facebook ads by visiting Facebook for Business, where you can register your app on Meta for Developer so that your campaign is optimized for app installs or events (you’ll choose one or both goals) over link clicks. Then, you can create ads with the app promotion objective effectively.

You’ll select an automated or manual campaign setup before creating your campaign. Both options will allow you to turn on Facebook’s iOS 14.5+ campaign feature for SKAdNetwork measurement, while the manual App Ads option will also provide elective spending limit, A/B testing, and campaign budget optimization features.

When creating individual ads for a campaign you may choose a deferred deep link within your app (useful for event KPIs) or to a custom version of your product page in an app store. You may alternatively choose to send viewers to an instant experience or a playable demo of your app (particularly popular with gaming apps). For your asset(s) you can pick from one image or video or a carousel of media.

Regardless of which option you select, it’s important to upload the three size ratios for Facebook ads–1:1, 9:16, and 1.91:1–to ensure your ad will be best suited to feed, stories, reels, and search results ad placements. To do so, click “Add media'' under the “Ad creative” section, navigate to “Crop” in the left hand menu, then select “Replace” under the two sizes you have not yet uploaded. You’ll be able to preview how your ad renders for each of these placements before publishing.

How to create Reddit ads

Reddit’s platform offers forum-like communities for topics across all fields of interest. Advertising on Reddit offers topic targeting, ensuring your ad is seen by users with a genuine interest in your product and making it a great platform for advertising niche products.

Reddit ad types for in-app advertising

Advertisers can display ads using Reddit promoted posts. There are two options when selecting the type of ad you want to show:

Link ads: Direct users directly to a specified URL, such as an app store page or your company website.
Text ads: Direct users to a Reddit post of your choice, which can be a better option if your primary goal is to increase brand exposure. Your Reddit post can also include external links.

How to advertise on TikTok

Marketers are taking note of TikTok’s rapid growth. This video-based platform requires marketers to act quickly, leveraging trending video topics and sounds while they are relevant.

Five types of TikTok ads that can be used for in-app advertising include:

Biddable ads: Marketers can now bid on ad space within TikTok, and the highest bidder will have their video ads displayed in the app’s feed.
Branded lenses: Marketers can also use custom, branded filters to promote their brand, offering an interactive experience via augmented reality (AR).
Influencer package: Working with influencers relevant to your target audience is another key way to attract users, and is widely used by many brands.
Hashtag challenge: By creating a hashtag challenge campaign, you encourage users to participate in a potentially viral movement on the platform.
Brand takeover: Advertisers can also opt for large-format ads displayed once a day when a user opens the app.

TikTok ads best practices

Communicate your key message immediately: TikTok functions on a quick-scroll, people-focused feed. Mirror this in your content, whether it is organic or paid, and make sure that ads are optimized for users having the sound on.

Use native in-feed video: Use this 9:16 aspect ratio video at a maximum length of 60 seconds.

Test continually: Sticking to current trends and targeting viral hashtags on the platform delivers the best results and the most affordable traffic. TikTok evolves quickly, and with this evolution comes a change in user experience and expectations. Keep on top of current trends and adapt your strategy regularly with results from testing to pave the way.

How to advertise on Twitter

The original microblogging platform, Twitter users have been using the website to share their hot takes on trending news topics since it was founded in 2006. Today, app marketers can leverage these five Twitter ad types for in-app advertising:

Promoted tweets: This ad format displays your Tweet on the timelines of users who aren’t already following you. Your promoted tweets will appear as a regular tweet with the inclusion of a ‘Promoted’ label.
Promoted account: Also known as a follower campaign, Promoted Accounts enable you to target a specific audience group. Your account will appear as a ‘suggested’ profile to follow.
Twitter cards: These are customizable media units that link to your website or app.
Promoted trends: This format displays your ad alongside a user’s lists of trending topics and on their Explore tab, functional on both mobile and desktop.
Promoted trend spotlight: Brands can also implement brand awareness campaigns with promoted trend spotlights, which can share static images, short videos, and GIFs.

Twitter ads best practices

Identify why your media is engaging for Twitter users: Adapt your videos for optimal performance on Twitter. Examples of engaging branded videos that can work well on Twitter include behind-the-scenes footage, customer success stories, and educational videos.
Keep your message short and direct: Keep your messaging concise to increase user engagement. Don’t forget to also include an engaging call-to-action to further nudge users to interact with your video.
Ensure Twitter videos are mobile-friendly: Use an MP4 video format under 2 minutes and 20 seconds in length. Your video should have an H264 codec (quality of compression and decompression) and AAC audio. You should also always opt for as close to the 1920 x 2000 maximum video resolution as possible, and for an aspect ratio close to 2.39:1, but not higher.

Ready to get started? Request a demo with Adjust to see how our tools can consolidate your social media marketing analytics into one streamlined dashboard for quick insights to optimize as you go.