9 ways to generate app downloads through social media

There are many ways you can boost your mobile app or game downloads: working on App Store Optimization, through User Acquisition, with App Content Marketing… and much more! Today, we will focus on one specific way to get more downloads: by marketing your app on social media. 

Social media are a great way to get more users to download your app or game and there are many things you can do to increase your app downloads thanks to social media. Ready to discover them all? 

Social Media – How to market your app and increase its downloads

Read this post and discover all our tips and tricks to improve your downloads thanks to social media.

1. Create engaging and attractive content

It might seem obvious but you need to work hard on the content that you will share on social media to promote your mobile app. Provide your audience with informative and helpful content that will be useful and that will build trust. 

Promote your app with a taste of what your app offers, to make them want to access to more and thus, download the app. For example, if you have a fitness app with different programs, you could share one of them to arouse people’s interest and make them want to access other ones. It’s just an example but this concept could work for many apps.

2. Incite users to share content about your app

User-generated content always has a great impact as people are more likely to trust the feedback of non-biased users than the content shared directly by the brand. 

To incite them to share content about your app, you can create a campaign with a hashtag where users could get involved and share content with this hashtag. 

You could also organize a contest to which users would have to make a post mentioning the app / the campaign hashtag.

3. Paid User Acquisition

Of course, when we think about generating download through social media, paid user acquisition comes to mind. And it is a great strategy to adapt if combined with a good ASO strategy as well. 

Social ads (Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube…) are a great way to make people hear about your app on social media, and it’s more, to make people download and use it. 

Make sure that you are optimizing both the copy and the visual you are sharing for your user acquisition campaigns – make it engaging and try to find content that will catch your target audience’s attention and make them interact with the content and ultimately, with the app.

4. Influencer marketing

Another great way to find new users through social media is to work on influencer marketing. Nowadays, working with influencers is a must and it can bring out great results for your app if you do it well.

Some keys of influencer marketing:

• Work with influencers who’s audience correspond to your target users.
• Define the goal of the campaign – the content you want the influencer to share will depend on it. Here, if we want to generate more app downloads, the campaigns needs to be thought with this objective in mind.
• Provide the influencer with a brief and the content they need.

If you want to know more about influencer marketing and how to build up your strategy, have a look at our 2020 influencer marketing checklist.

5. Interact with the community

When working with social media, it is important to show to your community that you are present and available for them. If you interact with them, they will definitely be more likely to interact themselves with the app and download it. 

Provide users with answers to their questions and feedback when needed, take into account their comments about the app to keep them satisfied and make sure you answer the negative comments and try to solve any issue mentioned by the community.

6. Create offers & discounts

To make your posts on social media more attractive for users, create a special promotion for your social media posts. It could be a coupon code to get something for free when using the app / game, a discount for the first payment if it’s a subscription app… or many other things according to the kind of app or game.

Providing users with a good reason to download (a discount, an offer, exclusive content…) your app will definitely encourage them to do so and bring out better results in terms of conversion.

7. Optimize your social media profiles for SEO 

Just like you can optimize your website for search engines, you should do it as well for your social media profiles. 

Make sure they all contain all the information needed about the app / game and be the most descriptive you can for your profile to contain the main keywords you want to rank for. 

8. Do not forget about the CTA

The CTAs you choose for your promotions are key. Try different ones and track which ones provide the most clicks and the most downloads to optimize your copies afterwards and use the most effective options to engage your audience.

9. Have a quality product

As always, having a good product is one of the main keys of any kind of app marketing strategy. You might have the best social media strategy ever, if your product is not good enough, it won’t work and users will either not download it, or they will do but uninstall the app sooner than you know after their first use.

Increasing app downloads with social media – Conclusion

There are many different ways that you can work to improve your app downloads through social media, whether by promoting it through your own social media channels, via influencers or by inciting your own audience to talk about the app on their own account.

Make sure you include social media in your mobile growth strategy as it could make the difference and bring out great results in terms of downloads – don’t leave it aside!

Maud Panier , 16 July 2020