We’ve discussed various traffic sources for mobile app promotion in previous articles. But where else can we get it? A huge audience is gathered in social network communities. Today we’ll learn how to work with them and get app installs.

Mass app promotion

A mass app is a product for a large audience without any particular features. So the choice of communities for advertising is pretty wide. But will any community do for it? No, you still should choose them very carefully.
Important parameters that you should take into account:

  • Coverage (not the number of subscribers). It’s usually 15% of the whole number of subscribers. If they show you a bigger index, it means that it’s artificially increased.
  • Virality. The more active users share posts with friends and the more they like posts, the better.
  • The price should be adequate. Many communities purposely overstate prices for placing advertisements, so be careful.
  • The share of teenagers. It’s an important factor if you need a solvent audience.

What’s better: many publications in small communities or several in a huge one? It may seem that you shouldn’t use only one basket but practice shows that it’s false. The effect of publications in large communities is usually better. You risk more but if you succeed, you’ll be able to collect more installs.
If we talk about placing tactics, there are no ready-made recipes. It’s a fair statement that it’s better to publish a post 2 times for 4 hours than 1 time for 24 hours. And it’s also more beneficial to place a series of different posts than repeat the same one as some part of the audience (usually it’s 20%) will see your publication twice which will evoke negativity.
Professionals usually prefer to negotiate with community administrators directly about placing advertising.
You can promote various apps (even games) this way. But this method suits dating, social and entertaining services perfectly well. There are examples when such a method helped to promote many projects on learning languages. As for prices, they vary a lot. But on the whole, they are lower than in advertising networks. Sometimes, you can attract new users very cheaply.

Specialized app promotion

The key moment while promoting apps for the small audiences is subtle targeting as you need to find users with definite qualities, for example, lovers of elite wine or beginner drummers. The task is non-trivial and requires lots of routine work. But the more efforts you make, the more suitable audience you’ll find. You’ll be able to get good results and high conversion rates as a reward for your hard work
How to find the audience? First of all, make a list of keywords by which you’ll carry out the search. Everything depends on the subject of your app. The list can be very short or may include several tens of “keys”.
Where should you search?

  • Communities in a social network.
  • Use Google and indicate the social network you need.

As a result, you’ll get a vast list of communities that you should filter. The aim is to get rid of small and “dead” communities and those full of teenagers. Coverage is one of the main criteria. Besides, indicate contact data of each community administrator on your list. You’ll be able to get almost all the needed audience this way.

Types of advertising materials

  • Re-posts from your community are the most inefficient type of an advertising post as users don’t like to transfer a lot and the conversion way is simply torn.
  • It would be better to pin your post with a link at the top of a community. It’s more efficient but doesn’t suit well for app promotion.
  • An advertising post by the platform with a link to your product is an optimal choice.

How to form a post? Avoid “sheets” of texts. The practice has shown long ago that 2-3 precise phrases with an appeal, in the end, work great. You should also add an alluring picture to the post. An intrigue often increases efficiency several times. But you should be careful: don’t lie to users as it evokes negativity.

If you know the community you are going to publish your post in, try to adjust your advertising material to its format. Such a nativity may increase efficiency several times.
An example of a good advertisement:

 

Testing

It’s quite difficult to forecast the efficiency of placing advertisements on this or that platform in a social network even for a professional. So testing is the only possible way to clear campaign planning. But’s it’s rather expensive and is justified only in case with wide-scale advertising campaigns.
Single test purchases are made in different groups in order to compare efficiency. Besides, you can carry out A/B-testing of the content by publishing different variants of posts in similar communities. Visit pages of the users who shared the post. If there are tens of similar posts on their walls, they are probably bots.

Communities in social networks accumulate a great quantity of mobile traffic. You can attract many new users for an inexpensive price if approach the task wisely and thoroughly. It’s an irreplaceable way for specialized apps.

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