Facebook app marketing is a relatively new trend, and yet people have quickly begun to use these tools to increase their exposure within the field of their choice. As Rob Jewel puts it;
With more than 125 billion connections across Facebook, there are (almost) infinite opportunities for reaching your target audiences. By leveraging the existing connections between people, app developers can effectively increase brand visibility and reach.
Apps are the new “in thing” and they are here to stay; the only question is how are companies going to use them to increase their success within the market of their choice.
Be Seen
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Research has shown that each Facebook user has about 130 friends, and this means that any time one of these individuals does something on Facebook, this activity is just about advertised to 130 people. This alone is great exposure for an app. There is just about no better advertising than word of mouth because people tend to take suggestions from their friends and family quite seriously; this visibility of a company on someone’s Facebook page is just about as close to word of mouth market that a company can get online.
Add a Social Element To Your App
If you are on Facebook regularly, you will most likely notice that people are sharing apps and generally getting their friends involved in the games that they enjoy playing, and this is a great way to advertise without actually going through to motions of marketing yourself. Instead of just allowing someone full access to an app, ask them to share an app to be able to take advantage of more features and watch as they spread the word.
One of the best things about the social facet of any game is that it allows people on sites such as Facebook to interact with each other. Most people will remember how often people threw sheep and other farm animals at each other when Facebook was still new; this is now possible through the many apps available on the social media platform.
Generating Revenue Through Facebook
There are many different ways to access an app; some people prefer smartphones, while others prefer Facebook. The game company Zynga actually collects about 94% of the revenue obtained from its games solely through Facebook, and this is enough to prove to just about anyone else how valuable a resource this platform is for the marketing of their apps.
Rewarding Your Fans
It is not enough to get people interested in your app; you need to draw others in by treating your current fans well, since this will only drive up your traffic. Consider it this way; if someone is playing one of your games and they are rewarded through your app, they will be more inclined to share these rewards, or to like your app “in front of all their friends” through the medium of Facebook. The best thing about sharing things on Facebook is that it takes little more than clicking the “like” or “share” button for this to be posted on their feed.
Measure Your Success
As any marketer will know, measuring your success with a specific campaign is extremely important, and luckily, Facebook allows individuals the chance to do just that.
The contributors of Tapstream put it this way;
Understanding the results of how your money and time are being spent is imperative to keeping your bank account healthy and your user acquisition strong.
If you aren’t spending your marketing budget wisely, you need to know as soon as possible so that you can put this right, and you can do this by measuring your results after every campaign. When you make use of the right technology, you can choose to measure your results after one status update, or after an entire campaign; this can actually go a long way in helping you spot weak points in a campaign.
A great marketing campaign is one that has been constantly tweaked and upgraded, and it is something that evolves continuously over time. Static marketing quickly becomes outdated and ineffective, and this is something that marketers need to take very seriously.
Reengaging Users
The whole idea behind marketing an app effectively isn’t just about getting users to download an app; it is about keeping them interested. Most people will only really engage with an app between 1 and 10 times, but programmers haven’t put all that time and attention into an app just to have it be discarded after a few occasions.
As Anthony Ha explains;
The idea of re-engaging users is a familiar one in online marketing. On Facebook, that can now take the form of targeting users who have already installed a mobile app and then presenting them with custom calls to action.
Users who have signed up for a retail app, for example, can be “called to action” by an ad that tells them about a current promotion or sale. Those who enjoyed playing a specific game have the option of benefiting from an updated level. These are only a few examples of how to draw people back to app time and time again, using effective marketing techniques.
Targeting Your Ads
The one facet of Facebook that might just have revolutionized online marketing is that it allows people the chance to target their ads to specific audiences. Basically, this means that individuals not only get the chance to reach millions of people much more easily (not to mention in a much more affordable manner), but they also get to target these ads to specific demographics, and this alone could shoot up their sales. If, for instance, you have come up with an app that is targeted at teenage boys (such as a new and exciting game), you can use Facebook to advertise to this demographic alone.
Facebook app marketing has opened up a whole new world for developers and retail companies alike, not to mention just about anyone else who might benefit from the sale of an app. When used correctly, this type of marketing could just alter the face of advertising altogether.