Writing a
marketing plan is a crucial step in app development. There are several types of
advertising/influence making that go into a good marketing mix - media buying,
a strong press release, traffic generation, media coverage and social media
exposure.
Facebook has become the platform that allows a single solution, combining social media marketing and traffic generation into Facebook Mobile App Install Ads. This is not to say that building an app fan base via a Facebook fan page shouldn’t be part of the equation, but in this article we will focus on how to prepare, launch and analyze the results of a Facebook Mobile App Install Ads campaign.
Planning
Like any type of promotion, launching Facebook Mobile App Install Ads (FMAIA) requires planning. To come up with a proper plan for an ad campaign you’ll first need to take the following steps:
First, you need to choose which Facebook account will be used for running ads during your campaign. The Facebook Ads platform is based on launching ads from a Facebook users personal account. As such, it is crucial to make sure that the account that you’re managing your campaign from won’t get blocked.
The Facebook security system has a sophisticated set of tools to make sure that an account is not hacked and a frequent logging location is one of the red flags.
To prevent being blocked, you need to create a Facebook account and restrict access to it from a single computer in a single location. Unfortunately, it’s risky to access a Facebook account from different locations, even though it maybe a convenient way of allowing a team of employees to share the task of managing the account. Logging in on multiple devices, from multiple locations typically results in blocking, which will stop your campaign before it begins.
Next, to run ad campaigns you will need to add a funding source to the Facebook account you have created for running FMAIA from. You can use either PayPal or a major credit card to do this. There is a daily expense threshold for how much you can spend on ads from your account starting at $25 and increasing (automatically) up to $750 as the level of your daily expenses on various campaigns grows. A more detailed this policy is described here.
Allocating a budget to run a campaign
There are several things to factor while allocating a FMAIA marketing budget. According to mid 2013 AdExchanger data an average CPI (cost per install) for FMAIA is $1.5 to $2.5. This data correlates with the numbers ComboApp has observed after running multiple campaigns. At the same time, it is possible to get an install for as little as an average of $0.2 throughout a campaign; conversely, for as much as $50 to $60 CPI for an expensive app in a niche vertical.
In those instances, FMAIA was the only solution to get a desirable number of downloads and other marketing channels didn’t work at all. Typically, the final figure you allocate will be dictated by one of two possible goals. (1) You want to reach top positions in the app’s category chart, thus improving the app’s visibility. (2) Or you want to to increase your loyal user base. Last summer, Techcrunch published numbers that may give you a ballpark estimate on what your budgetary figure should be, depending on the desired number of downloads.
Defining a timeframe:
A timeframe for your FMAIA campaign will be defined by the time that will be spend on writing text and developing graphic creatives, app launch date (or a specific date to take advantage of, like a holiday, sporting event, etc). Getting a Facebook editor’s approval for your ads takes an hour in the worst case scenario. After running several campaigns, your approval time will decrease to 5-10 minutes. After submitting your ad, within these timeframes, you will get a notification that your ad is either approved or rejected. If your ad is rejected, Facebook will detail why they have chosen that action so you might correct the problems and resubmit the ad in a timely fashion.
Defining your audience
It’s widely known that Facebook owns the biggest (and, most comprehensive) data pull about its’ users. All this information allows you to be efficient in targeting your ads to a specific audience. The size of your defined audience will be shaped by the following variables:
Defining ad campaign budget
Depending on your app, you can launch a whole array of different ads with specific audiences, and split your general budget between those. Each ad campaign budget may be limited - either by daily expenses or overall expense limits during entire ad campaign.
Creatives
A good strategy for running any kind of ad campaign is to deploy several different ads simultaneously. So for a FMAIA campaign you’ll need at least four or five different banner ads with unique text. The Facebook Ads platform allows you to combine all of your banners with your different text options to get as many combinations as possible. This will help you to test different creatives and focus on the ones that perform best in promoting your app. Facebook has some restrictions for FMAIA banners. Text can’t occupy more than 20% of a banner space. Use this tool to determine if your ad fits within the approved constrictions: https://www.facebook.com/ads/tools/text_overlay
Composing Your Ad
The composition of each ad requires several distinct elements:
Facebook SDK
Facebook has created an SDK for Android and iOS apps that developers can use to track metrics for each Facebook Mobile App Install Ad campaign they are running. The information the SDK collects includes number of downloads the app is getting from a specific campaign as well as demographic breakdown for age, language and the geography of people who are downloading your app.
Detailed information on SDK for Android and iOS apps is available here, as well as in this video tutorial.
I’d like to emphasize the importance of installing Facebook SDK into your app in advance and making sure it works properly prior to your campaign launch. This tool will help you to make the most of your Facebook Mobile App Install Ad campaign.
Launch & Running:
In a situation when an app’s launch in the app store is scheduled, we suggest you schedule your Facebook Mobile App Install Ad campaign in advance. This will allow you to have all the ads approved and ready to automatically launch once the app is live on the App Store / Google Play. By having them scheduled this way, you’ll be able to generate downloads for the app during its’ very crucial launch period - when all downloads contribute to the app’s positioning on the App Store or Google Play category charts.
At any point in your campaign you can stop, resume or delete any ad you’ve created and alter its’ settings. Each alteration will trigger an approval process via Facebook, approval will be on par with how long it took to approve your initial ad submission. Our suggestion is you not delete any ad you’ve run and stopped. The information gained from those ads will be helpful for the analysis after the general campaign is finished.
Results Analysis
Analysis should be carried out on a daily basis while running your campaign so you can adjust its’ parameters and after the campaign is finished you can evaluate the effectiveness of those moves. All metrics that the Facebook Ads dashboard provides are important, but there are few among them that are crucial:
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