Leverage the Mobile-Social Sweet Spot

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Many marketers have told me they feel like their app is invisible. Since this isn’t the world of superheroes, invisibility is not exactly something we’re hoping to achieve, right?

This brings us to another key question in the world of apps: How can you make your app visible to those with eyes to see and money to spend? With the sheer number of apps in the world and the functions and features they provide to consumers, apps are demanding more and more marketing dollars. Those making the right investment will reap ample rewards.

Today’s blog will focus on the paid media element of mobile-social, or what some have termed the “mobile-social sweet spot.” This is the area of convergence where marketers can reach mobile device audiences that are highly engaged on social networks. The basic premise is this: To monetize your app, you need to promote discovery of your app. Social media can help. Here’s how.

1. Billions of people use social media: A total of 1.3 billion people actively use Facebook every month–which is to say, approximately one-seventh of the entire planet. Those people are also potential customers. This is, in part, why social has become one of mobile’s sweet spots. Sheer volume. Where else can you potentially reach that many people at once?

Not only are there a lot of people on Facebook, but they are on Facebook via their mobile devices. Reuters reports that of the 1.28 billion Facebook users, 1.01 billion of those users (or 79 percent) log on with their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

2. Social media has effective audience targeting: As marketers, we’re always looking to reach the right audience at the right time with the right message, right? That has been drilled into our heads. Social media has already honed and targeted much of our audience. In short, it has done the work of segmenting audiences for us so we don’t have to. Social has created natural affinity groups and categorized people by age, personal preferences, etc.

Of note, from Ad Age, is that Facebook is now “prioritizing ad relevance,” meaning it’s not simply putting every single marketing message that you create in front of its users. Instead, it is prioritizing ads that are the most relevant to each one. That means you “must focus on messaging” what is meaningful and relevant to your audience.

3. Mobile app ads can extend app marketing campaigns: Following Facebook’s lead, the long-awaited mobile app install ads have arrived in the Twitter ecosystem. What is an in-app install ad, and what can it do for you? When a customer clicks on one, it takes them directly to the app store. According to Digiday and eMarketer, app install ads now account for 30 to 50 percent of the mobile advertising market.

Ad Age explains Twitter’s new service: “Mobile app install ads will be available for purchase in Twitter’s ad auction, and other targeting parameters can be applied to them. But separately, advertisers will be able to participate in real-time bidding to buy mobile app install and app engagement ad inventory programmatically via MoPub within the Twitter ad system. Those ads will appear as banners, interstitials, video and sometimes in native formats.”

Kevin Weil, Twitter’s vice president of product for revenue, explained that marketers, as well as mobile app developers, who use Twitter can extend the marketing campaigns they’re running in Twitter “across the rest of the mobile ecosystem through MoPub’s exchange.” Who are some of the early adopters to the “Twitter publisher network”? Keep your eye on brands such as Spotify, HotelTonight, Kabam, and GetTaxi.

Also, in late April Google announced “plans to introduce its latest updates to AdWords, its core search product, and allow app developers to buy ads promoting installed apps in paid mobile search and YouTube.” Everyone seems to be jumping on the mobile app ad bandwagon these days.

4. Social media is cost-effective: Have you thought about buying Facebook ads to increase the visibility of your app? According to eMarketer, Facebook and Google accounted for the majority of mobile advertising growth last year, claiming “75.2% of the additional $9.2 billion that went toward mobile in 2013.” From an advertising perspective, Facebook can reach over 1 billion users who may download your app. In addition, it is demonstrating cost-effectiveness for brands that use social ads. Colette Crosby, director of app marketing at Intuit, notes that the “cost per install (CPI) metric [on Facebook] is much lower than other app marketing tactics.”

So, in the mobile-social sweet spot, you may be able to pay less and get more people to download your app. Proctor & Gamble recently made news by reducing its marketing budget this year, largely due to the cost-effective marketing value it has found in mobile and social.

A Mobile-Social Must As you begin to leverage app-related benefits in the area of paid social media, don’t forget to measure. Given the growth in ad spend, the measurement of these ad formats (click-throughs and downloads) is even more critical today than it was two years ago. A million dollars spent in this area requires robust measurement, so be sure to build it into your budget from the outset.

In addition, your measurement strategy should evaluate whether the ad campaign drives effective app downloads and related conversion events for your business, such as watching videos, buying products, or walking into your physical store. Although technical challenges exist with attribution across channels and devices, you must have a plan to measure post-download engagement and customer life time value.

Recently, I spoke with the head of audience development at a media and entertainment company, and she emphasized that marketers need to focus on post-download engagement metrics. Her company’s test of paid media campaigns resulted in app downloads for games, but it did not see much engagement over time and saw low in-app monetization. Consequently, its investment in analytics allows her team to course-correct and tune the company’s future campaigns to the right audience.