App Influencer Marketing

What is App Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is the practice of using influencers (either of social media popularity or thought leaders) from an app’s industry or category in order to promote and bring traffic to an app/game. Influencers would likely have a sizable following that relates to the audience demographic an app developer/marketer is looking to tap into. Ultimately, an influencer’s recommendations can bring significant traffic.

Influencer marketing is often synonymous with young Generation Z types and it can be, but it can also be a well-respected leader in their field of work who has a large social media following also.

Why App Influencer Marketing is Important

Influencer marketing is a new channel to increase growth and find new audiences which is an important lever for user acquisition (UA) teams to pull. This type of marketing breaks existing circles of audiences that surround the topic of a game / app. 

A Youtube or Instagram influencer that has millions of followers can partner up with an app / game to market it by highlighting and promoting specific content. Exposing their entire audience to a product can result in an increase in organic traffic (branded and keyword search) and installs.

App Influencer Marketing and ASO

A vital element of ASO is discoverability and improving the chances of a user finding an app / game through organic search. If an influencer campaign launches and a large amount of traffic comes to the store as a result, users will be either reaching the page directly through a deep link, searching for the brand name in the store and though it’s possible to find it on the ‘top charts’ perhaps, it’s mostly found through a branded search. Only with effective ASO can an app / game appear at the top of the search results, so in order for search to turn into actually locating an app’s product page easily, ASO techniques must be implemented

Influencer marketing is also important to ASO as, with any increase in traffic, an app or game will need to accommodate the influx with optimized App Store or Google Play creatives / messaging in order to result in good conversion rates. 

It’s important for the creatives used in the App Store or Google Play to match what the influencer has been promoting in the campaign. For example if a user is promised a sign up bonus by the influencer, the ASO team should match that message on the visuals. So a listing should surface the influencer’s message at first impression to make the connection between what was advertised to what is being seen in the listing, in order to convert that user to install the game / app.

Influencer marketing is a unique word-of-mouth source and it can be used as part of a wider marketing strategy which may also include paid ad campaigns, getting ‘featured’ in placements and ranking highly for keywords through ASO.