How to leverage influencer marketing to double app downloads

Whether you’re gearing up to launch an app or already have one available publicly, the goal is the same: have a huge chunk of your target audience download it. But with very crowded app stores, getting noticed is an uphill battle. That’s when influencer marketing for apps comes into play – a growing strategy trend that can send your download counter skyrocketing.

Influencers have built big platforms that connect them directly to an engaged audience. 

How engaged? 61% of consumers trust influencer recommendations. 

Thus, this isn’t just about slapping your app’s name on a popular Instagram account; it’s about crafting a genuine connection with audiences who trust the influencer’s word. Influencer marketing emerges as a powerful tool to put your app into your target audience’s devices.

This article will explore the strategic intricacies of identifying and collaborating with influencers who resonate with your brand ethos. Engage, learn, and let’s amplify your user base, crafting a narrative that resonates and converts.

What is influencer marketing & why is it important?

At its core, influencer marketing is leveraging these influencers’ trust and reach to promote products or services. It intertwines your app’s narrative with the content creators’ relatable stories, bridging the gap between your brand and potential users.

This helps your app find its way into your target audience’s customer journey and nudges them to make informed decisions about adding it to their devices.

You’ll get a boost in conversion and engagement rates as influencers seamlessly blend effective strategies with authentic content. That means your app doesn’t just get downloaded but becomes a part of users’ digital lifestyle.

Here’s a peek into how influencer marketing will help you:

You’re already running a cat insurance business, but sales are not growing. The solution? A mobile application to make the process of getting cat insurance easier for your audience.

But how do you put that app in your audience’s phone? 

Partner up with a cat influencer, like Philip The Cat and Mozzy The Cat, to increase your app’s brand awareness. Let them use it so they can form their opinions and talk about it genuinely. 

With creative content creation, they can tell engaging stories about unexpected visits through playful images and insightful Insta stories. 

Additionally, the cat owners can host a live Q&A on Instagram, where they subtly weave in how your cat insurance app, with its user-friendly interface and easy registration process, became their financial safety net during feline emergencies.

This authentic narrative doesn’t just promote; it resonates, converting followers into potential clients. 

Following that, you’re ready to dive deeper into the “how” when it comes to maximizing influencers and their social media platforms. You’ll learn to create a mobile app influencer marketing strategy that amplifies your user base.

How to strategically leverage influencer marketing in 6 steps

With a whopping $935 billion mobile app revenue on the line, using influencers to promote apps is a trend here to stay. With their increasingly bigger platforms, they’ll support you in reaching a wider audience and smashing your marketing goals. 

Here are 6 ways to forge relationships with influencers to propel your app in the Google Play Store and Apple Store.

1. Identify your target audience

Before anything else, know who you’re targeting. Identify your target audience to orchestrate influencer marketing campaigns that truly resonate and boost app downloads.

Why?

Knowing who to talk to shapes the ‘how’ and ‘where’ of your communication. It’s not merely about reaching audiences; it’s about connecting with an engaged audience. Thus, making sure user engagement triggers downloads.

Dive into audience demographics, understanding their likes, dislikes, and digital hangout spots, to make sure your app lands in front of an audience with genuine interest. 

This approach helps you avoid just being an echo in the vast digital space. It lets you curate content that converses, connects, and convinces.

For instance, let’s say you’re about to launch an app for your lingerie collection and your target audience is women aged 25-40 who cherish comfort and elegance. Collaborate with fashion influencers who embody confidence and sophistication.

With strategic product placement, influencers won’t just showcase your pieces. They’ll share how your products empowered them and improved their self-confidence.

This connection elevates your brand awareness and encourages app downloads since viewers will want to explore and purchase your collections. Plus, it bridges authentic storytelling with tangible business success.

2. Choose the ideal social platforms

Get on the right social platform to promote your app and you’ll set the perfect stage for your influencer marketing efforts.

Here are the most popular social media platforms and what they do best:

Social Platforms	How can they help?
TikTok	This is where short influencer videos skyrocket your app downloads with catchy and engaging content.
Twitter/X	Influencers can spark conversations or write threads around your app, driving curiosity and downloads.
YouTube	A platform where influencers create in-depth content and provide thorough app reviews or tutorials.
Instagram	A visual paradise with over 2 billion active users, offering a rich content format that allows influencers to weave your app into vibrant stories and reels.
Facebook	With over 3 billion users, FB influencers can leverage diverse content formats like shareable stories, live sessions, and posts about your application.

How do you choose which platform to invest in?

This pivots on understanding your target audience. Where do they spend most of their online time, and what content captivates them?

Use marketing analytics software like Singular to help you identify conversion sources and concentrate your efforts on the most impactful platforms. Those insights, coupled with clear campaign goals, guide your decision-making. 

Let’s say you’re launching a medical alert watch app and you’re targeting older individuals aged 50+. Lean towards leveraging Facebook, given its popularity among this demographic.

Engage an older mega influencer, who maintains a social media presence on Facebook, to create relevant content for your target market. Through live sessions, they can discuss health monitoring benefits. 

Additionally, they can post personal stories of using your app as a way to introduce it to their followers. Ask them to provide pre-registration links and exclusive early-bird offers to encourage their followers to download and explore your app’s life-saving features.

3. Find the right influencer

To have a successful marketing campaign, go through a meticulous influencer search. The ideal influencer isn’t merely boasting a hefty follower count but has voices that resonate, engage, and hold sway over their audience.

But more importantly, choose someone who complements your brand’s mission and vision because they’ll represent your company.

Here are the most effective ways to find your influencer match:

• Social Media Profiles: Check their social media accounts to see their audience demographics, engagement rates, follower count, and content quality.
• Influencer Marketing Agencies / Influencer Marketplaces: They offer a curated influencer database to search potential influencers whose values mirror your brand.

Here is an example of an Upfluence influencer profile:

With these techniques, you’ll get an influencer who becomes an authentic advocate for your brand. They’ll weave your app into their narrative naturally to resonate with their followers. 

Here’s a scenario: You’re in the last stages of launching an app that sells balls for pitching machines, and the goal is to have an influencer promotion that hits a home run.

To achieve that, select top-tier influencers, like renowned baseball players or game experts. Have them use your product to let them create high-quality content derived from an authentic experience.

That’ll lend credibility to your brand since it won’t simply showcase your app but validate your product’s quality as well. Thus, putting your app on the map.

In contrast, a mismatched influencer dilutes your brand message, misaligns with your audience, and potentially hinders trust. Ultimately, it will hurt your campaign and diminish ROI since the audience will see the content as inauthentic and move away from your brand.

4. Pitch to influencers

Once you have the best-fit influencers for your brand, ask them for a collaboration. Build rapport and provide a custom brand brief. Additionally, discuss the concept approach to make sure they understand your campaign objectives. 

However, be balanced. Offer enough information to align with brand goals, yet allow them to have the freedom to create content that resonates with their audience and platform. This collaborative approach enhances the content quality and improves influencer relationship management. 

Additionally, inform them about promotional activities, content development protocols, approval procedures, and payment arrangements. When choosing a campaign type, consider your app’s niche or features and the engagement metrics that you want to measure.

You should also experiment with various campaign formats, including affiliate programs, to identify what works best for your business and the influencer’s niche.

As a reminder, include each of these points in your outreach message:

• Tell them why you like their posts and what stood out to you.
• Include how their audience can benefit from your application. 
• Introduce yourself and mention what your company or app does.
• Mention why you’d like to collaborate with them and their platform.
• Put the incentives you offer (this is subject to negotiation).
• Remind them to get in touch with you if they’re interested in your invitation to collaborate.

5. Create & launch an authentic campaign

An authentic influencer campaign to elevate app downloads requires strategic planning with genuine storytelling. When offering pointers to influencers, make sure they capture your brand message without stifling the influencer’s natural voice.

How do you do that?

Leverage the art of storytelling, recognizing the short attention span of today’s social media users. Collaborate closely with social media influencers, perhaps devising a unique hashtag or encouraging a genuine review video that includes your app’s cons and not just all the fluffy words to compliment your product. 

In addition, influencer campaigns should not only spotlight your app but also weave it into stories that echo with authenticity and relatability. That helps build a deeper connection with the audience and increase their trust in the influencer’s words about your app.

For example, you could have a well-known game streamer play around with your mobile game application, sharing real experiences (pros and cons) in a live chat. Their gaming journey, with wins and amusing losses, can connect with viewers and spark relatable conversations and curiosity about your app. 

As viewers are drawn in by genuine insights and uncensored experiences, they get eager to play your game. This authenticity confirms the influencer’s support and fuels word-of-mouth and app downloads.

6. Measure your results

Keep an eye on key metrics or KPIs to see if your influencer-promoted content is getting the word out, getting people to engage, and converting them.

What should you keep your eye on?

That depends on your business or goals. However, to give you a headstart, track engagement rates, click-throughs, and most crucially, app downloads.

Use Singular’s customizable marketing analytics tool as your partner in influencer marketing.  With it, you can effortlessly gauge data, including total app downloads and associated costs, thus offering you a clear picture of your campaign’s ROI.

It lets you monitor your campaign’s impact and make instant analytics-based decisions to improve your tactics. This helps you make sure your marketing campaigns stay agile and impactful.

For a complex product like the Estuary Flow web app, which syncs data from MySQL to Elastic in real time, KPIs like the number of syncs initiated, how long the sync time is, and issues reported should be added. This data helps the brand see if their influencer campaigns drive meaningful engagement and what their users experience when utilizing their app’s key features.

With that, let’s delve deeper into the different influencer types. Understanding these diverse personas helps you strategically choose a voice that resonates with your intended audience. This helps you maximize your app’s marketing impact since the content will come across as genuine and reliable.

5 types of influencers to consider 

Knowing different influencer types sharpens your decision-making, safeguarding against wasted resources and brand harm. Plus, it’ll let you tailor your marketing strategy to your target audience and make sure it connects authentically with them.

Pay close attention to the key points to help you allocate your budget wisely and choose the most suitable influencers for your app.

A. Nano-influencers

Follower Count: 1k to 10k

Nano-influencers are often perceived as genuine, relatable individuals who share their lives and interests on social media. Their smaller, yet highly engaged audiences typically value their opinions, making them subtle yet impactful partners for app promotion.

They’re more cost-effective, so if you’re a startup or dipping your toes in a new audience demographic, this is for you. Plus, they have the highest engagement rates on Instagram and TikTok despite having the lowest follower count among influencer types.

For instance, if you’re a new local coffee shop with an ordering app, you’ll find a perfect ally in a nano-influencer. Let’s say a local foodie with a devoted following shares their morning coffee ritual using your app.

This not only places your app in a realistic, daily context but also does so in a way that is unintrusive and authentic, weaving your app into potential users’ daily digital discourse.

Points to consider: Ideal for new businesses but make sure their audience aligns closely with your target demographic.

B. Micro-influencers

Follower Count: 10k to 100k

Micro-influencers often carve out a cozy space in specific niches, becoming trusted voices in their communities. Their charm lies in the relatable, almost peer-like relationship they share with their audience, blending credible expertise with a personable touch.

Let’s say your company is launching a wellness app focusing on mindful living. You can get a yoga micro-influencer like Ailex Nomii and have him subtly integrate your app into his content.

He can incorporate your app’s features by posting daily practices and wellness recommendations on his Instagram page. This content will be seen as genuine and helpful by the audience and it will increase the chances of converting his views or likes into app downloads.

Points to consider: Assess their expertise and influence in your app’s niche, as well as their alignment with the preferences of your target audience.

C. Mid-tier influencer

Follower Count: 100k to 500k

Mid-tier influencers strike a sweet spot between reach and genuine engagement. They’ve often matured from micro-influencer status, gaining professionalism while retaining a personal touch.

For example, let’s say you have an online marketplace app that lets entrepreneurs sell digital products or services seamlessly. Get the services of a skilled digital marketer or influential entrepreneur to use your platform and showcase its features and advantages based on their firsthand experience.

Sharing their first-hand experiences, challenges, and success while using your platform validates its effectiveness. Plus, it introduces it to an audience that’s inherently interested in starting their own business, driving its relevance amidst many other digital offers. 

Points to consider: Check their previous collaborations and analyze their content quality to see if they deliver consistent performance.

D. Macro-influencers

Follower Count: 500k to 1M

Macro-influencers are powerful forces in the social media landscape since they have a substantial platform to amplify your app’s message. Their expansive reach can catapult a brand into wider awareness, but they do come with a higher price tag. Thus, more established or bigger companies are the ones getting macro-influencers.

For instance, if you are expanding your sports streaming application, choose a well-known sports commentator or a former professional athlete to provide exclusive coverage during a live event, or to present their expertise.

Associating with trusted names in sports amplifies your app’s visibility, increasing downloads and active usage on your app among sports enthusiasts.

Points to consider: Make sure their broader audience still aligns with your target market. Plus, assess the authenticity of their content.

E. Mega influencers

Follower Count: More than 1 million

Mega-influencers often hold celebrity status, offering brands a spotlight on their apps and introducing them to a wide range of audiences. Their endorsement can skyrocket brand recognition but it comes with a hefty price tag and potentially, a dip in engagement authenticity since not all their followers are interested in the same niche.

A global eCommerce platform, for example, is introducing a new, innovative feature, like a virtual try-on for clothes and accessories. A mega lifestyle influencer like a fashion icon or celebrity sharing their virtual shopping spree using the new app feature will create a buzz that transcends borders.

Points to consider: Weigh the investment against the potential impact on your brand awareness.

Conclusion

In today’s digital age, where app stores are brimming with countless options, standing out is more challenging than ever. But influencer marketing for apps, when executed right, not only amplifies your application’s visibility but can effectively double its downloads.

Collaborate with the right influencers, resonate authentically with audiences, and leverage trust to pave a direct path to your application’s success.

However, the journey doesn’t end at implementation. Continuously evaluate and refine your influencer marketing strategies to make sure they evolve with changing trends and audience preferences.

But how do you consistently maximize influencer marketing’s potential?

Explore Singular’s platform to track data and unlock insights that let you optimize your campaigns seamlessly for better results. Leveraging its features, your goal to double your app downloads will turn into reality and redefine your app’s success story. Don’t miss out and book a demo today.

About the author

This is a guest post by Burkhard Berger, the founder of Novum™. He helps innovative B2B companies implement revenue-driven SEO strategies to scale their organic traffic to 1,000,000+ visitors per month.