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How to Market Your Mobile App with Instagram

Taking photos for Instagram
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Practically every internet user has heard about Instagram. With one billion monthly active users, 90% of whom follow at least one business account on the platform, Instagram has become one of the fastest-growing social media networks with the most engaged user bases. As a result, businesses of all sizes and niches try to have an Instagram presence to market their products or services, reach their target audience, and convert engaged followers into paying customers.

If you’re looking for a place to market your mobile app to raise awareness and attract more app users, it’s high time to promote your app on Instagram as this platform offers a great number of features that help app companies to spread the word about their app, understand their potential users better, and increase app downloads.

1. Dedicate Your Instagram Bio to Your Mobile App

The number of business profiles on Instagram is constantly growing, so modern users don’t spend much time deciding whether your profile is interesting to them or not. As a result, an Instagram bio is the first thing people see when they visit your business account. 

Being limited to 150 characters and one clickable link, it’s important to write down all important information about your mobile app to spark customers’ interest and improve app retention rate.

To let your Instagram visitors learn more about your mobile app, make the most out of your bio with the following tricks and tips:

  • Choose the right business category
  • Write about your app and its benefits
  • Encourage visitors to take an action with a strong CTA
  • Tell visitors what operating systems your app supports
  • Add emojis to make your bio more creative
  • Include a link to your app 

Here’s a good example of an Instagram bio for a mobile app:

An example of a good Instagram bio for an app
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2. Tell About Your Mobile App with Instagram Videos

Another step to market your mobile app with Instagram is to tell about your app in posts. However, writing a good caption isn’t enough to grab the attention of your potential users. It’s significant to create content that keeps your audience hooked and engaged, so it’s a good idea to make appealing Instagram videos.

Not only do dynamic Instagram videos include all important information about your app to spark users’ interest in it, but these videos also keep viewers hooked as they tell stories. Here’s how one company introduces its Myntra app with an Instagram video:

An Instagram video post on using an app
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The best thing about this video? Not only does the company guide the viewers on using the app, but it also includes the text layover that helps viewers who watch the video without sound understand more about the featured app. As a result, the video got 1,311,259 views which means it has reached a wide audience of potential users.

3. Encourage Instagrammers to Download Your App

No matter how useful and interesting your app is, it means nothing unless you have an audience of potential users who are interested in downloading it. What is more, marketing your mobile app should include a strong call to action that encourages Instagram users to download your app. 

Let’s take Spar University, for example. The company writes a post about its app, adding information about it on the image and writing a caption that tells about the benefits of having an app as well as includes a call to action:

An Instagram post that encourages users to download an app
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If you use lead analytics for your business, it’s easy to track what results your Instagram presence brings for your mobile app. Generating leads from Instagram, means you do everything the right way. But if you don’t get leads from Instagram, it’s a sign for your company to test with your posts and captions to spark followers’ interest in your app and therefore turn them into leads or even users.

4. Make the Most Out of Instagram Stories

In 2016, when Instagram rolled out Stories as its ephemeral content format, it gained in popularity fast. Today, Instagram Stories have over 500M daily users which means that the popularity of Stories is still growing.

When you want to market your mobile app with Instagram, it’s important to keep up with the trends and use Instagram Stories as this content format is one of the most engaging and popular ones. Moreover, Instagram Stories have various features that help app developers promote their products in-app.

For example, you can upload app reviews and save them in a separate Instagram Highlight album with all customer testimonials to provide potential users with social proof and encourage them to download and use your app. Check out how Tailwindapp did it:

An example of using app testimonials in IG Stories
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But here are several other ideas on how to make the most out of Instagram Stories to market your mobile app on the platform:

  • Add branded hashtags to attract a wider audience of potential users who are interested in discovering a certain topic
  • Include a clickable Story link that redirects users to the landing page where viewers can learn more about your app and download it
  • Use Instagram poll stickers to understand your users and their preferences better

5. Ask Instagram Influencers for Brand Endorsements

To attract more app users who are active on Instagram, many brands use another marketing tactic that works best these days–brand endorsements from influencers. Why? Modern social media users trust influencers as much as their real-world friends, so they pay close attention to people they follow and discover suggested content with interest. 

As a result, it’s a good idea to find niche Instagram influencers whose following might be interested in your app and team up with them to ask for brand endorsements, just like in the example below:

An Instagram influencer tells about a new app in a post
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What is more, if you work with influencers who have over 10k followers, you can ask them to tell about your app in their Stories and include a clickable link that allows interested users to download an app without leaving Instagram.

6. Provide Instagram Customer Care

With the growing popularity of Instagram as a marketing channel, the number of customer requests in-app has grown, too. Today, more and more users reach out to brands on Instagram to ask their questions even when it comes to questions about your app.

Thus, marketing your mobile app with Instagram, your team should monitor brand mentions, read comments, and check out direct messages to find what users want to know about your app and what questions bother them. Simply put, it’s a good idea to provide Instagram customer care.

If you provide Instagram customer care, that’s great. However, it’s important to provide omnichannel customer support as some customer requests should be solved via email or phone. Moreover, many people choose a phone call as the fastest way to get in touch with your customer support team. Thus, having a business phone service and sharing your contact number on Instagram is important to keep your audience satisfied.

Booking.com is a good example of providing omnichannel customer support as the company analyzes customer case studies and offers the right contact method that can solve customer requests fast. Here’s an example of a reply from the company on Instagram:

Booking.com encourages dissatisfied users to solve a customer request via phone
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7. Run Instagram Ad Campaigns for App Installs


Businesses of all sizes and niches market their products and services on Instagram, so users might be bombarded with brand content from all sides which means that it’s getting harder to market your app and reach your potential users unless you run Instagram ad campaigns.

Not only does it help to reach your audience faster, but it also helps to encourage users to download your app as Instagram offers brands app install campaigns.

To increase app installs, Dineout India ran an Instagram Story ad campaign to reach a wider audience of potential customers. The company told about its app benefits that resulted in a 17% decrease in cost per app install, a 39% decrease in cost per purchase, and a 7-point increase in the number of bookings made after installing the app:

A Dineout app ad that offers a discount
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To organize and manage your ad campaigns that give good results, it’s a good idea to use social CRM software where you can add all relevant information on your ad performance and understand how to improve your ad campaigns and therefore get more app installs.

Finding your app users online these days, it’s important to market your mobile app with Instagram as this social media network is one of the most popular among people and it offers a great number of business tools and features that help companies find their potential users and encourage them to download an app. As a result, Instagram is a great place to promote your app, so don’t miss a chance to interact with an engaged audience who might be interested in your app.