Every marketing person who has dabbled in app marketing understands how tough it is to decide how to advertise an app. It can be intimidating. There are several applications with various app marketing tactics, each with varying degrees of success. The competition is stiff, and many mobile app businesses have a well-documented long-term mobile app launch plan.
Every app developer’s objective is to boost downloads. Unfortunately, only having a user-friendly solution will not guarantee a large number of downloads. A strong mobile user acquisition strategy is also required.
Mobile app user acquisition is a fast-paced and highly competitive industry. It may be highly lucrative if you play your cards wisely. Taking calculated risks and experimenting with new and/or underutilized channels may provide a significant amount of revenue.
What is Mobile User Acquisition?
Any method that is expressly targeted to drive app installations is referred to as mobile app user acquisition. This is often accomplished through advertising campaigns and/or promotional offers. User acquisition is critical for your app since discovering and turning new users into paying customers is exceedingly tough without it. A good app user acquisition strategy makes use of data to identify successful trends and patterns and eliminates the guesswork that frequently leads to wasted ad expenditure.
It is vital to highlight that, owing to the lack of openness in app ecosystems, getting mobile app data might be difficult at times. It might be difficult to determine the real source of an app install at times.
Our post will assist you in selecting the best mobile acquisition methods to help you gain users for your app and succeed in your 2022 mobile growth ambitions.
How is Mobile User Acquisition Measured?
The number of installs and the install rate are the most significant KPIs for recruiting consumers for any mobile app. These two measures are by far the simplest method to determine whether an app is something that people find valuable, and hence whether it has a chance of success. However, it is also crucial to evaluate other cost-related parameters. These include:
- Cost per install (CPI)
- Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Cost per action (CPA)
- Return of Investment (ROI)
- Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM)
- Conversion rate
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Use the following strategies, methods, and best practices to create an effective mobile user acquisition plan.
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Social Media
One of the most popular mobile app user acquisition (UA) channels is social media. When utilized correctly, it may be incredibly effective. Facebook, in particular, is an excellent tool for locating and attracting certain groups. As a result, it controls about 31 percent of overall mobile ad expenditure across devices. Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok are other popular platforms. Each of these networks has an advertising platform that allows you to target certain individuals who are likely to download your app. Paid advertising on social media may be incredibly effective, which is why it is the most preferred UA channel for most applications and games, accounting for more than 30% of total mobile ad spend globally.
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Google
Google offers a vast portfolio of platforms available to app developers for reaching their target customers, including:
- Google Search: You can get your app in front of a large section of your target market by applying SEO best practices and generating AdWords advertisements.
- Google Play: It has 2.87 distinct applications in its portfolio at the moment. Organic search and Universal App Campaigns can help you reach your target audience on Google Play (UAC).
- YouTube: You may sell your app to millions of prospective users by making YouTube videos and advertisements. Brand recognition often increases with YouTube commercials.
- Google Discover Ads: These advertisements are presented to 800 million Google Discover users, who have a personalized feed that Google’s AI engine will automatically update with relevant news and articles. Create Discovery advertising to reach out to users who are interested in your app. The ad platform is similar to Facebook’s in that it automates user targeting and bidding. It then offers advertising to the users who have the highest value across all of Google properties. It’s no surprise that Google controls 33% of overall mobile ad expenditure across devices.
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Mobile Ad Networks
Mobile ad networks enable developers to buy ad space within other apps. Interstitial, banner, video, and playable advertising are among the types of ads available through mobile ad networks.
Despite their high claims, mobile ad networks frequently produce lower-quality traffic since in-app ads are typically perceived as invasive. When a person is using an application, they are usually uninterested in hearing about alternative options. Furthermore, several sorts of ad fraud exist in the mobile app network environment, including invalid traffic (IVT), click spamming, and ad stacking.
A well-planned and well-executed mobile ad campaign may generate a lot of traffic and boost your consumer base. It is a feasible mobile user acquisition method, but it must be thoroughly understood before implementation.
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Offline Advertising
Offline advertising includes all non-digital marketing initiatives. This includes radio and television commercials, billboard advertisements, and print marketing methods. App developers face several marketing challenges when using offline tactics. For example, measuring the success of a television advertisement is quite difficult. However, it has its uses. With the correct promotions, you can significantly increase the exposure and brand recognition of your app at a low cost. A mobile user acquisition plan for apps with an offline component can also help you balance out other hyper-targeted marketing approaches.
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Get Your App Reviewed and Rated
Reviews and ratings might assist potential new users decide whether or not to download. Encourage current users to evaluate your app as part of your app marketing strategy. Include elements, such as a rating prompt, that make it simple for people to leave a review for you. For an even more respectable (and prominent) perspective, you may contact a knowledgeable, professional reviewer from an app-reviewing website. Before installing, most people read reviews.
Negative reviews aren’t always negative, as long as you don’t take them personally. Reading and reacting to reviews may provide new ideas, point out areas for development, and demonstrate to potential new customers that you’re involved and listening.
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Utilize the Viral Loop
Viral loops are excellent tools for increasing the number of people who use your mobile app. Create something worth sharing, such as high scores or shared experiences, and make it simple for users to tell others about how awesome your app is.
Viral loops help spread the word about your app by inverting the usual marketing funnel, allowing your users to sell your software on your behalf. Viral loops may be built with strong software design: incorporate incentives, invite-only features, shared experiences, and other referrals to get your loop started.
Companies like Dropbox, which offered free 16GB of storage space to customers who recruited friends, and CandyCrush, which encouraged players to share their scores, have utilized viral loops to rapidly develop their brands.
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Creating a Good Branding Style
Writing compelling blog articles and press releases is only one part of communicating the proper message to your target audience. Your branding style’s consistency also makes a powerful impact. A good brand must communicate a certain narrative and have the user emotionally connect with it. Sharing your basic beliefs and educating the consumer on how your software solves a specific problem will be part of telling your brand narrative. You should also give careful consideration to your logo design and brand colors.
Colors in all of your visuals across platforms should adhere to a rigorous set of standards and norms. For example, Facebook uses the color blue in all of its apps. The same can be said about WhatsApp’s color choice of green.
Other essential elements of a branding style are:
- Name and tagline of the brand/app
- Style of copywriting and UX authoring
- The landing page
- Personalization and onboarding
- Social clones
Last but not least, think about collaborating with brand advocates and specialized leaders. They are perhaps your best opportunity to affect a large number of people. Your ideal brand ambassador is someone who is engaged in your app and has a large number of followers who actually trust his views.
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Offer Free Trials, Contests, and Giveaways
Help your users save money, and they’ll likely demonstrate their gratitude by connecting with your app even more. Distribute promotional coupons or provide free trials to encourage downloads. Spotify, YouTube, and Netflix all provide free trials to first-time customers in order for them to become addicted to their services before subscribing.
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Effective Keyword Analysis
Use keywords wisely. Determine the most competitive keyword for which you wish to rank. It should be focused on your brand and mostly discuss the service you provided. Consider your customers. Write down the keywords; more free keyword tools are now accessible on the internet to determine the search volume and competency level, as well as to filter the most relevant terms with the highest search traffic. You can’t fit additional keywords into the material, so choose 4 to 5 keywords wisely. You may optimize the App title, URL, and description based on the keywords.
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Create Browser and Cross-Platform Versions of the App
It is no longer sufficient to have a native platform (usually Android or iOS). To reach a wider audience, your app should be offered on many platforms. This attempt not only saves you money but also speeds up the creation of your program, especially if you use top-rated IDE tools. Most IDE software also allows app developers to create browser versions of their apps, providing customers with several ways to access them across platforms. Consider any e-commerce app, such as Adidas. It is not only available for Android and iOS, but it is also fully functional in a browser.
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Run App Store Ads
App store advertising is another technique to increase your exposure and presence regardless of your degree of app store optimization by paying to rank rather than ranking organically. Consider paid app store advertising to be equivalent to a pay-per-click campaign like Google Ads. Paid app store advertising places your software precisely where a large number of prospective consumers are looking for it: at the top of search results.
Trello, for example, displays an app store advertisement when you search for “to do list” on the App Store. Simply choose a term related to your product and pay per click as one of your mobile app marketing best practices.
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Get Help From Influencers
There’s no doubt that influencers have a tremendous amount of power. However, unless you have a large enough budget to pay for an endorsement from an A-list influencer (think $400,000 per post for a Kardashian), you’ll have to hunt for a “micro-influencer” who is relevant to your target demographic.
The idea here is to use any existing relationships, but most importantly, to locate someone who is relevant to your business and objective. Otherwise, any new users you get will immediately leave. Bumble used its own staff to find hyper-micro-influencers (those with less than 1,000 followers) for the “Anne Smith” campaign, which sparked the growth that led to over 40 million members and pushed women to #MakeTheFirstMove.
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Create an Affiliate Program
Affiliate programs are analogous to the viral loop’s invitation mechanism. The distinction is that affiliate programmes often offer monetary incentives to their members. Companies provide affiliates with links and material to share with their audiences.
Shopify’s affiliate program is well regarded for several reasons, including large commissions, quality material for affiliates to share, and support. As a result, affiliates enthusiastically promote their apps to their audiences.
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Blog Regularly
By writing on a regular basis, one may demonstrate your industry expertise, boost your exposure on search engine results pages, and drive visitors to landing sites. In fact, businesses that blog on a regular basis earn 126% more leads than those who do not. Blog material may also be delivered via email newsletters, repurposed on social media, or presented on a landing page as an ebook or downloadable resource.
To generate interest in your app, teach your audience about the development process. Determine which keywords to target, then begin producing quality blog entries about those themes and obtaining links to boost your search exposure. Service of mobile delivery DoorDash has a highly successful blog that emphasizes their most recent changes and news, demonstrating to new and existing customers how the app makes their lives simpler.
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Develop a Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing has historically been thought of as a technique for generating growth, but it may also encompass the use of social media, video, blogs, and other formats. Success stories, infographics, use cases, and other material for your app are examples of content, as long as it is all related to your app. Content marketing demonstrates what your app does, how others have used it to improve their lives, and what your brand represents.
The content campaigns of note-taking app Evernote cater to both existing and new customers, including articles and videos on themes such as productivity, goal setting, app usage recommendations, and even interviews with high-profile users.
