App marketing has always been about getting new users and scaling volumes as much as possible, at least until a few months ago. However, with advertising budgets now tightening, ROI and profitability have become the main focus of mobile app marketing campaigns. Therefore, we’ve put together a list of best practices to make your app promotion efforts ROI-positive and acquire new users profitably.
Choose the right MMP for your app marketing campaigns
Integrating with a mobile measurement partner (MMP) is always the first step to start your app marketing campaigns with the right foot. MMPs are platforms which allow app developers to track all install and post-install events coming from their user acquisition sources such as agencies, ad networks, DSPs, etc. Furthermore, they provide advertisers with fraud protection, measurement of most important app marketing KPIs, from retention to ARPU and ROI.
Here are the most popular MMPs in the mobile app marketing industry:
Choosing the most suitable MMP for your user acquisition goals may prove essential to make revenue out of your mobile app marketing campaigns. SDK integration, fraud tools provided, user experience, measurement capabilities, data freshness and availability are all features to evaluate when choosing your mobile measurement partner.
Define your app marketing goals
Next, user acquisition goals should be defined and shared with app marketing partners. It’s imperative to have clear goals in mind right from the start, in order to gather insightful data and optimize app campaigns as soon as possible.
As mentioned in our introduction, volume of new users used to be the holy grail for any advertiser in the past. Don’t get me wrong, acquiring new users is still the ultimate goal of app marketing campaigns.
However, increasing in-app revenue and app marketing ROI has now become paramount, reshaping the way mobile app campaigns are run and optimized.
Once user acquisition goals and KPIs are defined and communicated, the next suggestion is to provide app marketing partners with anything they could use to better optimize their activity, from post-install events to insight about monetization and ROI.
Choose multiple app marketing sources
As we move forward in our list of best practices for app marketing campaigns, user acquisition partners become more relevant. Indeed, advertisers need to integrate with multiple sources in order to run their app marketing campaigns. They can choose amongst many different platforms and networks, which provide different services and also different traffic.
Some of the most common user acquisition partners are the following:
These three main categories may be compared to each other in terms of transparency, pricing model, costs, technological capabilities and many more features. However, our suggestion is to test and combine multiple sources, in order to balance costs and try more than one solution before pushing your efforts.
Measure your app marketing performance
Launching your mobile app campaigns with the selected user acquisition partners will get you to the heart of app marketing, but your job won’t be over. Monitoring and measuring your performance is the only way to become profitable and scale your app marketing campaigns cost-efficiently.
MMPs allow advertisers to track a wide range of metrics, from conversion rate to post-install events, ARPU and ROI, just to name a few. It is possible then to evaluate every single source based on such metrics and make data-driven decisions.
However, we recommend allocating enough budgets to each source in order to run significant tests. Otherwise, it’s more likely to make mistakes and leave money on the table.
This industry more than anything else relies on data, because UA partners often use machine learning algorithms and A.I. in order to analyze data and optimize app marketing campaigns. That’s why running short tests with small budgets is going to be anything but a useless waste of money.
Make the best out of your creatives
We’ve decided to conclude our best practices list for app marketing with creatives. Even though algorithms analyze numerous dimensions like app placements, os versions, internet service providers, etc., creatives still play the most important role. They’re what attract users to download the app after all.
The most common practice is to test multiple ad formats and identify the top performing ones. Amongst the most employed ad formats are:
- Banners;
- Video ads;
- Playable ads;
- Interstitial ads;
- Rewarded ads;
- Native ads.
Banners are still the most popular ones, given their cheap placement and production cost, but they are also the most likely to annoy users and be ignored. Interstitials instead, even though they’re difficult to ignore as they cover the entire screen of users’ devices, tend to be perceived as too intrusive and annoying.
Video and playable ads are more expensive than all other ad formats and are especially suited to promote mobile games. They are able to grab the attention of users thanks to their engaging and more interactive content.
Rotating and A/B testing creatives isn’t all you can try to improve your app marketing campaigns. Advertisers have a few more tricks up their sleeves when dealing with creatives. For example, they can add interactive end cards at the end of video ads. They are shorter playables which users can engage with and work especially well for mobile games. If videos show the gameplay and some core features, end cards allow players to directly try the game and get involved.
To wrap up our best practices for app marketing, we’ve discussed MMPs, user acquisition goals and sources, the importance of budgets and tests, and the crucial role of creatives. Needless to say, there are many more strategies and tactics to put in place in order to get the most out of mobile app marketing. To learn more about them, don’t miss our blog and resources!
