- Intro
- What is mobile app marketing
- Develop your monetization strategy
- Target your ideal audience
- Track these essential app marketing KPIs
- Launch your mobile app marketing campaign
- Post-launch and app campaign optimization
- Conclusion
Mobile app marketing campaigns are advertising activities largely employed by app developers to acquire new users for their products. The proliferation of tech platforms and networks for mobile user acquisition make it difficult for advertisers to find the solutions which best fit their goals.
Moreover, while the annual spend on app marketing campaigns is projected to grow, advertisers are increasingly looking to grow their apps profitably. This means they’re allocating budgets on the most efficient user acquisition channels, focusing on metrics like ROAS and retention, rather than CPI and CPA.
In this guide, we’ll take a deep dive into mobile app marketing campaigns, providing you with the best tips throughout every step of the campaign, from planning to launch and optimization.
Let’s start with a basic definition of mobile app marketing:
Mobile app marketing is the set of activities, both paid and organic, aimed at promoting mobile apps, by acquiring and retaining valuable users.
It should not be confused with mobile marketing, which refers to advertising and marketing activities carried out via mobile devices, aimed at promoting all brands and not necessarily mobile apps.
While in this article we’ll focus on paid activities, it’s worth mentioning that there are multiple app marketing activities that can help advertisers promote their apps, and some of them can be combined in order to maximize results and efficiency.
Types of app marketing
We’ve divided all app marketing activities into 3 major categories. Again, these categories are not mutually exclusive, they can be combined together. In addition, they’re not interchangeable because they serve different purposes and audiences, just like any app does.
Mobile advertising
Mobile advertising refers to paid user acquisition activities, carried out by app developers to acquire new users by showing them ads on their mobile devices. There are many networks and platforms that serve this purpose, as we’ll see in later sections.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is another form of mobile advertising, different from all the others because of the channel it uses to promote apps. Indeed, mobile apps are promoted by influencers like celebrities or industry experts.
This activity, which occurs mostly via social media, helps app marketers to boost their apps’ user base and increase their brand awareness too.
App store optimization
Finally, app store optimization, frequently abbreviated as ASO, is for apps what SEO is for websites. By working on keywords, app descriptions, logo and other store assets, app developers can improve their apps’ ranking within the app/play store. Needless to say, higher rankings drive more installs and organic growth for mobile apps.
Now that we have clarified what app marketing is and how its different types serve different goals and purposes, let’s focus on mobile advertising. Specifically, we’ll analyze 5 tips that can help advertisers scale their app marketing campaigns.
First of all, before launching any app marketing campaign, it’s necessary to have a clear and effective monetization strategy. The majority of mobile apps available in the market are for free, thus they monetize either through ads or through in-app purchases (IAPs).
The monetization strategy usually depends on the app category. For example, shopping apps monetize with purchases of items carried out by users, fintech apps through deposits of transactions, streaming apps via both ads and subscriptions.
Mobile games are even more peculiar, since they can be divided into many subcategories, and the monetization strategy varies based on such categories. While hyper-casual games earn money mostly through ads, action and strategy games monetize mainly through in-app purchases.
Knowing where your in-app revenue comes from is essential to both targeting your app marketing campaigns and measuring its effectiveness.
Understand your app user funnel
Before setting up your app marketing campaigns, it’s also essential to completely understand the user funnel inside the app. Advertisers must know the user journey after the install, including post-install events such as registration, account verification, purchase, etc.
By measuring the in-app event rate at each stage of the funnel, it’s possible to measure the quality and value of new users and, as a consequence, the quality of the channel which brought such users.
Know your ideal audience
Every app is targeted to different audiences, based on their categories and the service they provide. Such differences can refer to the demographics (like gender, age, etc.), to personal interests and online behavior and also to purchasing power. All these factors must be taken into account when planning your app marketing campaign and finding your ideal audience.
While it’s always a good idea to explore more audience segments before narrowing your reach down, it’s important not to waste money showing ads to people who are definitely not interested in your app.
Set the correct targeting strategy for your app marketing campaign
When launching your app marketing campaign, there are multiple targeting options which can be defined in advance, making sure to show your ads mostly to your target audience. For instance, it’s possible to target users based on their gender, age, location and operating system (iOS or android).
Besides these basic targeting options, there are even more possibilities, based on the platform you’ve chosen for your app marketing campaigns. They can target users based on their internet connection, ISP or narrow down the geographical location to the ZIP code level. Furthermore, it’s possible to either whitelist or blacklist specific apps or app categories where to show ads.
Finally, due to the latest privacy limitations imposed by Apple, while lookalike audiences are not available anymore, there are platforms which provide advertisers with contextual targeting. It allows advertisers to optimize app marketing campaigns based on contextual signals received from users’ devices, rather than their personal behavior or interests.
One of the crucial steps before launching your app marketing campaign is to correctly identify which KPIs to measure in order to assess the effectiveness of the campaign. There are dozens of metrics to keep track of, based on your main goals and objectives. Here we’re going through the most common ones used in app marketing campaigns, based on our experience.
What are the most important app marketing KPIs
CPI
CPI, a.k.a, cost per install, is the cost that advertisers pay to their UA partners for every new user. Even when advertisers pay on CPM or CPC, measuring the CPI is useful to assess the effectiveness of the campaign and to compare the performance of different app marketing channels.
CPA
Similar to CPI, CPA stands for cost per action, and it measures the cost for acquiring a new user who completed a specific post-install event, like a purchase or a subscription. As a result, CPA is even more insightful than CPI, because it measures the cost of acquiring a user who actually generates revenue for the app.
ROAS
To better understand the profitability of your app marketing campaigns, you should compare earnings and costs, and calculating ROAS is the best way to do it. It measures the return on ad spend, which is how much money advertisers are making from new users compared to how much they spent in order to acquire such new users.
Retention Rate
When trying to assess the quality of new users brought by app marketing campaigns, retention rate is a valuable tool. It shows how often new users return the app after they have installed it on their smartphone.
LTV
LTV refers to the lifetime value of new users. Even more than the retention rate, this metric helps advertisers measure the quality of new users. It is a predictive metric, which computes the value each new user is likely to bring to the app, by tracking post-install activity like app opens, usage time, etc.
ARPU
Average revenue per user, frequently abbreviated as ARPU, is very similar to LTV, except that it’s based on actual data and not a prediction. Indeed, ARPU computes how much money was generated by every new user, dividing the total in-app revenue by the number of new users acquired.
Choose your UA partners for app marketing
Once all the previous steps have been completed, the major task left is to choose your UA partner(s). Advertisers usually run app marketing campaigns with multiple UA platforms/channels, trying to diversify the audience they reach and to better understand what works and what doesn’t. Let’s find out what are the most common UA platforms for app marketing.
What are the most common UA platforms
While there are many platforms that can help app developers with user acquisition, we’re going to focus on 3 specific categories:
- Mobile Ad Networks
- DSPs
- Affiliate networks
Ad Networks
Ad networks are UA platforms that run app marketing campaigns for advertisers, targeting the best inventory for their needs. There are several different types of ad networks, based on peculiar features they may provide. For instance, there are ad networks specialized in traffic for video ads; mobile ad networks that focus only on in-app advertising rather than mobile web campaigns; or rewarded ad networks that provide rewarded traffic.
One major advantage of ad networks is that they can achieve a positive ROI for app marketing campaigns. Indeed, ad networks often work with performance-based pricing models, like CPI or CPA, making advertisers pay only for valuable results and adjusting payout to meet their expectations.
DSPs
Mobile DSPs are tech platforms specialized in user acquisition for mobile apps. DSPs can be either self-serve or managed platforms. The former provide advertisers with a dashboard they can work with, setting up and running app marketing campaigns. The latter are managed by a team which takes care of campaigns’ setup and optimization.
Compared to ad networks, DSPs work only with CPM model, thus being usually more expensive than other UA platforms. On the other hand, they are 100% tech-driven, providing advertisers with sophisticated targeting options, full transparency and ML algorithms for optimization purposes.
Affiliate networks
Affiliate networks are the cheapest option available for app marketing campaigns, working with affordable CPI and CPA pricing models. Such networks aggregate traffic from different publishers, trying to match what app developers are asking for.
However, affordability comes with a price: affiliate networks do not usually provide much transparency about where ads are shown. Also, it is usually hard for affiliate networks to optimize app marketing campaigns to optimize user acquisition towards KPI like ROAS or down-the-funnel in-app events.
Measure your app marketing campaign performance
Once your app marketing campaign is up and running, the most important task becomes monitoring and optimizing user acquisition. Besides your goals and KPIs, discussed earlier in the article, there are some performance metrics useful to check if everything is working properly.
Here is a list of the most common app marketing metrics to keep track of:
- CTR: click through rate
- CR: conversion rate or click-to-install rate
- CTIT: click-to-install time
- CPM: cost per mille, which is cost per thousands of impressions
- CPI: cost per install
- CPA: cost per action
Then, advertisers can work with their UA partners to optimize app marketing campaigns towards their main goals and KPIs. In order to do so, full transparency is required, providing UA platforms with as much data as possible about in-app events, new user LTV, in-app revenue, etc.
Besides technological optimization, it is also important to think about strategic decisions like switching pricing models, adjusting payouts, refreshing creatives or updating campaign setup.
- App marketing campaigns allow advertisers to acquire new users for their apps, potentially increasing also their ROAS and revenue.
- The definition of a clear app monetization strategy makes app marketing campaigns more effective in terms of ROAS and cost optimization.
- Planning app marketing campaigns efficiently includes identifying the ideal audience, tracking the right metrics and KPIs and choosing the best UA channels.
- The success of app marketing campaigns depends on a good post-launch strategy, which includes measurement and optimization.
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