What is User Acquisition (UA)?
User acquisition, often abbreviated as UA, refers to the process of bringing in new users to a website, service, platform, or app through marketing efforts. User acquisition is a strategy that works on generating installs through marketing activities including paid advertising, organic traffic, and app store optimization (ASO).
In this article, we’ll explore the significance of UA for mobile applications, discuss strategies for acquiring users via paid and owned media, and provide you with the tools necessary to measure your efforts.
What is the goal of User Acquisition?
In a mobile app install campaign, one of the main goals is acquiring new users: therefore, a good user acquisition strategy is necessary for app advertisers. The goal of user acquisition is to attract new users and get more users to install your app at the lowest possible cost, and, at the same time, to acquire high-quality users, who will use the app and make purchases in it.
Generally, mobile marketers will use a variety of techniques, ad platforms, and marketing channels to decide the most profitable way to acquire more users. After this, businesses can focus on maximizing the number of active users.
Channels of User Acquisition
Users can be acquired through various channels, here we are going to focus on paid media marketing, owned media marketing and app store optimization (ASO).
- Paid media marketing: this marketing channel works by paying channels and ad networks to display ads that will be shown to a target audience. These ads will hopefully result in an immediate action, such as the download of an app. Paid media channels may include various types of ads that encourage users to install an app. For example there could be banner ads, playable ads, video ads, and interstitial ads, addressed to a target audience. In user acquisition terms, the aim is to encourage new users to install your app. Paid user acquisition has increased its impact on the quality of new users over the years. Thanks to ever more sophisticated machine learning algorithms and technologies, paid UA channels are able to precisely target the highest quality users for the advertised app.
- Owned media marketing: owned media concerns the platforms the business owns, such as emails, SMS and social media pages, tools that have the purpose of directing web users to an app.
- App store optimization (ASO): important process in user acquisition that aims to make an app easier to discover in app stores. ASO focuses on the importance of descriptions, visuals, keywords, to attract visitors and acquire new users. A high ranking of an app in app stores usually implies a greater number of new users.
How is User Acquisition measured?
It’s important to know when an acquisition strategy is working. User acquisition can be measured through key metrics, and through the analysis of these metrics, the marketing team will figure out if the user acquisition strategy is effective or if it needs to be adjusted. Here is a list of key mobile acquisition metrics:
- Conversion rate (CVR): it’s the percentage of people exposed to an ad who proceed to download the app. It’s used to see if the ads are working.
- Lifetime value (LTV): it measures how much value each customer brings to the business, over the whole time they spend using the app.
- Return on ad spend (ROAS): it determines the profits that the advertising has produced. ROAS will identify the most effective channels, and, not only the cost of acquiring users, but how much revenue those new users bring in.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): it is a key metric for measuring the success of user acquisition campaigns. It compares how much the business has spent to attract new paying users against the actual numbers of new users.
Takeaways
- User acquisition is an essential process in app install campaigns;
- The goal is acquiring new app users and increasing installs, which will help the business grow;
- An effective user acquisition strategy will increase in-app events and therefore in-app revenues;
- In analyzing the success of the UA campaigns, businesses should compare a variety of metrics to have a full picture of their achievements;
- A well-organized paid user acquisition strategy provides not only more traffic, but also more high-quality users;
- User acquisition depends on data-driven optimization methods, which are essential for adjusting and optimizing each app installation campaign in time.
