In today’s competitive mobile app landscape, effective advertising is paramount to driving app downloads, increasing user engagement, and ultimately boosting revenues. App advertising strategies encompass a wide range of techniques that help app developers and businesses reach their target audience, optimize visibility on app stores, and grow their app’s performance. In this article, we will discuss the top five things you should know about app advertising to maximize app revenues and achieve business growth. 

Define Your Target Audience and Their Needs in App Advertising: 

Understanding your target audience and their needs is the first step for successful app advertising campaigns. By identifying your ideal users and conducting thorough market research, you can tailor your advertising strategies to resonate with their preferences. This ensures that your campaigns are more likely to reach the right people and generate higher engagement. Knowing your audience also helps you identify the best platforms to advertise on and the type of content that will likely perform better. Incorporate relevant keywords such as “advertising,” “app advertising,” and “advertising mobile apps” to optimize your messaging, design, and targeting efforts. 

App Store Optimization (ASO) for Effective App Advertisement: 

App Store Optimization (ASO) is crucial for increasing visibility on app stores and attracting organic downloads. Optimize your app by strategically incorporating keywords like “app advertisement,” “increase app performance,” and “grow your app” in your app’s title, description, and metadata. Focus on creating a compelling app store listing that highlights your app’s unique features, benefits, and screenshots to capture users’ attention and improve conversion rates. 

Choose the Right Platforms and Channels for Advertising Apps: 

You probably have an awesome app that you want to promote and make more money from, you need to choose the right platforms and channels for advertising. There are many options out there, but some are better than others depending on your goals and budget. For example, you can use popular sources like Google, Meta, TikTok, or programmatic platforms with ad networks. These can help you reach a large and diverse audience that is interested in your app’s category and features. But don’t limit yourself to just one platform. You should explore all the possibilities and create a media plan that covers all the bases. You can also advertise your app through DSPs and ad networks, which gives you more control and flexibility over your campaigns. They can also help you optimize your performance and visibility, and get more installs for your app by targeting the right users at the right time and place.

Leverage Word-of-Mouth and Influencer Marketing for App Advertisement: 

Word-of-mouth and influencer marketing can significantly impact app downloads and user engagement. Encourage your existing users to share your app with their network by implementing referral programs and incentives for successful referrals. Partnering with influencers in your app’s niche can also boost brand awareness and attract new users. Incorporate keywords like “advertising apps for business” to optimize your reach in the business community. 

Implementing MMP and Analytics for Measuring App Performance: 

To optimize your app advertising efforts, it’s essential to track and measure your app’s performance accurately. Implement a reliable Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) to gather data on installs, engagement, and revenues. Analyze user feedback and reviews to gain insights into user satisfaction and identify areas for improvement. By incorporating keywords such as “advertising app performance” and “increasing app revenues,” you can make data-driven decisions and continually refine your advertising strategies. 

App advertising is dynamic and can be sometimes a complex process that requires a deep understanding of your target audience, effective optimization techniques, and strategic promotion across various platforms. By defining your target audience, optimizing your app’s visibility through ASO, choosing the right advertising platforms, leveraging word-of-mouth and influencer marketing, and implementing MMPs and analytics, you can increase app revenues, enhance app performance, and achieve sustainable growth. A successful plan and execution are all about mixing different channels, digging deep into the data that your campaigns produce, and keep testing new channels and approaches along the way.

Advertising for apps?

Stay informed about the latest trends in app advertising with Zoomd to adapt your strategies accordingly, and continually refine your approach to stay ahead of the competition in the ever-evolving world of mobile apps.

In today’s competitive app market, increasing app installs and acquiring users are crucial for mobile app success. With millions of apps available across various platforms, it’s essential to employ effective tactics to stand out and drive user acquisition. So how can app marketers try and be distinct in this competitive arena? In the following article, we will explore proven tactics to boost app installations and enhance user acquisition strategies.

Implement App Store Optimization (ASO) Strategies

Searching within app stores is one of the most common ways to install apps. ASO is a continuous process that involves optimizing various elements to improve your app’s search rankings within app stores. To maximize visibility and attract potential users, optimize your app store presence by:

1. Keyword Research: Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant and high-volume search terms. Incorporate these keywords naturally in your app title, description, and tags so people could search for them intuitively.
2. Compelling App Title and Icon: Create an engaging and descriptive app title that reflects its core features. Additionally, design an eye-catching app icon that conveys the essence of your app. People shop with their eyes and are attracted to show-stopping graphics. 
3. Persuasive App Description: Write a concise and compelling app description that highlights the unique value proposition (USP) and key features of your app. Use screenshots and videos to visually showcase its functionality.
4. App Ratings and Reviews: Encourage satisfied users to rate and review your app. Positive ratings and reviews, not only improve your app’s visibility but also build trust and credibility.
5. Localization: Tailor your app’s metadata, screenshots, and description to target specific regions and languages. This approach can significantly increase visibility in local markets.
6. Regular Updates: Consistently update your app to enhance its performance, fix bugs, and introduce new features. Frequent updates demonstrate your commitment to user satisfaction.

Leverage Influencer and Social Media Marketing 

User acquisition can be greatly enhanced by utilizing influencers and social media platforms. Here are some tactics to consider:

1. Influencer Partnerships: Join forces with influencers in your niche to promote your app. Their endorsement and recommendations can reach a wide audience and generate organic installs.
2. Engaging Social Media Content: Create engaging and shareable content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Utilize app teasers, tutorials, user testimonials, and giveaways to generate buzz and attract potential users.
3. User-Generated Content: Encourage users to create and share content related to your app. User-generated content serves as social proof and can influence others to download and try your app. You can use professional services such as Zoomd’s CGC (creator-generated content) department, to reach the most precise influencers to promote your app in the most efficient way.  

Implement Referral Programs and Incentives 

Incentives and referral programs can motivate existing users to spread the word about the app, resulting in an increase in user acquisition. Several strategies can be considered:

1. In-App Rewards: Offer incentives such as in-app currency, exclusive content, or discounts to users who refer others to download your app.
2. Personalized Referral Codes: Provide users with unique referral codes that they can share with their network. This method helps track and reward successful referrals.
3. Gamification Elements: Integrate gamification elements within your app to make the referral process more engaging and enjoyable. Users are more likely to refer to friends and family if they perceive it as a fun activity.

How to increase App installs?

Once you have all the above strategies in place and have applied these organic initiatives, it’s time to take your app install strategy to the next level. That’s exactly where Zoomd comes in. Zoomd’s user acquisition platform allows you to reach international audiences, grow your audience dramatically and see ROI faster than ever before. By leveraging the power of user acquisition platforms like Zoomd, marketers can access advanced targeting, optimization, and analytics features, ensuring their campaigns reach the right audience and drive maximum app installs. 

With continuous evaluation, optimization, and data-driven decision-making, developers and marketers can stay ahead in the competitive app market, effectively acquiring users and achieving success. Implement these tactics and leverage user acquisition platforms to increase app installs, expand your user base, and drive long-term app growth. Stay proactive, adapt to market trends, and prioritize user satisfaction to establish a strong and sustainable app presence.

What if your website performance could experience over 40% increase in average session length, double the pageviews, and 30% less bounce rate?
That’s exactly what publishers experience with Zoomd’s free on-site search tool and now is the time to do so, as people are still quarantined all over the world, stuck to their mobile phones and computers, consuming more digital media than ever.

Retain Readers with More Engaging, More Relevant Experiences

When readers browse through your site, they want to find the content they need as soon as possible, and they want to enjoy their journey.
When publishers provide an on-site search experience that is visually engaging and is customized to their needs, readers kick off their shoes, get some cake or smoothie, and keep on reading.

Visual, Engaging On-Brand Experience

Visitors are used to line after line of headlines and metadata in Google’s search results. Therefore, when they log into your site, it’s easy to immerse them in deeper experience if you turn these results to a visual party.
Check out the difference between what Google Custom on-site Search results look like and what your on-site search tool can create. What would you prefer to browse through?

Moreover, providing visual search results differentiates your website from Google’s experience. You can customize the look and feel of the search layout to match your site design, which will deepen brand recall and affinity.
The on-site search is optimized for both mobile and desktop, and both new and returning visitors.

Quick Orientation for New Readers

Chances are, your team works hard every day, investing plenty of resources, to get more people to check out your site. Once they do, they enter a form of unfamiliar land. After all, they don’t know how you’ve structured your site and what’s the quickest way to find what they need.
It’s our job as publishers to give them a quick compass – and thankfully, online readers have already shown the online publishing industry what that compass needs to be.
As our CMO Omri Argaman shared on Business 2 Community, “43% of visitors go immediately to the search bar when they enter a new website” according to a Forrester Research study.

Personalized Journeys for Returning Readers

If your visitors have already spent some time on your site, or if they’re returning visitors, the advanced technology operating your on-site search can give you an unfair advantage.
Zoomd’s on-site search is created using patented NLP technology, plus machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. Alongside our advertising products, the search tool turns 500,000,000 daily events into measurable business results.
Therefore, once a reader has spent some time on your site, the on-site search tool is able to offer contextualized results based on that reader’s personal activity. Therefore, she’s more likely to stay on the site, check out additional pages, gain trust, and eventually convert throughout your funnel.
And that’s with the basic features of the search tool alone. Smart publishers take a few extra steps, tapping into the more advanced options, to improve results even further (and yes, the advanced options are also totally free and very easy to customize – no need for tech superpowers).

Know What Content to Invest in Based on Data from Your Readers

While you don’t need tech superpowers, it *is* easy to feel like a super-publisher when you check out the data the search tool provides, and take a few actions based on this data.

Develop the Most Desired Results Readers Look for

One of our favorite parts of the search tool is that you get the information you never had before.
Usually, when a reader can’t find something on your site, she’ll just click the “back” button and ask Google to find her another resource. With the on-site search tool, she might still do that – but unlike before, you’ll know that this happened.
When you start seeing a recurring theme in searches that didn’t provide any results, you can see which content readers need most from your site – and develop it.
You can also develop more of the content you do have, once you understand how popular it is in on-site search.

Give Them Relevant Content When They Get Lost

Sooner or later, we all find ourselves stumbling upon the good old 404 page. So set your 404 page – and your readers – to success.
Use the search tool to offer contextually relevant articles and videos, presented in a visually engaging way, to encourage them to explore some more, and continue their journey with your site.

Increase Average Visit Duration and Pages Per Visit

Of course, you don’t need to wait for a reader to find your content. Using the on-site search tool, your content can find your reader as she browses through the site.
Two of the features that help your content do that:

• Top Searches: At the top of your site, present a row with popular search results. You have total control over which keywords are placed there, so the top searches can be relevant to a promotion you run, or could be topics you know keep visitors engaged longer on the site.
• Top Video Searches: Similarly, you can promote top videos during on-site search. This can be done automatically – have the tool select popular videos from your site, which are most relevant to a search query. And it can also be done manually, to help you promote specific video content.

And that’s not all. The tool also lets you promote third-party content and your own direct ads as an additional monetization path.

Increase Monetization with the Traffic You Already Have

Publishers who use the on-site search tool discover there are many ways to significantly increase monetization with the traffic they already have.
And since it’s done with such a high-quality reader experience, it actually brings them even more readers, which, you guessed it, improves monetization too.

Leverage the In-Search Ads Available in Your Free On-Site Search Tool

Add new ad units inside the search overlay, and earn money when readers click on them.

1) In-search ads- Add sponsored banners and videos inside the search overlay.
2) Native ads- Ads that blend in with your site’s design, for a better user experience.
3) Top searches-  As mentioned above, you can have a row of keywords at the top of your site, representing “top searches” on your site. The idea is to encourage readers to click on a keyword and explore related content. Some or all of these keywords can actually be ads.

Get More Ad Views and Clicks

1) Use data and AI to develop more of the content that works. As mentioned above, once you know which content readers want, search for and click on, you can develop more of that. More page views mean more ad views and clicks. Plus, the AI-based search tool leads visitors to the more relevant content, where they are much likelier to engage with ads.
2) Get more ad views from your current readers. More time on the site means readers can see (and click on) more ads. It also means they’re likelier to remember you and come back another time (to see and click on more ads), and/or recommend you to their friends (who, too, will see and click on ads).
3) Get more ad views from Google. A better reader experience, which leads to more time on site and more page views per visit, signals to Google this is a high-quality site, that needs to get more visitors, who can view more ads. Invest in your current readers, and Google is likelier to help you out.

Source: Times Leader

Optimize Sponsored Content

4) Create better conversion paths. Once you improve the user experience and reader journeys with the search tool, you’ll be able to charge more from sponsors and other direct advertisers, because you’ll know how to optimize on-site campaigns for the right readers.

Some of the Monetization Results Publishers are Seeing with On-Site Search
With so many ways to increase site monetization, these are some of the results our publishers have been seeing:

• +20% eCPM
•  $15 eCPM video ads
• An additional 3-4% revenue within the first month

Want similar results?

It Only Takes a Few Minutes to Get the Free On-Site Search Going
No matter how big or small your website is, investing in your current readers will help build loyalty, retention and even advocacy, as readers tell their friends about the differentiated experience you offer.
And the best part? Investing in this advanced on-site search tool is free and only takes a few minutes to get started. It requires only one line of code, so you don’t need advanced tech skills to get going. Click here to sign up, and you’ll zoom into growth.

 

About Adam:
Adam Agassi is the Director of Publisher Relations who defines, develops and executes Zoomd’s business strategy, leading the onboarding of new partnerships that mainly consist of tier-one websites from top markets. Adam has an international background and prior to Zoomd, has worked in sales and business development at ad tech and MarTech companies for over six years.
He is highly knowledgeable of publishers’ pains and needs in a market that changes on the fly. When he finds some time off, he enjoys sports activities and cooking.

You’ve done your customer research, analyzed your data and designed the perfect user acquisition strategy. Now it’s time to create that magical moment when your ad and ideal app user stumble across each other on the feed.

Today’s guide to creative assets that convert is all about that moment. It’s about helping your ad stand out, about starting a conversation (or continuing a previous one), and connecting your app with the people whose lives it can improve most.

Advertising for apps? Whichever Creative Assets You Choose, Set Your App Advertising Campaign to Success.

1. Choose a Goal

You can achieve every conversion goal you want for your app, you just can’t achieve all the conversion goals with one single ad. Choose a goal first, then reverse engineer the creative assets that will help you get there.

2. Be Inclusive

82% of people believe brands must take a stand on social issues to earn their trust, revealed the 2020 Edelman report. 60% even said it impacts their purchase decisions.

The easiest way to start? Be inclusive. Showcase a range of genders, ethnicities, ages and abilities.

Source: Edelman

 

3. Create Instant Trust

Whenever possible, include trust triggers in your campaign – success stories, testimonials, amount of customers, recognizable customers, everyday app users just like the ad viewer, coverage in popular media, you name it.

4. Analyze and Tweak

Review your assets periodically to make sure they align with your app’s message and the current times. Rotate assets in a previously-determined, strategic order. Analyze conversions, let go of what doesn’t work, and create more of what does.

Best Practices for HTML5 Assets

5. Draw Attention Strategically

Animate the beginning of your ad to draw immediate attention to it in a busy feed. Also animate the most important part of your ad – for example, your product – to help it stand out within the ad experience

6. Tell a Story

Take advantage of the fact you can include multiple frames in one ad, and use it to share the story behind your app, or the narrative of transformation awaiting those who download it.

But don’t push it. Keep it to 3-5 frames. Otherwise, you risk exceeding both viewer fatigue and platform weight limitations.

7. Gamify Your Ad

Make your ad interactive. Let customers answer a quiz, for example, at the end of which they can click through to your app to get the results.

Or let them replay the experience in-ad instead of clicking through right away. For example, give them multiple attempts to ensemble the perfect look out of your brand’s clothing items, before they click through to buy. Or play a small portion of your game multiple times before they download, to build a stronger emotional connection.

8. Provide Actionable Guidance

Include captions to direct people to the next step – both in-ad, for a better ad experience, and when it’s time to click through and download your app.

Best Practices for Video Assets

9. Make the First Few Seconds Count

Whether you advertise on YouTube and viewers can skip your app within five seconds, or you advertise on Instagram or TikTok, and viewers can skip right away… the first few second influence whether they’ll give your ad a chance.

10. “Design for Sound Off, But Delight with Sound On”

If you’ve been advertising on Facebook the past few years, you might have noticed the often-quoted stat that “85% of Facebook video is watched without sound.” Therefore, it’s crucial to add captions to your videos.

However, Facebook itself, which owns Instagram, reports that “60% of Instagram Stories ads were viewed [with the] sound on, and… Instagram Stories ads with sound were perceived as more relevant than those without.”

So, as a creative strategist, Isabelle Quevilly recommended to Facebook advertisers, “design for sound off, but delight with sound on.”

11. Make Video Ads Loopable

This might make sense especially on platforms like TikTok, where viewers are used to watching loop after loop of the same short video. But ideally, you’ll want viewers to replay your ad wherever they can, whether it’s on their Instagram feed or on YouTube.

The more time they play your ad, the more connected they’ll feel, and the higher the brand recall will be as well.

Of course, the intention is to move them off the current platform, so you could leave an open ending, requiring them to download your app to know how it ends.

12. Align Your Ad Tone with Your Conversion Goal

Yahoo, Nielsen & Hunter Qualitative surveyed 14,000 consumers and discovered that different tones help generate different types of conversions in video ads – at least when targeting millennials, according to Clickz.

Check it out:

Source: Yahoo and Nielsen & Hunter Qualitative, via Clickz

 

Best Practices for Image Assets

13. Test Faces vs. Products

Follow LinkedIn‘s example, and test whether your app targets consumers or business buyers. When LinkedIn advertised a business report, it tested a photo of a hand scrolling a phone versus a photo of a human face. The photo with the face converted more downloads.

Source: LinkedIn via YouTube

 

But your situation might be different. You might want to show how food photos that make customers drool enough to download your app and make a purchase.

So test it out.

 

14. Test Product Focus

If you do feature products, test just how closely to zoom in on them. Maybe for one app, closing in on red shoes will convert better, because it will emphasize the unique features this pair of shoes has.

Source: Zazabest

But maybe for another app, or for a different audience sector, a photo of a woman wearing red boots to a picnic of sweet potato soup and pumpkin spice drinks, set against the backdrop of mountains covered in fall colors, will create a greater urgency to “buy now.”

15. Test Complimentary vs. Contrasting Colors

You might need the contrasting colors to pop up on a busy page or feed, and fight banner blindness, but again, every audience is different.

Source: Lingokids

Maybe the soothing or inspiring aesthetic of complementary colors is what will get your specific customers wanting more.

Source: Wowcher

16. Let the Visual Tell the Story

Amplify your ad with copy, but make the image 80-ish% of your banner ad. Remember that some people will see it on mobile. The more text you add, the smaller the font needs to be… and the harder it is to read.

On that note…

Unless you do it to qualify your audience – say, your app targets a specific type of artist – don’t add all the visual details to one image. Your image needs to be interesting, but it needs to be easy enough to understand within a mere second or two, even on a small screen.

Source: NordVPN

 

If you need to show more details before customers download your app, create additional banners for the campaign, or direct them to a landing page to learn more.

Bonus Tip for advertising app: Gain Deeper Data

Data is crucial in understanding how well your creative assets are performing for you, and how to improve your user acquisition efforts.

Make sure you use an advertising platform that lets you compare campaigns in an efficient way. If you partner with a platform that lets you leverage one channel’s data to empower results on other channels, even better.
Zoomd offers 3 solutions that do that. You can check them out here, and see which one is best for you. But either way, remember – always be testing.