The cutting-edge agenda of the App Promotion Summit covers new ways to drive app growth through user acquisition understanding more about SKAN 4.0, best UA tactics using influencers and creators, and digging deep into your first-party data to maximize reach, analytics, engagement and retention.
The number one step to maximize a small ad budget is to use it to target the right app customers, and to communicate with these people in a way they can relate to.
Take M.M.LaFleur, for example. It’s a retailer that defines its fashion as “powerful pieces to wear as you’re out fighting for the things you believe in.”
The company was “built on a core belief: When women succeed in the workplace, the world becomes a better place,” its website explains. The company’s “mission is to take the work out of dressing for work,” so that women can “harness the power of self-representation” and focus on the issues that matter to them.
That said, the brand has been known to clarify that “we take our work – but never ourselves – seriously.” Therefore, when it comes time to craft messages that speak to this audience and lead to conversion, M.M.LauFleur’s team easily navigates through the full customer experience.
If peek at the company’s Instagram feed, you’ll learn how this brand naturally communicates with its audience, and then think about how you can implement it yourself when you set to advertise your own app, based on the core idea and values of it.
Among the content, M.M.LauFleur invests in are simple fashion tips, like which colors go with which. You can find posts about gender equality. And you can find content about workplace life – anything from what your “out of office” messages really mean to whether it’s OK to cry at work.
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This understanding of its target audience makes advertising much more efficient. M.M.LaFleur can focus its budget only on women who fit its target audience, saving itself a lot of money and time.
And you can do the same.
Before you start your advertising campaign, get to know your app’s ideal customer.
In some occasions, knowing demographic information can help. If your app is for home buyers, for example, you want to understand your customer’s budget and housing needs. A professional looking for a condo in the hottest neighborhood in town, overlooking the skyline, is different than a family that needs a budget home in a good school district, or an older citizen looking for comfort.
Even if your app can serve all of them, each ad campaign will be more successful if it speaks to one customer sector at a time.
Either way, in most cases, it’s recommended to dig deeper than demographics. But don’t worry if you can’t afford a research firm to reveal the specific characteristics of your app’s target audience. If you’re on a budget, the internet is your best friend. There’s a wealth of information right here, at your fingertips.
Research and get to understand your ideal app customers’ underlying desires, challenges, fears and aspirations. Try to figure out how they define and phrase things.
Spend some time following hashtags and social media group discussions, and reading-related book reviews and popular blog or YouTube channel comments.
Gradually, you’ll gain a clearer understanding of their voice. It’ll be like hearing them speak.
You could also participate in discussions yourself, ask questions, and leave some blind spots behind.
It will help you target the right people for your app, and write ad copy they can connect to.
Simultaneously, choose an advertising partner that has access to a larger, deeper volume of data. Platforms that connect a wide range of media sources are usually better at targeting specific audiences accurately and cost-effectively because their algorithms can cross-reference and validate data way more efficiently than single-source platforms.
But more on that a little later. Let’s first make sure you’ve got the goal of your campaign clear.
Once you understand who your ideal customer is and what she needs from your app, it’s time to clarify why you want to reach out to her with your campaign.
One very valid reason is to increase brand awareness, recall and preference. After all, it takes time to get people to know your app, remember it and trust it enough to buy from it. Building a long-lasting relationship with your ideal customer takes a long time, and it’s important to keep nurture it.
This way, when your customer is ready to buy, your app will be the one she wants to buy from.
However, if you have a small budget and a small team, chances are you need real business results as soon as possible.
The sooner you’ll convert prospective customers into actual customers, the sooner you’ll have the budget you really need in order to grow your app, and run campaigns like the bigger companies in your space.
At the risk of a shameless plug, that’s exactly why we decided to offer a pay-per-performance model in our advertising platform. You get guaranteed app installations.
No matter how wide your campaign spreads across our 600+ global mobile user resources, the guarantee still stands. And it’s the same if you prefer to narrow down the reach to premium social media networks, like Facebook and TikTok. If you don’t get an installation, you don’t pay, because we want to level the playing field and see more small businesses succeed.
Of course, to get app installations, it’s important that you build trust with your ideal customers.
Have you generated results for your customers? Do you have customers your prospective customers can recognize, like celebrities or influencers? Has your app been featured on large media sources?
Do you have lots and lots and lots of customers?
Incorporating these little nuggets of information in your ads and landing pages instantly boosts trust. It differentiates your app from similar apps, especially if your prospective customer is new to your brand.
Suddenly, this isn’t just another app that’s trying to sell a product or service. Instead, it’s an app that helped a favorite celebrity – or a woman just like her, or 10,000 women just like her – create the life she, too, wants.
Check it out in action. KiwiCo, which provides science and art kits for kids, has the number of products it has sold, customer testimonials, and photos of kids using its products in one spot.
Source: KiwiCo
Now, you don’t necessarily need to pack so much social proof into one spot. You can spread different trust anchors throughout your campaign, or just highlight the one aspect that will matter to your customers most.
Then, stay consistent.
Have you seen this meme on social media?
Celebrities, everyday people and organizations posted photos that represented them differently on different platforms – LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Tinder.
What do social media and campground fire pits have in common? They’re the only places allowed to be lit 🔥#FindYourPark #nationalparkservice #dollypartonchallenge pic.twitter.com/NNsF40NhWZ
— Joshua Tree NPS (@JoshuaTreeNPS) January 23, 2020
Meme or not, we all do that. We all show up more professionally on LinkedIn than we do on dating apps (well, most of us anyway). We all have personality facets that shine with certain friends, siblings or coworkers, and other facets that shine elsewhere.
Your app’s brand personality might be the same.
It might be more humorous in some of your communication, and more compassionate when that’s a better fit. But at the core, its essence must remain consistent across all channels.
Think of it this way:
First, your app’s brand needs to feel like a human being for people to connect with it emotionally. If they connect with it emotionally, they’re more likely to buy according to fMRI studies. “Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows that when evaluating brands, consumers primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences), rather than information (brand attributes, features and facts),” reported Psychology Today.
Therefore, you want to give your app a brand personality, that can provide an emotional experience for customers.
Second, remember that your app basically interacts with one person – your ideal customer. Whatever personality aspects that interaction sparkles, it needs to sparkle them across all channels, just like it would with that one friend or family member.
Even more so during a campaign.
Here’s why:
When your ideal customer connects with an ad enough to click on it, you want to make sure that experience – that feeling – continues through your landing pages and into your app.
That’s what got her to click. That’s what will get her to download your app, and even to buy.
And if the experience keeps proving itself, that’s what will turn her into an advocate who brings more ideal customers to your app.
As you can see, it’s important to unify your app’s message and how it communicates. But to take your efficiency to the next level, also unify the platforms you operate for your ad campaigns.
In other words, instead of managing campaigns across multiple ad networks, choose a platform that gives you access to all of them on one dashboard.
Preferably, the platform will do more than unify your channels. It will also unify your data.
Here’s how this helps you get more for every dollar you spend, so you can spend less money to get the same (or better) results:
The beauty of artificial intelligence is that it takes all the smarts we have as humans, and scales it to levels we might not be able to reach even if we dedicated our entire career to learning one topic.
Artificial intelligence algorithms can study massive amounts of information at pretty enviable speed, then make smart, data-based decisions, while correctly predicting results.
If you have a small budget, it’s especially critical that you choose an ad platform that utilizes AI. You’ll be able to get more customers for your app on that budget. And yes, you can totally access this type of technology even with a small budget [link to site].
As a bonus, it might also make it easier to differentiate humans from bots.
21.3% of iOS and 26.9% of Android app installs are fraudulent, according to Business of Apps.
That’s more or less every fourth or fifth download you get. And it seems to be a profitable market for scammers. “The WFA predicts ad fraud will become the biggest market for organized crime by 2025, worth $50 billion,” added Business of Apps. But it doesn’t mean you’re doomed to waste your money on scammers.
Source: TrafficGuard via Business of Apps
If you’re building a small business with a small budget, this is just another key element to compare between ad platforms: How much fraud protection do they provide? How do they reduce your risk of encountering fraud?
The math is simple: The less you pay for bots to view your content and fake-download your app, the more budget you have left to pay for actual humans who download your app and make actual purchases with actual money.
For a small budget to make a big splash, take advantage of zero costs strategies right in the app store. These strategies are not only known for their effectiveness, but they get the app store to do some of the marketing heavy liftings for you.
Make Your App Easy to Find in the AppStore
App stores have their own in-store search engine, just like Google. It’s important to invest in app store optimization (ASO) to give your app a chance to rank high when someone searches for your type of app. Ideally, you want your app to be the first or second one a customer sees in search.
Conduct keyword research, and choose the most relevant keywords you’re most likely to rank for. Then, use it in your description and title. You’ll want to emphasize your main keyword more than once in the app’s description, but don’t make it sound like it was written by a bot.
Let the description “sit” for a bit after your write it. Walk away and do something else. Then, edit it until it feels like the keyword has integrated seamlessly into your copy.
Make Your App Engaging from First Glance
Making your description human-friendly is a big part of a good first impression. Use your customer research to phrase it as closly to how your ideal customer would phrase it. It will help her connect emotionally and feel like you get her.
For an even faster connection, invest in high-quality images and videos that convey the experience she’ll get to enjoy once she downloads your app.
Remember that customers might be checking out your app in a public place or late at night, so your video needs to convey the app’s experience even without sound. You could add captions to bridge this gap.
Screen capture of Autodoc app on the Playstore
Source: AUTODOC, via Google Play
How to market a mobile App? Make Your App Trustworthy
Nothing we ever say about our app will be as trustworthy as what a fellow customer says. Therefore, do your best to get reviews for your app. You could give in-app rewards, push notifications to power users, or approach people one on one if you see them giving you a shoutout on social media.
Just as importantly, respond to reviews in the app store. Especially if you get a negative review. Prospective customers who will see how compassionate and helpful you were when something went wrong will likely find it easier to give you a chance.
As a small business, you have less time, workforce and budget, and it’s often perceived as a negative thing. But while it feels harder now, it almost puts you in a spot where you have to think strategically in order to generate results that will keep the lights on and that will, gradually, help your app grow.
It’s a great way to build a strong foundation. The more you follow the guidelines we shared in this ebook, the greater return you’ll get for the budget you invest in your app, and the easier your journey will become.
Here at Zoomd, we’re committed to level the playing field for you. Our AI-based, predictive ad platform is available to you with a few clicks of a button. If you have $200 to invest in your campaign, you get access to the same pay-for-performance model our big brand clients – including AliExpress, SheIn, eToro and NordVPN – get.
And yes, that means instant access to 600+ global mobile media sources, including premium social networks, like Google, Facebook, TikTok and Snap, and an added fraud detection layer. If you don’t get actual app downloads by actual humans, you don’t pay.
When you’re ready to zoom into growth, we’re here for you.
It comes naturally to those serious app advertisers, to use a large variety of media sources you might not be aware even exists. But it’s not just a world that belongs to the brave, those who mix a variety of advertising categories in their mobile acquisition strategy plan, are those who dare to try something different,
Those who spread their budget wider and connect with more app users, because they don’t restrict themselves only to the most expensive players in town.
And something else they don’t want you to know?
That after they diversify and diversify, they bring all their data together into one spot, mix it really well, and come out with predictive data that lets them scale even the less robust, less expensive channels.
Let’s go through some of the wealth of options waiting for you, a click of a button away, and start dreaming big.
Anyone who’s been in advertising for more than five minutes knows – Facebook is where segmentation thrives. The targeting you can do for user acquisition on Facebook is unmatched on other platforms.
So advertisers tend to invest a lot of their budget in Facebook, even though pricing there is far from cost-effective in some cases. Thankfully, with the rise of new media channels, such as TikTok and Snapchat, some advertisers actually generate better results outside of Facebook.
Moreover, advertisers that rely heavily on one channel leave themselves highly vulnerable to whatever changes this platform decides to take down the line.
Now, when things are going great for you on Facebook, is the time to test what the wealth of other social channels can provide for you so that you’re ready for the day things change.
And it’s not just that other social channels – including Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and the rising star TikTok – are more cost-effective, while still offering some segmentation.
It’s that you have an opportunity to communicate differently on different channels. You can enrich the way you connect emotionally with potential app customers while staying true to your brand personality.
Take Salesforce, for example. On Twitter, they tap into lightheartedness while keeping things professional.
On TikTok, they take lightheartedness to the next level. It’s the same brand personality, and the same target audience, but with a different twist.
If these posts were ads, each of them would have converted different sectors of Salesforce’s audience, at different stages of the funnel.
For example, maybe the TikTok one would have built emotional connection and curiosity to engage with the brand more. Once a relationship was established, the Twitter post could have been used to move a prospect to consideration or purchase.
It depends on your audience, of course. Maybe your ideal customer would tap into your funnel through a data-based post, because it made her realize she’s not the only one dealing with a certain situation. But maybe she would actually download your app only when saw the TikTok ad, and realized you just get her personality.
According to Apple Search Ads, 70% of app store users use the search option to find new apps, and 65% download an app directly after conducting this search.
Source: Apple Search Ads
Therefore, it could make sense to pay for placing your app at the top of the search results, and test to see what happens. But at the same time, you’ll want to leave room in your budget for Google Universal App Campaigns (UAC), which use machine learning to find accurate app customers.
According to internal Google data, “advertisers that optimize in-app actions with UAC, on average, drive 140% more conversions per dollar than other Google app promotion products.”
UAC lets you advertise “across Google Play, Google.com, YouTube and the millions of sites and apps in the Display Network,” according to Google.
There are so many platforms and media sources to choose from – just check out Appsflyer’s latest performance index. So consider adding these channels to your user acquisition mix, since they were developed for app advertisers. Over time, you’ll be able to see what the true conversion rates are for your specific app.
What do you do when your car battery dies? If you’re Nathon Apodaca, and you live in a trailer with no running water or electricity, and you have two teenage daughters to take care of… you use your longboard to get to the potato farm where you work. And you film a TikTok video to cheer up a pandemic-ridden world. Say, a video of yourself drinking Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry while longboarding, as an “ode to Fleetwood Mac,” which, you know, goes viral and gets 26 million videos, according to The Drum.
Then, you end up inspiring other creators to make similar videos, “including the 73 year old Fleetwood Mac’s namesake drummer Mick Fleetwood, who specifically joined TikTok just to get involved,” according to The Drum.
In video after video, TikTokers film themselves drinking Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry. Ocean Spray’s marketing department eventually hears about it – and decides to take action:
It reached out to Apodaca, and gave him a brand new car, according to The Drum… filled with Cran-Raspberry bottles, of course.
Not your classic influencer advertising campaign, but a very classic “surprise and delight” strategy, that ended up making even bigger waves. Two months after publication, that original video has 71.5 million views and Apodaca is selling merch – including shirts featuring a photo of himself drinking the now-famous drink.
Ocean Spray’s reaction likely increased enthusiasm for the brand in a way that would have been challenging to achieve otherwise. To further strengthen the bond with the enthusiastic audience, Ocean Spray’s CEO joined TikTok and did the challenge himself, reported The Drum.
While this kind of opportunity might not present itself for most brands and apps, consider it an invitation to think outside the box.
According to the State of Influencer Marketing 2020 Benchmark Report, influencer marketing has grown by “at least 50% each year” since 2016. Leaning into (or creating) trends, showing your appreciation to a community or its leader, making a real impact on an everyday hero’s life… can all help you stand out even if your product or app doesn’t gain fame on its own.
There are many ways you can diversify your influencer advertising strategies to convert better in your app campaigns:
Source: Influencer Marketing Hub
Then there are the ad networks. Some of the biggest SDK ad networks include ironSource, Vungle, Applovin and Unity. Each one gives you a different advantage, allowing you to easily monetize your app’s ad space inventory.
Need interactive or playable ads? Applovin can help you. Need video ads? That’s exactly what AdColony and ironSource focus on.
Just understand that in the realm of so many SDK or ad networks also comes the dirty hassling of fraudulent advertising argued to take 80% of ad budgets in SDK campaigns.
At the risk of a shameless plug, that’s why we added an extra layer for fraud detection. If you want to tap into 600+ global mobile media sources (including Snap, Google and TikTok) in one dashboard in a safe way, and have one channel’s data supercharge the targeting you do on another channel, give Zoomd a try.
Of course, whichever platform you choose, it’s critical to examine its measurement and fraud detection capabilities. You’ll want a platform with a strong enough infrastructure that it can provide accurate data – maybe even predictive guidelines – and as much security as possible, to make sure only real human beings download your app.
Programmatic is the general term for digital media buying, made in an automated, real-time bidding process, that allows advertisers to purchase ad inventory by specific contexts, resulting in hyper-targeting.
With out-of-home screen usage becoming more frequent, programmatic buying can also be done on those constantly evolving inventories.
One aspect of programmatic advertising is guaranteed impressions. A price is pre-determined by the buyer and seller before the impressions go live on the app or website.
Programmatic campaigns allow you to nurture potential app customers and increase your profit long term.
When your app needs to amplify its message, use programmatic for branding campaigns. Over time, you can shift your programmatic efforts into acquiring new users at a lower cost than you’re used to seeing on pure performance campaigns.
As you plan your mobile user acquisition strategy, diversify as much as possible. To do that without breaking the bank, use a platform that gives you access to as many sources as possible. It will help you to diversify advertising categories and diversify channels within each category.
But then bring it all together.
Use one dashboard to keep track of everything, to save serious time on the optimization process, reporting and data crunching when you’ve accumulated enough data across various sources and campaigns.
Use one platform to integrate data across channels, to improve your targeting even on less robust channels, and gain a bird’s-eye view on all your UA campaigns together. It will help you know more about your audience and its behavior.
This data is yours to be used wisely as you keep on growing. Before you know it, your app will be making a difference in so many more lives.
While still in the midst of the global pandemic, we at Zoomd find ourselves hungry to not only share our knowledge and expertise but hearing back from other industry peers from the US east coast.
We welcome you all to join us for this virtual conference taking place online on April 21st.
Omri Argaman, Zoomd CMO, will take part in the AGS interactive panel, with other media and digital experts mainly from North America.
for other events where you’ll be able to e-meet us (hopefully face to face events will return to normal by EOY 2021) visit our Events tab
