As a solopreneur or a small team trying to make a difference in the world – while paying bills and dreaming big – you’ve invested so much into an idea that you believe is brilliant, that people will connect with. You know they’ll find value in your app but as you try to reach more customers and grow, you end up getting pulled in a million different directions, trying to maximize operations and results across as many user acquisition platforms as you can. You end up wasting time and money that, as a small business, you can’t afford to lose.

 

We know what that feels like because we’ve been there- starting a company from scratch too and managing a growing number of user acquisition accounts manually, stretching ourselves across platforms and KPIs (key performance indicators). The good news we learned along the way is that was that it doesn’t have to be this way. You can increase advertising efficiency and get more customers to download your app in a profitable way. And you can do it even on a small budget with a small team – or on your own. You can grow your app step by step, and make scaling your business easier the more you grow. In this net article, we’ll present 9 realistic steps you can take to do just that. Start with one of them, then gradually combine as many of them as possible to reach the results you are after.

How to increase App installs

1. Focus Your Research Efforts on Your Most Ideal Customers (and the Tools that Help You Find Them)

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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A post shared by M.M.LaFleur (@mmlafleur)

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.

 

2. Target Actual Action Taking, Not Just Brand Awareness

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.

 

3. Build Trust Quickly

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.

 

4. Create Brand Continuity Across Touchpoints

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.

 

5. Unify Data & Scale Your Efficiency the Simple Way

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:

• It saves you time and workforce- If you’ve found yourself amazed at how long it takes to build one campaign (on either media source) or process invoices for all your vendors, you’re not alone. As marketers who built our company from scratch, we’ve been there too. Managing user acquisition campaigns on multiple advertising channels takes time. And it’s not just the administrative stuff. You need to learn how to optimize each platform, track progress, make changes, track progress again, check each of the creatives, make changes… Transitioning to one platform makes this process much easier and faster.
• It increases conversions for less money- Getting data from one source is great. Unifying data from over 600+ sources like we do here at Zoomd, including all the hot social channels (did someone say TikTok?) helps us and our clients make much more strategic decisions, which end up converting more customers for less money. Just the ability to compare apples to apples (instead of impressions generated from one ad network compared to installations generated from another network) is helpful. When you add the predictive algorithm that knows how to buy ad inventory efficiently… We just sleep better at night.

 

6. Leverage Predictions

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.

 

7. Pay and Get Real Users, Not Only Downloads

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.

 

8. Remember to Invest in Organic Growth

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.

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.

 

9. Think Big to Grow Big

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.

If you are out there looking for the fifth or sixth week of the month, you are not alone. Talk to any professional in today’s busy-driven environment, and they’ll likely have a story of how they rushed to work in the morning, struggled to keep up with their inbox, or came home too exhausted to spend time with friends or play with their kids.

For marketers operating in a constantly changing landscape, often serving audiences and teams in multiple time zones, it feels harder and harder to keep up with the clock and deliver powerful results for management along the way.
But it does not have to be this way. There are practical strategies you can implement to take back control on both your time and ROI.

 

 

Understand Your Core Audience and its Needs

The number one-way marketers can save time and improve results is to get back to the basics, and really get to know the people we serve or want to attract. The better we understand them, the better we will be at tailoring experiences to their preferences and goals, which means the less time we will spend on content, channels and campaigns that don’t work.

According to the 2019 Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs B2C report, marketers use a wide variety of tools to learn about what their audiences need to convert and thrive. These tools include social media listening, website analytics, keyword research, database analysis, primary research, sales team feedback, secondary research, and customer conversations and panels. You do not need to use all of them. Choose the ones that make the most sense for you.

Source: 2019 Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs Report

Of course, to make sure you get the most impact for your audience and bottom line while saving as much time as you can, track your activities and measure results. This way, you keep your audience’s responses to your efforts top of mind and adjust as you go to serve everyone better.

We know all this can sound overwhelming at first. We have been there too. But once you implement a few strategic processes and tools, it makes your work life easier. Let’s dig deeper into that.

 

Get Ahead of Your Marketing Schedule

Chances are, you ran into this time waster once or twice. You know your company hasn’t published a blog post, Instagram story or LinkedIn status update, and you start researching for ideas. You invest time in one that seems great, only to find disturbing information, doubt yourself or get objections from team members, and start the process all over again.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

The ad campaign keeps waiting for you to find a freelance designer. The email copy you approved yesterday has not been incorporated into your autoresponder.

And that’s before we even mention the word inbox.

When we’re behind, it’s easy to feel so overwhelmed, we might as well take an hour-long coffee break. There’s no way we can get any of it done anyway, right?

It’s very human.

Yet if you use that coffee break, or another dedicated time slot, to take control of your schedule, your day to day life could become easier.

How?

If you publish content on a regular basis, get yourself a Trello board or an Excel spreadsheet, where everyone on the team can throw ideas into a collaborative space when they come up spontaneously, and provide feedback on a regular basis, instead of spending too much time coming up with a good idea when they’re stressed to hit “publish.”

To help you out, here’s how the team at CoSchedule, a platform that helps marketers stay organized, does it:

Even better? Create an editorial calendar and start producing content in advance. Creating a calendar can make it easier to come up with strategic ideas, such as aligning content with National Coffee Day, product launches and the step by step process you want your audience to go through this year, to continuously grow educated enough to buy from you.

This, too, is about putting your effort into what can generate the biggest impact, and saving time on what cannot. Producing content in advance gives you the peace of mind that you’re not running out of time, and helps you develop ongoing processes that ultimately streamline your work and make it faster.

 

 

Make More Use of the Content You Already Have

Have a game plan to repurpose the content you produce. Chances are you already have stats, quotes, images, and little nuggets of storytelling in your longer-form content you can repurpose for social media. Or you’ve given 20 tips on Instagram about a topic over time and can now combine them into one blog post.

SheIn, for example, presents clothing items in multiple ways on the same site, displaying them in different order under different categories. Women looking for workwear might find certain blouses by casually searching for blouses…

 

… other attire by searching for “urban elegance” under “Trendy 2019″…

… and completely different suggestions under “What to Wear to the Office?” under “Explore.”

Source: SheIn

 

All these options could be relevant to the same woman yet might not be discoverable without repurposing product photoshoots.

And since we’re talking about workwear, let’s talk about other choices you make for work.

 

Make Strategic Choices About Your Team

It’s likely that, at some point, you will need to hire an in-house team member or bring in a freelancer, a consultant or a software provider.

When you spend your marketing time on social, carve out time to get to know experienced professionals and leading tools in your industry. Connect with people who already know and love your audience ahead of time, so that, once a need comes up, it’ll be easier to reach out to a person you already trust, instead of researching tens of websites of new faces.

Bringing in people who specialize in your industry means it will take you less time to train them and to see results.

That said, consistently investing in the education and professional growth of people who are already on your team can also help your schedule stay sane as your marketing operations grow.

First, professionals who are on top of industry trends and skills can be more agile as needs change. Second, according to Training Industry, “personal and professional development is an important focus area for modern employees when seeking employment, as well as for deciding to stay with their current employer.” In other words, consistently investing in your team equals less time spent on recruiting and training new folks.

Showing your teammates, you care about them and sharing a costume with them also helps, of course.

 

Unify the Platforms and Tools You Use

Now that you have got your strategy and your team figured out, let’s go back to the whole “being everywhere and doing all the things” situation we tapped into earlier.

First, you do not need to be everywhere. That is a very easy way to waste time. Get clear on your goals, get clear on your audience’s needs, and test everything out. A strategy and a channel need to prove their efficiency for you to continue to invest in them.

However, as demands increase and platforms multiply on the daily, many of us do need to show up in a lot of places. That is basically how our company got created in the first place. You might know that our company was created by merging two companies, Zoomd and Moblin. But back in the day, Moblin was a performance agency. We served a bunch of big brands, including Coca Cola, Always, Ikea and… even ICQ. Yes, that’s how far back we go. And as you might imagine, we were swamped. We had to check so many platforms and ad networks for each client. It was thrilling, but exhausting.

So we built our own unified platform that combines over 600 ad networks into one simple dashboard, and when we offered it to clients, they managed to save 70% of their campaign work time thanks to that. Not to mention that, as a bonus, they’re also the new favorites with their finance people. If you want to make your accountant’s day, send her one invoice instead of the 600 she used to get.

But on a more serious note, you do not actually need to go all out and build your own software. The MarTech world is only getting better, and there are plenty of unifying options for marketers. There are platforms that let you handle all your campaign creative in one place. There are social media management tools that spare you from logging into 10 platforms every day and getting lost in a sea of hashtags. There are team management tools that combine email-like communication with task management and collaboration.

And those are just a few examples.

 

How Marketers Can Maximize Their Time-Saving Efforts and Set Themselves to Success

As you see, there are many ways to get underneath that mountain called your to-do list and make a bigger impact. We highly recommend not overwhelming yourself by trying to explore all of them at once, as sometimes you need to invest some time upfront – say, when onboarding a new tool or getting your team used to list down content ideas – in order to save time down the line. Start with one or two strategies, master them, then add more.