No matter how mind-blowing or life changing your newly developed app may be, how successful it becomes depends largely on the app user acquisition strategy implemented by the developers and marketers.
With over 2.8 million apps available to Android users and 2.2 millions apps available in Apple’s App Store you can imagine just how difficult it is to try and get your app noticed. And with that number constantly on the rise, app user acquisition is only going to become more and more tricky for app developers and marketers to reach their potential users.
Luckily for you, we have brought together some of the ‘Gurus’ in the field of app marketing and strategy to bring you their five top tips for how to implement a successful user acquisition strategy…
Table of Contents
- The 5 App User Acquisition Tips from The Mobile Marketing Experts
- guaranteed keyword ranking service
- buy app installs
The 5 App User Acquisition Tips from The Mobile Marketing Experts
1. App Store Optimisation
“Focus first on ASO’.
Much like SEO, ASO is a lot like search engine optimisation (SEO) and involves tweaking your App Store listing in an attempt to rank higher in the search results.
App marketing manager of Moneyhub, Iain Russell, emphasises this point further as he says to “start with a solid ASO to improve organic visibility before diving into paid acquisition channels. It can be genuinely eye-opening to see your daily download levels improve after some simple changes to your naming, keywords and description.”
2. Paid Campaigns
Once you have nailed your organic acquisition you can then up your game further and invest in paid campaigns using Adwords, Instagram, Facebook… wherever your target users hang out online really.
Marta Miklinska (Mobile Marketing Manager at IAC) suggests to look for online influencers and ask them for reviews. This can be a hugely effective method but be sure to do your research before handing over your hard earned cash for this one. You need to chose credible influencers who are followed mostly by your target market or this will be completely pointless and perhaps even damaging to your brand.
Tim Vogel, Head of Performance Marketing at Bux advises app businesses to reserve a serious budget for user acquisition:
“I often see app developers spending a lot of time, effort and money on developing a great product, only to have a very limited budget to market it.”
Lastly, with regards to paid channels, Iain Russell suggests testing as many as possible. Every app is different so sometimes it is just a matter of trial and error before you figure out what’s gonna work for you.
3. Focus On Lifetime Value (LTV)
As app marketers we sometimes put a huge focus on app user acquisition when in fact, this is not the most important metric. Having thousands of users download your app within the first few days of launch should not be viewed as a success if they haven’t bothered to return to your app a week later. When it comes to users quality over quantity is much more important. Ten loyal app users are much more valuable to you than 100 nosey parkers that install your app out of curiosity and then never return…
User LTV is ultimately a measure of a user’s value over time. You can choose to define it in a number of ways, but it must be a quantifiable metric that correlates to specific actions. For example, how much time they are spending in the app, how much money they have spent or by specific key actions they take in the app. When you have established what defines your user LTV you can focus on getting more of your less engaged users to carry out the same actions as your higher value users through the likes of push notifications and increase your average LTV and ultimately drive more revenue.
4. Measure Everything
Cédric Oeblinger, CEO of Owlie believes that measuring the impact of each action is the key to a successful acquisition strategy. Measuring everything and carrying out A/B testing allows you to see exactly what’s worked, what hasn’t and make the necessary tweaks as you go along.
Tim Vogel backs this up as he told us:
“You can only spend your money once, so make sure you keep track of your UA investments and measure the results closely.
5. Be Relentless
Finally, the last of our app marketing experts tips is to be relentless. Andi Jarvis, Marketing Strategist at The Tomorrow Lab puts this nicely:
“If the app is central to your business, throw everything you have at it. Saving money and ideas for “down the line” or “when we get to phase 2” might sound like it’s a good plan, but if you don’t get a solid base of users, then you’ll never reach that stage.
People often look for the one silver bullet that will lead to a million sign ups, but I’m yet to find it. It’s a combination of small factors – being visible, being relentless and doing all of the small things right.”
