In today’s competitive app market, gaining visibility and driving app installs requires a well-executed mobile app marketing strategy. From optimizing app store listings to leveraging social media platforms and running targeted campaigns, app marketers have various approaches to explore. In the following blog post, we will explore several tactics and paths for mobile app install campaigns and discuss how to create an effective mobile app marketing plan to drive app growth.

If you’re an app marketer, you know how important it is to boost your app installs and craft effective campaigns. But with so many channels and platforms to choose from, how do you decide where to invest your budget and time?

First, what you can and should do is invest efforts on the organic steps, owning your app assets:

App store featuring:

Your app viability on the App and Play stores can help you reach audiences that are actually looking for a solution or a game like your app. Focus on creating an app with a unique value proposition, user-friendly interface, and positive user reviews. By delivering an exceptional user experience, your app stands a higher chance of being featured in app store recommendations, leading to increased visibility and app installs.

In-app referral program.

Encourage existing users to refer the app to their friends by offering incentives such as exclusive rewards or discounts. This leverages the power of word-of-mouth marketing and can lead to increased app installs.

More efficient ways to promote your app is through paid advertising, especially using performance channels and programmatic media buying. These methods can help you reach your target audience at scale, optimize your campaigns in real-time, and measure your results accurately.

As you may know, mobile app install ads are a type of ad format that encourages users to download your app directly from the ad. They are available on various platforms, such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and TikTok Ads, as well as ad networks and mobile app DSPs (demand side platforms).

Mobile app install ads can help you reach potential users who are likely to be interested in your app based on their demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can also optimize your campaigns for different goals, such as impressions, clicks, installs, or conversions.

But how do you create and run successful mobile app install ads? Here are some of the key steps you need to follow:

1. Define your target audience and budget. Before you start creating your ads, you need to have a clear idea of who you want to reach and how much you are willing to spend. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Network, or TikTok For Business to research your audience and find out their preferences, habits, and pain points. You can also use these tools to set your budget and bid strategy based on your campaign objectives and expected results.
2. Choose the right platform and ad format. Depending on your target audience and goals, you may want to choose different platforms and ad formats for your mobile app install ads. For example, if you want to reach a young and creative audience, you may want to use TikTok Ads, which offer various interactive and engaging formats, such as TopView, In-Feed Video, or Branded Hashtag Challenge. If you want to reach a broad and diverse audience, you may want to use Google Ads, which offer various formats across different channels, such as Search, Display, YouTube, or Gmail. If you want to reach a highly targeted and loyal audience, you may want to use Facebook Ads, which offer various formats across different placements, such as News Feed, Stories, Messenger, or Audience Network.
   Once you maximize the opportunities on the major search and social channels, it is highly recommended to start exploring the vast global reach of a DSP (demand- side – Platform) and also the various ad networks and SDK’s that have been proven to accommodate the reach and achieve the goals app owners are looking for.

Mobile App Marketing

Programmatic media buying can help you: 

• Save time and resources: You don’t have to negotiate with publishers or manage multiple contracts manually. You can use a single platform to access a large and diverse inventory across the web, mobile, apps, video, and social media.
• Reach your target audience: You can use data from various sources, such as your own app analytics, third-party data providers, or publisher data, to segment and target your audience based on their characteristics, behaviors, preferences, or intents.
• Optimize your campaigns: You can use real-time feedback and insights to adjust your bids, budgets, creatives, or targeting strategies. For example, Zoomd DSP using advanced technology for media buying such as machine learning (ML), to automate campaign optimizations and improve your app install performance campaigns.
• Measure your results: You can use advanced analytics and attribution tools to track your campaigns across different channels and platforms. You can also use key performance indicators (KPIs), such as cost per install (CPI), cost per action (CPA), lifetime value (LTV), or return on ad spend (ROAS), to evaluate your success.

3. Create compelling ad creatives and copy. Once you have chosen your platform and ad format, you need to create your ad creatives and copy that will attract and persuade your audience to download your app. You need to make sure that your ad creatives and copy match your app’s branding, value proposition, and features. You also need to make sure that they are clear, concise, and relevant to your audience’s needs and interests. You can use tools like Canva, Adobe Spark, or Animoto to create stunning visuals and videos for your ads. You can also use tools like CoSchedule Headline Analyzer, Hemingway App, or Grammarly to write catchy headlines and error-free copy for your ads.
4. Test and optimize your campaigns. After you have launched your campaigns, you need to monitor their performance and optimize them accordingly. You need to track metrics like impressions, clicks, installs, conversions, cost per install (CPI), return on ad spend (ROAS), retention rate, lifetime value (LTV), etc. You also need to test different variations of your ad creatives and copy to see which ones perform better. You can use tools like Google Optimize, Facebook Split Testing, or TikTok Smart Optimization to run A/B tests and optimize your campaigns automatically.

With these examples and ideas for effective app install campaigns, your app can gain the performance and growth you are looking for. But all these take time and resources not all marketers have. You need to focus on the channels and tactics that you know and push effectively.
For the rest, high-volume campaigns, Zoomd’s technology and experienced media teams can help you achieve the goals you’re looking for.

If you want to learn more about mobile app marketing and how Zoomd can help you grow your app business with our powerful User acquisition platform or mobile app DSP platform, contact us today!

Last month we attended the PI Live event in London and it’s safe to say it was a huge success. We sponsored the event where all attendees wore Zoomd-branded lanyards, and our CGO, CMO, Omri Argaman had an eye-opening speaking session.

The two-day event which took place between October 18-19 at the stunning Old Billinsgate venue in London, is one of the leasing conferences in the world for affiliate and performance marketing. The 3,000 + attendees and exhibitors included the biggest names, agencies, publishers and brands in the digital and performance marketing arena. It was an insightful event aimed at building profitable and meaningful partnerships and exceptional networking.

As part of our sponsorship package, we had a booth in the main hall where we presented Zoomd’s main services and the latest technologies and products. In addition, the event’s attendees wore Zoomd-branded lanyards which helped increase our presence and the awareness to the brand. In addition, Omri Argaman, our CMO, CGO had a speaking session on the first day where he shared his insights on how to safely navigate the turbulent user acquisition ocean.

Performance In live was definitely a success and we can’t wait to attend next year’s event in London and meet more people in person.

Booth #21 at PI Live

Branded lanyards

Omri’s presentation

London views

The team

Will you be better off with an advertising agency or an in-house team? What will drive greater app growth while optimizing operations?

Having provided user acquisition platforms for both agencies and advertisers – and having acted as a performance user acquisition agency for some of the largest brands in the world – we know there isn’t a right or wrong way. There’s just the way that’s best for you.

Here are 5 key aspects to consider, and how both advertising agencies and in-house teams can help your app succeed, depending on what matters to you most.

Changing Industry Requirements

Choose in-house if you have the resources for continuous employee training. With the advertising and app industries changing so frequently and so widely (remember the days we only had a couple of primary channels?), you’ve got to constantly keep your team on the cutting edge of knowledge and technology.

The benefit is that employees often see professional development as an employee differentiator, so you are likelier to attract and retain top talent.

Choose agency if you just need to get going or if you don’t have the resources to keep up with all the changes, then develop or find training for your team on an ongoing basis yourself. Some agencies do that for you – they continuously train their teams on new channels and strategies. Others go deep and specialize in certain aspects.

If you need access to effective influencers *and* you want to build your app’s own TikTok community, hire an agency that has already achieved proven results for each goal, and see results faster. One of the top reasons for that is that agencies tend to have much more operations volume in one channel (in comparison to a single advertiser), thus get direct account managers introduced by the platform or social network themselves. For example, as a certified marketing partner of TikTok, we received in-depth data, best practices and faster supports from the platform. To understand the real value of a technology agency, you can read in our latest article by Zoomd VP of media.

Broad and Deep Perspectives

Choose in-house if you want a greater cross-silo collaboration. When your marketing people collaborate with sales, customer success and product people, magical things can happen. They gain a deeper understanding, better data, and end up driving better results, because they understand your app’s customers better.

You can create intentional collaborations with agencies, but the advantage of in-house teams is that they interact informally with other teams, whether it’s at lunch or on the company’s happy hour Zoom call. The personal relationships could make collaboration simpler, and some ideas might pop up spontaneously in day-to-day conversations.

Choose agency if you want proven strategies that have worked for apps like yours – or if you want the benefit of cross-industry experience. Folks who work at agencies typically work with many more app companies than the in-house marketer that “only” changes companies every 2-3 years.

It’s a different type of experience. The in-house marketers go deeper into one brand, while the agency marketers get a broad perspective. They can see how app users in both your industry and in complementary industries have responded to certain marketing initiatives, and what works in other industries that your audience might not already be used to seeing, allowing you to differentiate your messaging further.

Hiring and Compatibility

Choose in-house if you want to decide who you work with. First, you might care about certain skills that your agency doesn’t. Maybe your agency hires very creative people who design stunning campaign assets (link to assets article once it’s published), but you need someone on your team who’ll prioritize diversity and inclusion, or empathy toward your app users.

Second, maybe your agency’s team members check all your professional checkboxes, but you want someone who’ll just be fun to work with. When you hire advertisers yourself, you have more control.

Choose agency if you want access to a pre-vetted pool of industry pros, who have experience taking apps and campaigns to the next level. The hiring process can be extensive and expensive, and partnering with an agency that’s already done the heavy lifting can make your life easier and save you money. Make sure you meet with the people who’ll be working on your campaigns, to ensure compatibility in personalities and work process preferences.

Work Velocity

Choose in-house if you want greater control over your schedule and over your team’s availability.

You can tell an employee you need a project ASAP – it’s your company and you decide what to prioritize – but if you need a deliverable within two days, and your agency is already fully booked with commitments to other clients, you’ll need to find an alternative solution for that deliverable.

Choose agency if you want to grow fast. Agencies already have team members, plus relationships and partnerships with freelancers. They can likely add people to your app’s campaign quickly.

Alternatively, hire 2-3 agencies at once. You make 2-3 hiring decisions and book entire teams instead of 2-3 people.

Customization to Your Needs

Choose in-house *and* agency for the best mix for your specific situation.

Have some in-house advertisers to ensure your app campaigns remain on-brand across partners, and to simplify cross-silo collaboration. Simultaneously, partner with agencies that specialize in areas that complement your team’s strengths, have broad experience to help you differentiate yourself from the noise, and have the ability to help you scale fast.

Here at Zoomd, we have performance marketing solutions to help you whichever way you choose. If you need an agency that specializes in meeting ambitious user acquisition goals, we’ve got your back. Prefer to do it yourself? We recently started providing access to our proprietary AI-based platform. You gain the benefit of 500,000,000 daily data points, leverage what works on one channel to inform campaigns on other channels and increase your app growth efficiency. See what’s possible here.

They are the biggest players in town, and they’re every app advertiser’s #1 choice, but sticking to Google and Facebook alone in your user acquisition media mix might leave a lot of customers far away from your app.

App Marketing Strategy

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.

Pour Social Media Advertising

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.

Add Mobile User Acquisition Platforms – Best mobile advertising platforms?

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.

User Acquisition for Mobile Apps? Sprinkle Some Influencer Advertising

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:

• The type of influencers you partner with. A dad with no running water, working in a potato farm, isn’t the usual influencer agencies look for. How can you reach untapped audiences?
• The channels you sponsor – whether one influencer promotes your app across multiple channels, or you choose different influencers for different channels.
• Audience reach. Bigger isn’t always better.

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub

Mix with SDK Ad Networks

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.

Stir in Some Programmatic (Yes, for Performance Campaigns)

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.

Bake All Your Data Together for Sweet App Growth

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.