It’s inevitable to feel overwhelmed by the number of new apps popping up in the Google Play and App Stores. How can you, as a mobile marketer, get users to download your app in such a fiercely competitive market? The solution is simple - mobile programmatic. Running a user acquisition campaign through mobile programmatic gets you the best userbase, which is sure to turbo-charge your revenue.
Benefits of Mobile Programmatic
With so many technological advancements, users are drawn to one thing: convenience. Put yourself in the shoes of your users and ask yourself, “What's the most convenient way to download my app?” The answer will most likely be through mobile. It’s only one click away as the user is already on their mobile device. Imagine how inconvenient it would be to have to scan a QR code from a billboard or recall an app name from a radio ad.
Mobile programmatic is great for user acquisition as you can reach the right users for your campaign. This strategy allows you to run your campaigns in high-quality media inventories through real-time bidding. It lets you buy impressions that target the specific audience for your app that are likely to drive revenue. Mobile programmatic automates the decision-making process of your campaigns’ media buying for mobile ads in real-time.
Mobile programmatic’s automated technology means the media-buying process is more efficient compared to other strategies, so it offers a unique opportunity to increase brand awareness and expand your user base. Data is gathered and analyzed efficiently, delivering insights for optimizing your campaign performance. Lastly, it saves on operational time and cost, and on media spend. Inventory prices are decided in real-time through an auction where publishers and/or advertisers can participate, and there's no wastage.
Now that we’ve covered the benefits of programmatic for your next user acquisition campaign, the next step is to determine your goals and establish how to capture audiences depending on the stage of your app’s campaign.
Objectives and KPIs of a User Acquisition Campaign
Your programmatic strategy for your user acquisition campaign should be driven by appropriate objectives. The most important question to answer when setting objectives is where is your app in its marketing lifecycle? Is it a new app or an established app? User acquisition campaigns are relevant for three levels in where your users are at in the marketing funnel: awareness, conversion, and loyalty.
If your app is in the early stages of your campaign, your focus should be to acquire users at a low price. At this stage, the goal is to increase brand awareness and fight for your app’s visibility in the market. In other words, let your app be seen in the app store rankings! The goals of this user acquisition campaign is to drive traffic and downloads. The metrics you should look out for are cheaper cost-per-mille (CPM), low cost per install (CPI), and install volume.
Top-funnel metrics
- Cost-per-mille (CPM) - Also known as “cost per thousand impressions,” this is a pricing model wherein the advertising cost depends on the number of impressions served.
- Cost per install (CPI) - This pricing model charges a rate per app installation.
- Install volume - This metric is the volume of installs your campaign generates.
The next phase is to drive more high-quality users to your app. This means driving users that have good lifetime value (LTV) to download your app. This focuses attention on the bottom of the funnel, to drive user loyalty. These are the users that bring in the revenue to your app, allowing you to fund more marketing activities. You want these types of users as they are less likely to churn. The KPIs for this stage should focus on post-install events such as retention, LTV, and return on ad spend (ROAS).
Bottom-funnel metrics
- Retention - This means maintaining high-quality and engaged users, which contributes to the success and revenue of your app.
- Lifetime value (LTV) - LTV is a way of calculating the value of a new user. This predicts the worth of your user to your app, over their whole relationship with your app.
- Return on ad spend (ROAS) - This is the amount of revenue you earn for every dollar spent on a campaign.
Other metrics you can look at are click-through rate (CTR) and installs per mille (IPM or install per 1,000 impressions). Although these two aren’t necessarily KPIs, they are useful metrics to determine the effectiveness of your ad creatives and measure creative performance.
To help you get more insights into running a successful user acquisition campaign, you can see which ad format best suits your ad category here. Of course, these serve mainly as a guide, but should still be subject to testing by you.
To learn more about how to successfully run user acquisition campaigns with Aarki, shoot us a message here.
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