Building a successful app user acquisition strategy

Hello,

User acquisition is the holy grail of app marketing - no, scratch that, all marketing.

Yes, acquiring and keeping profitable customers is the central, most important marketing activity.

So, you’ve built an app, and it’s all hunky dory, but how do you get users? How do you get them to install your app? How do you get the word out that “Hey, my app exists and it is great! Install it, now”.

Here’s how:

Landing page

A stellar landing page is the most important user acquisition strategy. It is the focal point where the results / outcomes of every single marketing activity will converge. Treat your landing page as the central hub to which every single activity feeds in and feeds from.

Think of this as:

• The page where users will be directed to from paid ads.
• Your email campaigns will direct users to this page.
• Any PR/ publicity efforts will lead the users to this section.

So what all should a good landing page have?

Information about your app

Customer benefit: Focus on at least one primary benefit and 2 secondary benefits. Anything more will lead to clutter. You may choose to have a slider on the website detailing the benefits.

Value proposition: The landing page should be absolutely clear about the user problem being solved. A muddled value proposition can lead to confused visitors [cognitive load]

How to download your app: Point them towards the link of Google Play Store and Apple App store.

Customer reviews: It will be good to have some reviews of your app from the first set of customers.This will provide authentication and social validation.

Press coverage: Any press coverage that you receive for your app should be featured here. This builds authentication & social validation.

Media elements: You should display media elements such as video, audio, infographics, all of which should support the narrative.

Call to action: If you are still in the pre-launch phase, your call to action should strongly feature a “Register Now” page.

Awards: In case you have managed to win any Awards, this is the place where this information should be displayed prominently.

You can take some tips for landing page design from this detailed article by CleverTap

App store optimization

App store optimization is the process of refining and optimizing an application in order to enhance its visibility in the app stores during the discovery phase (when users search) and explore (when users browse). ASO leads to increased traffic and improves conversion rate, maximizing the volume of organic downloads.

App store optimization when done right reduces user acquisition costs. Think of the app store as a closed site search engine with ASO helping you bring the best results whenever any query is posted [read app search]

ASO strategies:

Keyword research: What keywords should your app be associated with? Try thinking of main features, synonyms, use cases, categories 

App title / name: Your app title should be unique and easy to recall

App description: This is a detailed section which provides more information on what your app is about; its main features and uses. Try incorporating keywords naturally in the app description. 

App Icon: This is the visual identity of your app - make sure it communicates your purpose with the icon.

App screenshots & videos: Use high quality screenshots and videos to convey the essence of your app.

App listing & localization: Add relevant localization for the keywords and meta data of your app.

For a deep dive into ASO strategies, visit this article on AppRadar 

Social media

Social media can give a huge boost to your app installations.

One of the most important things to figure out while leveraging social media for app installations is which is the correct platform for you to promote your content? Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / LinkedIn?

Of course, if given a choice, you can always cast out the net as widely as possible, but it helps to have a top three in mind. Given that social media will be one of the many channels that you’d use for promotions, and assuming that you’d have limited resources at your disposal, it would make sense to identify the social media channels most likely to align with your app strategy. Every channel has its own unique target audience and targeting capabilities, so you have to choose the ones with the closest alignment. 

In case you have a broad based social media strategy, you’d perhaps like to allocate your attention and resources in the following way:

Twitter: Influencer engagement, PR engagement

Facebook: Community building, audience engagement

LinkedIn: Influencer engagement + audience outreach

Instagram: Audience engagement

Few other ways in which you can leverage social media is as below:

• User generated content
• Seeking out reviews and ratings
• Ads

Content marketing

Have you ever heard of the app Blinkist?

I did - courtesy a superb content marketing campaign conducted by the app over an extensive period of time.

According to research from the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing, and brings in 3X more leads. 

Why do you need content marketing for driving up app installs?

What if you created a series of articles that is so powerful and evocative that the user felt compelled to click an ad for your app, which he saw later?

See, you can actually drive up the click through rate of your paid campaigns if your organic campaigns are powerful enough. So, to derive more mileage out of your paid campaigns, boost it with relevant unique content marketing campaigns.

So what should be your content marketing mix?

It can consist of e-newsletters, e-books, whitepapers, webinars, webcasts, online presentations, podcasts and virtual conferences.

Press release & publicity

Journalists, bloggers and publicists are remarkably time constrained folks (who isn’t nowadays) - make it easy for them to write about your app. Don’t make them run around for information - and make your own life difficult in return. Make their life easy - and you and your app win.

What can you do?

Create a media and profile kit, which answers questions like:

• Why should anyone care for your app?
• What is the big problem that your app solves?
• How does it do this differently from anyone else at present?

If you have a fitness app, it might appeal to both healthcare journalists and start-up journalists at the same time. But obviously, they will need to be pitched differently - and your pitch needs to be customized. Your pitch to the healthcare journalist will focus on the story behind revolutionizing healthcare [sedentary lifestyle, fitness on the go, no expensive equipment needed, customizable and personalizable, no fancy gym memberships required, how readers can benefit from this information]. Your pitch to the start-up journalist will feature on your journey, challenges surmounted, your funding journey, your future plans and so on.

Identify journalists and bloggers who are known for covering innovative, early stage products / start-ups and target them. Don’t try the blanket spray approach.

Blogs

An effective landing page coupled with a responsive website and an up-to-date blog can cement your content marketing strategy. The triangulation of these three platforms can act as a useful sounding board where almost all your marketing activities converge.

Blogging can be a very effective way to drive app installations. So how can you leverage a blog to drive up your app installs? What type of articles can you write?

Behind the scenes: Walk your readers through an extensive behind the scenes campaign. People like to be kept in the loop. You can do an entire series by introducing your dev team, your marketing team, show the people behind the app, talk about upcoming features, roadmaps.

Celebrating reviews and ratings: Have you received some fabulous reviews and ratings? Celebrate that on the blog.

Awards: Did your app win any awards recently? Why not showcase it there on the blog.

Press coverage / publicity: Did that journalist just write a fantastic article highlighting your app? Yes, again, show on your blog.

Celebrate the lows on your blog as well - if you ran into any problems, unanticipated setbacks - people love knowing the people behind stuff. So keep humanizing your app as much as possible.

Ads

You can boost your organic campaigns with a dash of ads. Typically you can leverage Facebook / Instagram / Twitter for driving app installs. I haven’t particularly seen app promotions on Linkedin but you can customize your requirements to fit any of the present advertising options on LinkedIn if your target demographic is more active on that platform.

Instagram

Image ads: Instagram image ads enable you to convey your brand message through photos in a square or landscape format.

Video ads: Hugely popular but more visually immersive, you can create video ads of upto 120 seconds

Carousel ads: Captivate your audience through an entire gallery of photos communicating your brand message.

Instagram stories: Stories make full use of the mobile screen, offering businesses a beautiful, distraction-less canvas.

Facebook: Facebook offers the following

Photo ads: These help in conveying app features and benefits through imagery & copy.

Video ads: You can design short, feed-based ads to longer videos, all geared towards driving app installs.

Stories: These are customisable, edge-to-edge experience that offers the opportunity to create immersive content.

Messenger ads: You can use messenger ads for driving up app installs - though I haven’t seen that many being used for driving conversions

Carousel ads: Extremely useful for showing app features / benefits. Leverage upto 10 slides to highlight the features / benefits by taking users to a specific section on the landing page talking about that benefit.

Slideshow ads: Tell the story behind your app by running a series of slideshow ads

Playables: Designed for finding high intent app users, playable ads offer people an interactive preview before they download an app. This mimics the try-before-you-buy experience, thereby increasing conversion probability.

Adwords

You can advertise through the following ways on Adwords: Search Network, the Display Network or the YouTube network. You may also want to try the Universal App Campaign.

Reviews and ratings

The rating feature in apps allows users to rate between 1 and 5 stars according to the level of satisfaction experienced by the user. App ratings are the cumulative averages of all user generated feedback. An app review is a written response that users leave with feedback

So when should you ask for a rating / review?

An article by CleverTap has this wonderful notion of when to ask for ratings / reviews. 

Rule of thumb is UX First, Then U-Ask. As a publisher, you have to first deliver an outstanding user experience. Then only you may want to ask for feedback.

Simplicity: Make it ridiculously simple to leave a review - leaving a review shouldn’t become a taxing experience, negating all the goodwill that you might have generated.

Remember, people will be far more hesitant in leaving a good feedback even when they’ve had a superlative product experience. But even if customers have had a single bad UI experience, they will invariably think of leaving a bad review / rating.

Video marketing

You already made some video teasers to upload to the App store, didn’t you. Now take it up a notch [App marketing is hard, I know!]. Get some high quality videos designed that evoke interest, generate excitement and compel the users to install the app.

Type of videos that you can create:

Use in action: You can create videos highlighting the use of your app by an intended target audience. For example, if it is an app for graphic designers, get a video designed that highlights how amazing designs can be generated using your app.

Testimonials: Seeing the app being used by other people and sharing their positive stories will propel other people to download the app as well, if not, at least include your app in their consideration set.

Expert influence: You can leverage the power of experts to provide weight to your app marketing strategy. If you have a fitness app, you can do a video interview with health experts who can provide an overview of how in-home fitness routines are important, and insert a subtle call to action for your app.

Email marketing

You have been using email marketing for every other marketing activity. So why not for your app’s promotion?

The first and the most important task is to have a relevant and regulation compliant database. This is where your landing page will prove to be useful. 

Types of emails that you can send

Coming soon: Share your app’s impending launch with your target audience. Let them know which problem your app solves and focus on creating a community of engaged prospects even before you launch the app.

Behind the scenes: Remember the behind the scenes blog posts that you wrote. Repurpose them so that they can be shared via an email campaign.

Meet the people: Let people know who have worked on which aspects of the app. As we discussed earlier, it helps in humanizing the brand.

Previews: Those fantastic screenshot videos that you created - yes, launch an email campaign for that as well.

Launch email campaign: Finally, your app has been listed and it is live. Line up a big ticket email campaign announcing the launch.

Testimonials: Do a montage of all the top testimonials, publish them on social media and yes, shoot an email campaign.

User generated content: Did you receive some fantastic UGC / response for a contest that you ran? Why not let other engaged users know?

Referrals

Think of the last time you were up against a problem - chances are you reached out to someone you know and trust to ask for a solution.

We turn to our primary reference group - family and friends - right from high-stakes decisions like taking up a new assignment or something as mundane as downloading an app.

But why do we do this?

To reduce cognitive load.

If it’s worked for them, it will work for me.

I literally don’t have the time to browse through a hundred different sites to short-list one.

Even if I do that, I need some evidence to back me up.

I trust the opinion that s/he provides - if she says it will work, its better than making an uninformed choice.

Referral marketing is one of the most reliable forms of app promotions - it works on our primary, native instinct of trust. This is also one of the most measurable marketing techniques for app promotions

So how do you design a referral program?

The referral program needs to be featured in all your outbound media - landing page, press kits, email & social media campaigns, all the dashboards.

The referral incentive has to be strong enough - We have seen enough of referral incentives not being enticing enough. It has to be of some value to the referrer - promoting your app is not his/her job - give him/her something that they would want from you, but won’t get it for free. Dropbox did a fabulous job for this by offering something like this [storage space]. Gmail did this as well, albeit not for an app [Initially, Gmail was by invitation only]. 

Timing is everything: I really like this bit from GetSocial “Engagement First, Favours Second”. Get them to refer at a moment when they have achieved a significant milestone on the app.

Redemption should be easy. Don't make the redemption cumbersome. It can disincentivize the user from using / referring the app further.

The operational part of a referral program is pretty much simple - generating the referral links, cascading the referral links, and tracking the referrals. You can read up further about referral programs for app marketing in this article here.

Some of the best referral marketing campaigns have been by Dropbox, AirBnB and Uber []

Influencer marketing

Sometime in the very near future, influencer marketing will become the only reliable credible form of marketing that there is. Read more about what is influencer marketing in this article here.

So how can you use the power of influencer marketing for driving up app installs?

Unlike ads or email marketing, influencer marketing is slightly difficult to crack - Why? First, the search for a credible influencer. You are aligning your brand with an individual / group of individuals with their own value set. Anything that the influencer does in the public space is attributable and linkable to your brand. So the choice of the influencer is critical.

How do you choose an influencer?

You need to consider the following things:

• Fitment: If your brand is a natural fit with the influencer's area of expertise. Ill-fitting brand endorsements can hurt your brand's image more than help.
• Niche in which the influencer operates: area of expertise, speciality, topics covered, depth of content, ability to create unique, authentic content
• Followers & reach: Should not be your only metric. As they say, better to have a small highly engaged audience that a large, disinterested one.
• Engagement Rate: Very important determinant in your decision making. How much is the audience engaging with the influencer's content?
• Resonance: How can you escalate your influencer's reach to outside the core TG captured by the influencer [to like-minded audience segments?]

After the choice of the influencer, you need to create an influencer marketing program that drives up your app installs. 

Influencer marketing strategies:

Brand mentions / shoutouts: This is a mention of the product, highlighting the product to his/her followers 

Product tutorials / how to videos / reviews: These are in-depth product interaction content pieces giving much more information to the users.

Engagement models

Flat fee: The influencer is paid a flat fee, irrespective of the outcomes.

Cost per view or engagement: The commercials are tiered as per the engagements generated by the content.
Cost per install or action: The commercials are designed as per the number of app installations driven by the campaign.

Measuring acquisition

Since you are spending considerably for user acquisition, it is natural for you to want to track user acquisition metrics. You should know which channel is the most profitable for your user acquisition campaigns, which channels are the least and which channels generate the maximum RoI. Here are few metrics you should track:

Cost per install (CPI) – This metric highlights what it has cost you to get one app installation. Obviously, channels with lower CPI are more desirable. CPI can be calculated by dividing the total costs of the user acquisition campaign divided by the number of installations driven by that campaign.

Cost per acquisition (CPA) – In this model, the payouts are calculated based on a pre-specified action. Unlike CPI, which relies on attributed user installs to achieve campaign conversion, CPA can be chosen from many different post install in-app actions, such as registration, app launch, and item purchase, among others

Return on Investment (ROI) – This calculates the returns (revenue) generated per user against how much it cost to acquire them. 

This is just a brief overview of user acquisition campaigns that can be integrated into your mobile marketing strategy. Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments section below.