Take a seat and fasten your seatbelt because we are going to immerse into the mobile marketing world. Are you ready?
Let’s start this journey with some facts from the digital world, in order to understand why mobile is so important:
- We already know that mobile is the new king in terms of traffic, as over 50% of internet traffic was from mobile devices in 2020 and it’s still growing (more stats here).
- Mobile apps are already deep integrated in our daily life and activities. The average person has around 80 mobile apps installed in their phone but only 9 are used on a daily basis (even more stats here)
- We can now use mobile apps to order food 🙂
All right, so how can you capture all this traffic and send it to your brand new mobile application? Well, it’s more about finding a perfect mix and creating a sustainable marketing ecosystem where you blend organic traffic with paid advertising. And yes, we already know how hard it is to find the perfect mix.
First things first: make sure your mobile app is functional and easy to use. Check your funnel very carefully, run some tests, choose your goals (conversions and micro-conversions) and set up your tracking codes.
Next, before you speed things up and rush to the bad guys (paid ads) you need to be sure that your app store is perfectly optimized and ready to rock the organic traffic. This process is also called ASO (App Store Optimization) and it’s the little (or maybe bigger) brother of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). However, you can find more information about ASO here. We can give you only one clue: it’s about keywords.
Now, after you checked the app functionality and optimized the app store, we can talk about paid ads. Depending on your goal, there are 3 main strategies:
- If your goal is to get as many installs as you can, the best type of campaign is the install volume campaign (not recommended for most advertisers);
- If your goal is to get very targeted users and bring high quality traffic, the best type of campaign is the in app actions campaign (recommended);
- If you want both install volume and high quality traffic (the usual scenario), you can combine the strategies.
But let’s take a look to the best platforms where you can run succesful paid app campaigns.
Universal app campaigns from Google are intuitive and pretty simple to use. All you have to do is to provide some ad assets (headlines, descriptions, images and videos), to set the budget and a bid, the location and the language of your users and to set your goal (install volume or in app actions).
From this point, the campaign will become automatic and Google algorithms will do the rest. Your ads will run on Search Network, Play store, YouTube, Google Discover and Display Network looking for users interested in your app.
Facebook also offers app install ads. The difference is that they are much more customizable as you can have control over audiences and you can build the ads exactly as you want.
After you link your ad account to your app and set your goal (install or engagement), the setup is very similar to other Facebook campaigns: select audiences, set the bid and budget, create ads and you are ready to go.
Apple
Apple search ads campaign is a combination of search ads and app install ads. All you need to do is to select your app, set the bid and budget, choose the location and demographics and add some relevant keywords you want to target. When users will search for them, your app will appear on top of search results page. No ad assets needed because Apple will use your app information.
For app install ads on Twitter you will have to create an app card (with image or video assets) then tweet it and let people install your app directly from their timelines. You can also select your audience, your goal and set your bid and budget. But before that, make sure you integrate your app with the platform.
Snapchat
Snapchat app install ads are non intrusive and it comes with great engagement rates within the Z generation. Also the platform offers a lot of interesting and detailed targeting options.
After you integrate your app with the platform you can start your first app install campaign by selecting your app, objective, audiences, location, demographics bid and budget. Then you have to upload your creatives and you are ready to “swap & roll”.
Tiktok
Tiktok is quite new in the digital landscape but it has quickly created a reputation as an unique blend of social media platforms. With huge traffic flowing through the app worldwide, it’s no wonder it brings results in app install campaigns. The platform is very simple and intuitive, similar with the others. Make sure you connect your app to the platform, then select your goal, audiences, demographics and location, set the bid and the budget and start serving ads.
And last but not least, the most important thing to do after you launch a marketing campaign is to look at the data very carefully and optimize based on results until you find the best combination of channels, campaigns and audiences for your app. So, don’t forget about the data and optimize, optimize, optimize 🙂
