A Solid App Campaign Can Help Grow Your Business

Many brands cannot grow without a mobile app in the 21st century. Not only is an app important for customer loyalty and user experience but most importantly, apps play a vital role in building additional revenue for the business in terms of in-app purchases for example. In addition, a brand’s app also gives your business a direct channel to communicate with your customers in terms of promotions and customer service. The marketing promotion of apps have become an important ingredient of the overall digital marketing efforts for businesses. 

Statistics can speak loudly to paint an overall picture so let’s mention some here:

• The Apple App store has almost 2 million apps available for download
• The Google Play Store has almost 3 million apps available for download
• Almost 70% of all U.S. digital media time is coming from interaction with apps
• 21% of Millennials open an app more than 11 times per day
• By 2023, mobile apps are expected to generate over $935 billion in revenue

Source: www.buildfire.com

Clearly, good app marketing effort should not be ignored. To strategize a solid app campaign strategy we need to consider the various stages of an app’s marketing cycle first. The seasonality of the business vertical is also a factor to consider when launching the app and the campaign(s).

There are four stages that come into play when strategizing a new app’s digital marketing campaign. 1) Launch 2) Growth 3) Maturity, and 4) Engagement. Each stage has its own campaign goals. The first question that every business needs to answer is: How much is an app install or app user worth to the business? Now, the “launch” phase should have new users and installs as goals. The “maturity” phase should focus on new users that complete valuable actions within the app for example. Again, it’s very important for a business to know how much an app install or app user is worth because that will help establish the tCPI (target-cost-per-install) bidding strategy in Google Ads when setting up an app campaign. It’s entirely possible for a business to have multiple goals simultaneously. In that case, separate campaigns for each goal should be set up for best practice. 

The best practice for strategy is to focus on installs first to build a strong user base and then to focus on in-app actions to drive higher-value installs, and lastly, to focus on re-engagement to activate existing users. This best practice will build your high-level app campaign marketing funnel. 

The average mobile app user acquisition cost will obviously differ from industry to industry. If we look at an average for all industries, North America does have the highest app acquisition cost. See chart below:

This fact will bring seasonality into the picture. It’s important to time your app’s launch/campaign according to your vertical’s seasonality. Getting the seasonality “right” can also improve your app’s ASO (app-store-optimization). For example, in the online dating industry, August marks the end of summer vacation and the beginning of “cuffing season” and acquisition costs are the lowest. Moreover, sticking to the online dating vertical, May has high acquisition cost since singles are thinking about planning vacations and finding a partner. Lastly, acquisition costs are lower at the beginning of the year and then rise when we get closer to Valentine’s Day.

The chart above shows you the average monthly cost per install in the dating vertical in the U.S. Ensure that you know your vertical’s seasonality before strategizing an app campaign.

App users have an LTV, a LifeTime Value. 17% of app users generate 85% of total revenue. The well-known 80/20 rule holds true here. So, it’s very important to identify the high-value users in your data analyses to get the most out of your app campaign. Once you have done so you can then focus on “similar users” who are likely to bring in long-term value for your business.   

We mentioned App-Store-Optimization (ASO) earlier. If you’d like to dive deeper into ASO, read Neil Patel’s blog “What is App Store Optimization? (ASO). The goal is to drive more traffic to your app’s page in the app store. It’s also an important factor in conjunction with your business’ paid media app campaign efforts. 

Digital marketing is an exciting field and gives brands exceptional opportunities for tremendous growth. It’s smart to have a good balance of organic and paid efforts. Our blog “The Synergy Of Organic And Paid In Digital Marketing” will give you further pointers to this particular marketing concept. We encourage you to read the blog. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help market your app contact us here. Moreover, if your business already has display and/or search campaign we can offer you a free audit with our recommendations. For now, stay safe out there, and let us look forward to an amazing 2021. Cheers!   

Photo by Rami Al-zayat on Unsplash