Find the Best User Acquisition Strategy for Your Mobile App!

You’ve finally finished the development of your app and now want to introduce it to the mobile world? The deciding factor for being successful is acquiring and building a wide user base. Not just any users! It is important to attract the right users, who want to engage with your app for a long time! In this article, we will explain the most important aspects and effective methods for your user acquisition strategy.

Piechart that shows how often users try new apps before stopping: user acquisition strategy

Users try new apps an average of 4.5 times before stopping © ayeT-Studios

Before Starting Your User Acquisition

Don’t dive into the user acquisition straightaway, even if you already have a rough strategy in mind! First, you have to be certain of a few remaining questions:

Is the Development of Your App Finished?

Make sure that the development of your app is truly finished before introducing it to the market. It should be as bugless as possible to ensure an enjoyable experience for the user. If this is not the case, no user will be willing to keep your app after downloading it.

Did You Set a Concrete Plan and Goals?

You should always think about your favored achievements before implementing a strategy or even starting a campaign. Determine the channels you want to use, metrics to measure your success, your time and your needed staff. In short, specify your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which tell you if you are on the way of achieving your goals or not.

Did You Estimate Your User Acquisition Costs?

Before planning your definite user acquisition strategy, you should calculate your budget! A very important metric are the user or customer acquisition costs (CAC), which measure how much you can spend on each user. You can determine your CAC by taking all your marketing expenses divided by the acquired users within a specific period of time. Even if you haven’t acquired any users yet, you should always keep estimated numbers in mind. The CAC are a crucial factor for the success and profit of your business!

Take a look at this article to learn more about this topic.

What Is the First Step of Your User Acquisition Strategy?

You should start off your user acquisition strategy by identifying the right users for your app. Undoubtedly, it is important to understand your (potential) users before investing money in a big marketing campaign. The risk is targeting the wrong users, which makes even the best user acquisition strategy futile. Therefore, we recommend publishing your app in only one or two countries first, which is called a soft launch. This allows you to analyze specific user segments, who are interested in downloading and keeping your app. While doing so, you should also think about the following questions:

  • What are your (potential) users generally interested in?
  • What are they searching for on google or in the app stores?
  • Which other apps do they use?
  • On which social media channels can you find them?
  • What are they talking about?
  • Who are they following?
  • At what times are they engaging?
  • How long will they keep your app on their smartphone? You can gauge this by using tracking providers to analyze session duration and retention rate.
  • What about demographics like age, gender, marital status, education, etc.?

Consider the answer to each question while planning your mobile user acquisition strategy! Thereby, you are able to target a specific audience rather than too many users, who may not be interested in engaging with your app.

Which Tools Can You Use for Your Mobile User Acquisition Strategy?

After clarifying the remaining questions and determining the right user group for your app, you can finally start planning a definite user acquisition strategy. Of course, there are many different ways of approaching your users, though not all of them are appropriate for you. You have to choose the most suitable method according the kind of app you’re publishing and your targeted audience. Keep in mind that even the slightest changes in either of these factors should result in an adjusted strategy.

The statistic shows popular tactics for user acquisition and retention: user acquisition strategy

E-Mail marketing is the most popular tactic for both user acquisition and retention © ayeT-Studios

We collected quite a few organic, as well as paid tools, which we are going to explain in greater detail below.

Organic Methods

You can use many different channels for your mobile user acquisition strategy that are absolutely free of charge. They work well for generating new and interested users for your app, but often you have to invest time to be successful.

Activate Your Own Social Network

A very simple way of building a solid user base, even before you published your app, is talking to your own social circle. Tell everyone you know about your product and which feature makes it special and unique. Whether it’s your family, friends, colleagues, business partners or fellow students, each of them could start word-of-mouth publicity for your app. This is a great way of attracting potential new users since they will certainly trust the recommendation of someone they know well.

Focus on Ratings and Reviews

Carefully read all existing reviews! They indicate exactly how satisfied your users are with your app and sometimes even provide ideas for possible changes and improvements.

Additionally, think about submitting your app to app discovery platforms and review sites. These present, review and promote new and unknown apps. If they like your app, this presents a good chance of acquiring new users since many users have trust in the opinion of these sites.

Use ASO to Optimize Your App Store Appearance

Just like with most situations in life, the first impression is crucial. Users decide whether or not they want to download an app mostly due to its appearance in the app store. If your app visually attracts them and informs them of all features and benefits, they will most likely install and actually engage with it.

Click here to learn everything about optimizing your app store appearance to convince users of downloading your app.

Create A Website for Your App

Another important factor of ASO is creating a landing page for your app. This is a good way of providing important information about your app and showing its main features. The website should be well designed and include links to your app store page. Thus, the users won’t have any difficulties getting to your app. Additionally, include contact information of your support team in case active or potential users have any problems or questions.

Tweak Your E-Mail Marketing

A mailing list is a good opportunity to keep your users updated at all times. With services like MailChimp, you can compile a list containing your important contacts and send a mail to each of them with just one click.

Make sure your content is interesting and offers relevant information for the users since you don’t want to end up in their spam folders. Furthermore, don’t forget to include your contact information and links to your website, app store page and social media channels.

Use Social Media Channels for More Virality

You can create an account on the social media channels that you and most importantly your users prefer, for example Facebook, Twitter and/or YouTube. By doing so, you can reach out to your users and communicate with them on a personal level. Therefore, you have additional possibilities of reacting to feedback or occurring questions and spreading news or updates much faster.

Build Your Own Brand

Next to your social media presence, you should also focus on building your own brand. Within this endeavour, it is important to define key features like the overarching design, visual language and message of your brand and the experience that you want the users to associate it with. You should match these key features to your app since users will be more inclined to recognize it. This highly improves the chances of them downloading your app, as well.

Furthermore, think about creating a blog to inform your users about any news and updates of your app. Again, use the features you defined for your brand.

Talk to the Press

If you want to communicate with the press, make sure to prepare yourself! Have a complete media kit or press release including all relevant information about your app at your hands. Invest some effort into an appealing design to convince the journalist to write about your app. The chances of people reading an article and downloading your app will rise.

Talking to the press guarantees your app a lot of attention and far reach. This method enriches your user acquisition strategy since many people have trust in the press as long as it is credible.

The statistic shows which advertising channels users trust the most

Which advertising channels do users trust the most? © ayeT-Studios

Paid Methods

With the right budget, there are paid methods for your user acquisition strategy as well. Below, we will show you some of the most effective ones available.

Install Campaigns Based on CPI

With install campaigns, you are able to boost your number of app installs and as a result your ranking in the app stores as well. This leads to higher visibility of your app and consequently to more organic traffic and installs.

The pricing model for install campaigns is CPI, which means you pay for every completed install of your app. There are two different options you can choose from: incent or non-incent campaigns. The former describes install campaigns where users are offered a reward for downloading the app. Here, the results are immediate and your ranking improves significantly. However, there is no guarantee for long-term engagement of your users, which means the effects may be rather short lived.

In comparison, non-incent install campaigns don’t reward a user for downloading your app. They decide to engage with your app on their own accord. Since they are truly interested in your app, the chance of them keeping it for longer is very high. Though, non-incent campaigns are usually more expensive than incent campaigns and it often takes more time before you see any results.

Another, special, type of install campaign is called High Retention Installs – a unique offer by ayeT-Studios. The main idea is only to reward the user if he or she kept your app for at least three days. Like that, your retention rate increases distinctly.

Read a much more detailed article about this topic here.

Use Social Media Ads

Although social media platforms are mostly free of charge, you can also invest some of your budget in social media ads. Since Facebook is the biggest social network, with 1.86 billion monthly active users in 2016, it’s certainly one of the best choices in terms of reach. It’s still wise to consider other platforms such as Twitter, Instagram or YouTube as well.

Communicate with Influencers

Another way of using social media as a paid method for your user acquisition strategy is influencer marketing. Besides the press, as we mentioned earlier, you can also get in contact with so-called influencers. These are people who have large follower bases on different social networks like bloggers, YouTubers or other social media stars. Getting them to recommend your app offers you many potential users since most of these followers trust their idol’s opinion.

Cooperate with Professional Ad Networks

Ad Networks like ayeT-Studios that are specialized in mobile marketing provide a great platform for advertisers to implement user acquisition campaigns. Additionally, you can choose from different pricing models and combine them with your favored ad format. Which one you pick is entirely up to you, your target audience and what kind of app you offer.

Different Media Types for Your User Acquisition Strategy

As there are many different approaches, there are various media for your user acquisition strategy, as well. Below, we explain the most common media types and their main functions in greater detail. Furthermore, we compiled an overview of these types plus some examples for your better understanding. In general, a balanced mix of these media types works very well. However, you have to decide on the exact ad formats that best suit your marketing needs and goals.

The statistic shows the most common formats and channels for your user acquisition strategy

The most common user acquisition formats and channels © ayeT-Studios

Paid Media

This media type includes all kind of paid advertising campaigns during the marketing process. They can appear in the form of various ad formats on any media like tv, print, internet, radio, the cinema as well as out-of-home media (e.g. on billboards). Here, another advertising method is native advertising. The advertiser can decide through which format and content he wants to deliver his message. The downside: This kind of advertising requires quite a large budget.

Earned Media

Earned media describes various content that has been created outside of the company and wasn’t paid for or assigned in any way. These are primarily social media posts (which are organic and might go viral) and contributions or recommendations on review sites. If you practice authentic PR and sufficient CRM, independent media will draw attention to your company.

Owned Media

The term ‘owned media’ includes all content that has been created and published by the company itself. These can be websites, customer magazines, (corporate) blogs and various social media channels and accounts. Oftentimes, this kind of media is referred to as Corporate Publishing, which refers to the communication between the company and its own media channels. Companies check these contents permanently and mark them as company content for customers. However, this could lead to mistrust due to potential biases of the author/publisher.

Paid Media Earned Media Owned Media
Advertising Public Relations Social Media Posts
Sponsored Content (Non-paid) User Reviews Content Marketing
Marketing Collateral
Influencer Marketing Word-of-Mouth Advertising Website
App Store Page

An overview of different media types for your user acquisition © App Annie

A Few Last Tips

To make sure your user acquisition strategy is as successful as possible, we wish to give you a bit of advice. Use these tips during your actual user acquisition campaign!

Don’t Reveal Too Much Too Fast!

Make sure not to reveal everything at once! Announce updates and upcoming features one at a time to keep users curious and interested in what’s new to come.

Constantly Measure Your Success!

For every marketing campaign, it is crucial to know which channels provide the best results. Naturally, user acquisition is a process that changes permanently. Therefore, you have to measure its efficiency and success constantly and, if necessary, change your approach. Otherwise, you won’t be able to detect whether your current user acquisition strategy is worthwhile or pointless.

Continue Testing!

Again, the aim is to know which channels work best for you and your app. Therefore, you have to change your strategy and your methods regularly in order to compare the results and identify the most effective ones.

And Finally: Retain Your Acquired Users!

One of the most important factors for being successful with an app is user retention. Therefore, generating users should not be the only part of your user acquisition strategy. Keep in mind to update your app and reach out to your users regularly in order to retain them as well! For instance, if you chose an incent approach for your user acquisition, make sure to constantly reward your active users.

 

Why User Acquisition Costs Are an Important Metric For Your Business

In every branch of industry, it is important to establish a wide customer base in order to be successful. To get there, you have to invest all your time, effort and sufficient budget into optimizing your user acquisition. In this article, we will mainly focus on the financial side and explain how to calculate your user acquisition costs. This is a necessary step to measure the efficiency and profit of your business.
The statistic shows average customer acquisition costs by industry: user acquisition costs

Average customer acquisition costs by industry © ayeT-Studios

The essential, and probably most difficult, part of user acquisition is reaching out to the right group of users! Basically, you have to attract interested and loyal users, who want to engage with your product, more precisely your app, for a long time. How do you accomplish that and does it affect your user acquisition costs?

 

What Are User Acquisition Costs Exactly?

Before we can dig deeper into any calculations, we want to give you a short definition of customer, and more specifically user acquisition costs in the case of mobile apps.

Customer acquisition costs (CAC) portray the estimated costs for every new user you acquire for your business. The CAC is an important metric while figuring out if your marketing and user acquisition strategies are effective.

In detail, you can explore the value and worth of every single user to your company. By comparing your user acquisition costs to their lifetime value (CLTV), you can calculate how much you can spend on a potential customer and finally your return on investment (ROI). If your CAC is higher than your CLTV or your ROI, it is time to fix your acquisition strategy immediately!

Click here to learn more about finding the best user acquisition strategy.

Example of an unbalanced business strategy: User Acquisition Costs

Example of an unbalanced CAC to CLTV ratio © ayeT-Studios

How You Can Calculate Your User Acquisition Costs

To calculate your user acquisition costs, you have to determine all the resources necessary to acquire one single new customer first. These resources portray every effort you have to invest, from reaching potential users to converting them into active customers.

Cost Per Install

When calculating your user acquisition costs for mobile apps, this metric correlates with the general understanding of CAC. Since CPI, or cost per install, portrays the costs for ads that trigger installs of your app, this can be compared to the traditional costs of customer acquisition in e-commerce.

However, how much you actually have to pay depends on what kind of ad format you use. Thus, you probably have to invest much more in non-incent banner ads than in incent campaigns through an offerwall.

Cost per install: User Acquisition Costs

CAC

In general, consider the following expenses of your own marketing department when calculating your customer acquisition costs:

  • Employee costs & salaries
  • Paid advertising & agency fees
  • Your own advertising campaigns
  • Digital marketing: maintenance of your website and various social media channels
  • Direct marketing: e.g. mail or email campaigns
  • Print media & company publications
  • CRM & gifts or discounts for your customers
  • Software licenses
  • Events & sponsorships

Try to figure out the amount of each matter of expense as precisely as possible! Your entire calculation will be much more precise.

The general formula for calculating your customer acquisition costs can be applied to any industry. Here, you have to sum up all marketing expenses and divide it by the number of users you managed to acquire in a specific period of time.

calculation of customer acquisition costs: user acquisition costs

However, you aren’t finished just yet! Now, you have to define the lifetime value (LTV) of your users, or in other words your ability to monetize a customer.

Customer Lifetime Value

The customer lifetime value predicts the amount of financial profit and revenue your business generates through any acquired customer. In general, it portrays the worth of your relationship with this customer and refers to his entire lifetime at your company.

Furthermore, the more satisfied users are with your service, the higher their lifetime value. Therefore, you should focus your efforts on providing a great experience for your customers. Depending on what your products and services are all about, you should set relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

For instance, if you have an e-commerce business, you should concentrate on optimizing and accelerating the buying process. Don’t prolong these sessions needlessly since users might abort the purchase – which results in losing a potential customer.

In other fields, like app development, your goal should be to create a flawless product to attract and engage users for longer. After all, you’ll want to maximize retention, session duration and total usage for every user acquired.

Overall, the customer lifetime value depends on these three factors:

  • Monetization – The amount a certain customer contributes to the revenue of your business.
  • Retention – How often a customer returns to your business.
  • Virality – The value of additional users a customer refers to your services and products.

Now, before you can calculate your CLTV, there are a few more metrics you have to gather first.

Average Revenue Per User

The ARPU reflects the average revenue a certain active customer contributes to your company in a specific period. You can use the following formula:

Average Revenue per User: User Acquisition Costs

Churn Rate

The churn rate represents the number of users who no longer engage with your app. Therefore, it indicates the satisfaction of your users with your company. Use this formula to calculate your churn rate:

calculation of the churn rate: user acquisition costs

With these additional calculations, you are finally able to determine your customer lifetime value:

calculation of the customer life time value: user acquisition costs

As a last step, you have to contrast your customer acquisition costs to your customer lifetime value. If the former is higher than your LTV, then your business is not beneficial. In fact, it indicates that you are investing too much in acquiring users without the ability to make any profit in return. In the end, this might lead you and your company to failure.

Therefore, keep in mind to never spend more than you’re able to gain with your active users!

Example for a well balanced business strategy: user acquisition costs

Example of a well balanced CAC to CLTV ratio © ayeT-Studios

Return On Investment

The return on investment, or ROI, helps you measure your profit or loss relative to your budget spend. Hence, you can figure out how beneficial your business really is and compare the efficiency of different investments. Don’t forget to include all further costs of your business as well – like rent, HR, infrastructure, etc!

Return on Investment: User Acquisition Costs

Like CLTV, your return on investment should always be higher than your customer acquisition costs!

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate shows the percentage of users who take a desired action and therefore convert into active customers. These actions can vary from business to business, depending on which products and services are offered. Typical actions are downloading content, signing up for a newsletter, joining a community, getting in contact with a website owner or clicking on display ads.

Additionally, the conversion rate portrays the value of each individual user to your company.

When calculating your user acquisition costs for apps, there are two types of conversions you should mainly have an eye on:

  1. Install / Active Users: Here, you can calculate how many users installed your app based on your mobile user acquisition campaign and converted into active customers by taking a predefined action.
  2. Active Users / User Generated Revenue: This helps you calculate the amount of users that actively engage with your app and take actions to generate revenue, for example through in-app-purchases.

Conversion rate: User Acquisition

How to Reduce Your User Acquisition Costs

After you formed an overall perspective of what you’re spending on acquiring new users, here are some tips to reduce your user acquisition costs. As we learned by now, this is necessary if you want to make a profit with your business.

1. Raise Your Expectations!

Don’t make the mistake of setting your expected user acquisition costs too low! When calculating before you finished the development stage of your company, you have to estimate the result. At this point, you should consider a few challenges that might arise:

  • Exactly know your potentially effective acquisition channels!
  • Expect time delays that might affect your costs!
  • Adjust your numbers according to real-life experiences!

Because of these possible challenges, you should double, or even triple, your calculated costs to prevent any misestimating.

2. Know Who You Should Be Targeting!

To avoid wasting your resources for ineffective marketing channels, define a target audience by creating a specific persona. Then, adapt all your efforts and investments according to the characteristics and interests of this persona.

3. Leverage Your USP!

Give users a good reason to buy your product! The USP, or unique selling point, defines a specific feature of your product that makes it stand out in comparison to your competition.

Emphasize it for your potential customers and focus most of your branding strategy on this information. If you don’t have a USP, users won’t see any advantage in buying your product of all things.

4. Improve Your Content Marketing!

By implementing so-called long-tail keywords into your website content, you automatically improve the chance of generating organic traffic. Since users generally search for longer and more specific keywords if they want to purchase something, they are more likely to find your content!

5. Don’t Just Acquire – Retarget As Well!

Most of the time, it’s much more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. If you haven’t establish a customer base just yet, your answer is retargeting. Basically, all you have to do is get in contact and communicate with your potential customers. This is someone who visited your website but didn’t make a purchase.

6. And Last but not Least: Testing!

All these tips won’t have any lasting effect if you don’t know which changes are actually effective. You have to test any content, like your landing pages, home pages or marketing funnels, after modifying them. Even more ideas of possible improvements will arise and you will realize which of your changes work best.

Therefore, doing split or A/B tests regularly is a qualified method to lower your user acquisition costs.

Conclusion

To answer the question we asked at the beginning: Targeting the right users does indeed affect your user acquisition costs! For one, acquiring active, long-term customers plays a major role in the success of your business regarding CLTV. Furthermore, by identifying your most rewarding target audience straightaway, you can even reduce your CAC in the long run.

That’s why you have to calculate and observe your user acquisition costs constantly in order to optimize your strategy.

 

Buy App Downloads – Improve Your App’s Visibility!

If you want to be successful with your app, the development itself won’t be enough: Publishing your app the right way is the key! You have to promote your creation in order to stand out amongst the competition. As one way to improve visibility, you can buy app downloads. How? We are going to answer your question in this article.

In Google’s Play Store alone, there are more than 2.6 million apps available, and the number is continuously growing.

The number of apps in the app stores grows continuously: buy app downloads

The number of apps in both app stores is growing continuously © ayeT-Studios

As you can imagine, it is very easy for you to get lost in the crowd. But don’t worry: We will show you how to make your app go viral!

Buy App Downloads As Part of Your Marketing Strategy!

To see your own app fail after months of hard work and effort is every developer’s worst nightmare. You can avoid this by creating a sophisticated promotion strategy. Think about your target audience first and find suitable methods to approach these users.

There are many possibilities for you to promote your app. For instance, ASO (App Store Optimization) can help you impact your app’s ranking position before it’s even published. In order to improve findability, you can optimize the name and description of your app along with its app store keywords. Furthermore, by creating an inviting icon and adding significant screenshots or videos, you can optimize the appearance of your app and attract the user’s interest. Read this article for more information and tips on how to use ASO.

Of course, there are many different promotion strategies after you published your app, as well. Depending on your budget, you have the options of free or paid app promotion. Again, feel free to click here if you want to learn more about this topic.

Free App Promotion

For one, you can always use social media platforms or relevant app promotion sites to advertise your app. In addition, you should consider creating a website, a blog and multiple social media channels for your app, to be able to reach out to your users.

Paid App Promotion

In this article, we will focus on explaining how to buy app downloads as a way of promoting your app. Paid installs result in a sudden increase of your app’s ranking, but there are a few things you have to keep in mind.

When you buy app downloads, and the same goes for paid app promotion in general, there are two options to choose: incent or non-incent.

Incent App Downloads

With incent install campaigns, the user will get rewarded for any interaction with your ad. Due to higher ranking positions, this leads to much higher visibility and eventually to an increase of organic traffic. There is also a downside: the effects are rather short-lived and permanent usage of your app can’t be guaranteed. Furthermore, Google and Apple use various criteria next the number of installs to determine your ranking in the App Store and Play Store.

Read more about the factors influencing your ranking in the section below: App Store Keywords.

High Retention Installs

This campaign is a special offer from ayeT-Studios. When you buy app downloads, the user has to keep your app for at least three days before getting a reward. Thereby, your retention rate improves significantly.

Non-Incent App Downloads

In comparison, non-incent install campaigns don’t reward the user for interacting with your app. Users show real interest in getting active, which can be more beneficial for the advertiser in the long run, simply because the chances of further engagement increase significantly. Make sure the rate of loyal users to installs is higher when buying non-incent app installs as opposed to incent installs. This campaign type can be leveraged by banners.

Before you decide on your campaign, beware that higher a retention rate alone won’t make any advertising material more favorable. You have to analyse retention rate in comparison to cost per paid install. The table below clarifies this kind of calculation.

Incent Non-Incent
Cost Per Install 0,10$ 1,00$
Loyal User (Retention Rate) 5% 25%
Cost per Loyal User 2$ 4$

Costs per loyal user as a result from cost per install and retention rate © ayeT-Studios

Nevertheless, every developer has to determine his own concept of a loyal user. For some, this user engages with the app for longer than thirty days. For others, it might be anyone who completed a transaction or the tutorial within the app. As soon as this is set and measurable, the developer can compare different marketing channels and advertising formats.

Buying Incent or Non-Incent App Installs?

In general, there is no clear answer to this question. Every developer has to decide how to buy app downloads. This decision depends on different aspects:

  • Your Marketing Goals – Do you want to boost your app’s ranking while users might not keep it for long? Or do you prefer to generate potential long-term users who show real interest in your app?
  • Your Time – With non-incent install campaigns, it can take quite some time before seeing any positive differences in your app’s ranking.
  • Your Budget – How much money are you able to spend? Often, incent install campaigns are much more cost-effective than non-incent campaigns.

With sufficient budget, combining these two campaigns might be the best option for you to buy app downloads. Initially, you can enhance your app’s ranking to generate organic traffic directly after its launch. At the same time, you are able to reach lasting, interested customers, which improves your retention rate and long-term ranking.

iOS or Android?

This is the question every developer asks himself before creating a new app. In the table below, we compared different features of both app stores to help you decide.

Google Play Store iOS App Store
Higher amount of downloads and installs than Apple. In turn, the number of uninstalls affects your ranking position. In comparison, Apple developers generate higher revenues with their apps. The Apple algorithm considers these numbers for the ranking.
Fast admission process and more freedom with the app’s content. However, there is less guidance which can be detrimental for inexperienced developers. Long process to get the app approved. Developers get a lot of feedback in terms of improvement and why the app was rejected.
Users mostly install free apps. Developers have to find different ways to make profit with their apps. iOS users are generally more willing to pay for great apps.
Featured Positions
Apps get featured in the section “Editor’s Choice” and in each category. The section “Featured” highlights apps for every category on the store’s front page.
The categories “Top New Apps” and “Top New Games” present new free apps, while “Top New Selling Apps / Games” highlight new paid apps. Apps get much more visibility by getting featured in special categories like “Popular Apps”, “App of the Week” etc.
Top Charts: Order by free, paid and top grossing apps, the category “Games” is presented individually. Top Charts: Each category is sorted by “Paid, Free and Top Grossing”.

Some features of both App Stores in comparison © ayeT-Studios

As you can see, both app stores have their advantages as well as disadvantages. Analyze both of them to decide which one will satisfy your own marketing goals and needs.

What to Keep in Mind When You Buy App Downloads

In this last part of our article, we would like to give you some advice for buying app downloads the right way and promoting your app successfully.

1. Free vs. Paid Apps

If you want to buy app downloads, make sure your app is free and available worldwide! This is a requirement of many providers of app downloads and installs.

2. What Happens after Buying App Installs?

Many providers assure you that users will open your app at least once after downloading it. Therefore, your app should be as bugless as possible and catch the user’s interest. If you can convince him or her of its value, the user will be more likely to keep your app. Nevertheless, few download providers can guarantee permanent engagement even after the install and first interaction with the app. Even so, ayeT-Studios offers a great possibility of increasing your retention rate with its High Retention Installs.

3. App Reviews

Don’t buy app reviews, please! We know, many providers offer app downloads and app reviews in combination, which is very compelling. In fact, users often prefer downloading an app with many positive reviews. Imagine: Isn’t it rather conspicuous than believable if your app gets tons of positive reviews in a short amount of time? Yes! Users will notice this contradiction and probably refuse to download your app. Furthermore, both Apple’s and Google’s guidelines prohibit any manipulation of ratings and reviews. Our suggestion would be to try to reach out to your users on a personal level. As an example, you could set up an option for ratings within your app.

4. Volume

Most providers work in a programmatic manner, like ayeT-Studios. As soon as you set a bid, available ad spaces of publishers will be requested in the ad network. Hence, there is no guarantee for any amount of volume as supply and demand determine the market. This is similar to securities trading at the stock exchange. When demanding higher volumes, the price per install or download rises simultaneously since the supply of ad spaces remains stationary over short periods.

To Summarize

Think about your marketing goals before choosing your campaign! Determine your target audience, your time and available budget. In the end, these are the Key Performance Indicators to measure your success and achievement of your goals. ayeT-Studios offers different and fair install campaigns for you to buy app downloads as well.

How to Buy Mobile Traffic – An Important Factor for Your Success

Today, approximately 2.32 billion people own a smartphone. Reaching these users is crucial when aiming to be a successful entrepreneur. You have to invest all your efforts and budget in acquiring visitors for your app or mobile website. To generate an immediate boost of traffic or app downloads, you can buy mobile traffic. In this article, we show you which options and pricing models are available.

Especially when operating a mobile website or developing an app, you have to understand the importance of mobile traffic and view it as part of your marketing strategy. The following chart shows the increased popularity of using smartphones and tablets to browse the web. By now, smartphone usage even surpassed the usage of desktops or laptops.

Distribution of internet usage worldwide between mobile and desktop: buy mobile traffic

Distribution of internet usage between mobile and desktop © StatCounter

Therefore it is necessary to take a look at your already existing traffic. You can use statistics regarding your mobile website or app traffic to locate any errors in your marketing strategy. This will help you find quick and effective solutions.

The data you get from these statistics portray the visitors of your site and common devices. These are:

  • Page Views – Which site gets the most views? This indicates which subjects, products and services attract new users.
  • Hits – The number of total hits your site gets within a day.
  • Country – Information about the location of your users.
  • Mobile Devices – Manufacturer, operating system (iOS or Android) and exact model of the used device.

For instance, Google provides such statistics plus a thorough report highlighting important data of your mobile traffic with Google Analytics. Thus, it can be of great assistance while optimizing your mobile site or app.

How Google Analytics Helps You Improve Your Own Traffic

Google Analytics shows you which factors affect mobile success. This knowledge can be beneficial when planning your marketing strategy. The report includes mobile websites as well as mobile apps. We explain the main contents and features of this tool below.

Mobile Apps

Additionally to the tool’s basic functions, here you are able to measure your app’s performance in different aspects; such as:

  • Mobile App Audience – Get to know your active users! This data shows how often and long your app is being used, lifetime values and locations of your users. Furthermore, you get an idea of your audience’s demographics (age, gender, etc), interests and preferred devices and operating systems. This information will help you optimize your services to target and retain the right users.
  • Acquisition – See what’s happening from search to download! This includes relevant data about new users, popular market places and your most effective marketing campaigns.
  • Behaviour – Understand your users’ interests! You can see which screens and app content attract and engage users the most. The reports “Crashes and Exceptions” along with “App Speed” locate technical difficulties for you to optimize.
  • Goals and E-Commerce – Measure your conversions and completed actions in order to evaluate your goals! Additionally, you can record your app’s total revenue and required sessions to generate a transaction.

Mobile Websites

If you own a mobile website, you can analyze and optimize various aspects. These include:

  • Amount of Mobile Users – How many of your website visitors use a mobile device? Information like bounce rates, session duration and returning visitors mirror how satisfied users are with your mobile site.
  • Audience – Similar to mobile apps, here you get relevant data about your users’ demographics and interests to target them directly.
  • Platforms – Find out which mobile devices, in detail model and operating system, are predominantly used by your visitors.
  • Locations – The report “Map Overlay” shows you where most of your generated traffic comes from. You can now identify regions which will likely grow in traffic and which are worth targeting.

All in all, the data and information you get from these statistics and reports should help you decide which traffic and form of advertising to invest in. This makes it easier for you to calculate the estimated costs and budget when you buy mobile traffic.

How Can You Buy Mobile Traffic?

After figuring out why you need to buy mobile traffic, it is time to find the right campaign. Ad agencies specialized in mobile marketing, like ayeT-Studios, offer various options for you to choose from. Oftentimes, they are connected to other ad networks – a great possibility for you to reach even more users! This also increases the chance of acquiring users on better terms and generating a large number of new visitors.

We would like to explain in greater detail which different ad formats and pricing models are available.

Which Ad Formats Can You Use to Buy Mobile Traffic and Gain Visitors?

When advertising on mobile websites and in apps you should only use formats that are made particularly for mobile devices. Meaning: They should be adapted to smaller display sizes and entirely visible on every device.

Mobile ad formats come in two types: incent and non-incent. The main difference between those two is the advantage for the user. With incent ads, the user gets a reward when interacting. However, there is no guarantee of further or constant usage of your product by this user. In comparison, non-incent ads won’t reward the user for an interaction. Instead, he acts due to pure interest and is more likely to actually use your product.

Incent Ad Formats for Advertisers at ayeT-Studios:

  • Offerwall – Through an offerwall, you can combine various campaigns within one ad. Here, CPI, CPA and CPE campaigns are the most common.
  • Rewarded Video – This ad format rewards the user for watching a video while generating installs. The assigned pricing model is CPV.

Non-Incent Ad Formats at ayeT-Studios:

  • Banner – Banner, or display ads, appear most commonly as text or image ads on websites or within apps. The campaign types available are CPM, CPC and CPI.
  • Interstitial – Interstitial ads cover the entire screen and typically appear at interruption points. These ads can be part of CPM, CPC and CPI campaigns.
  • Video – Videos are suitable for video distribution channels, but also to indicate the accomplishment of different actions within an app. Videos appear as CPC, CPV and CPI campaigns.

You see, there is a variety of advertising formats you can pick from and combine with your favored pricing model. In the end, your goals and marketing needs determine which campaign fits your product the best.

Click here to get a more detailed insight into mobile advertising and its different ad formats.

How to Buy Mobile Traffic Based on Different Pricing Models

To help you understand the financial side, if you want to buy mobile traffic, we exemplify some of our campaigns and related pricing models below.

Install Campaigns Based on CPI

With the help of install campaigns, you are able to generate new users through an offerwall. The advantages: The user is rewarded and you only pay for every completed install.

Action Campaigns Based on CPA

Action campaigns allow you to set specific actions and goals a user has to accomplish in order to receive a reward. These are actions like completing a level or signing up an account. The offerwall guides the user directly to your app to accomplish your predefined task. At the same time, this results in much higher engagement rates.

Engagement Campaigns Based on CPE

This campaign is a special offer by ayeT-Studios: The user won’t be rewarded for installing your app but for actual engagement time. The longer he/she uses the app the higher the reward – hence the significant increase of total engagement.

Campaigns Based on CPC

CPC stands for Cost-Per-Click, meaning you pay once a user clicks on your ad. This pricing model can be combined with most available campaign types and ad formats.

Campaigns Based on CPM

With CPM campaigns, short for Cost-Per-Mille, you pay for every thousand impressions of your ad.

Video Campaigns Based on CPV

When using the Cost-Per-Completed-View, or CPV, model you pay as soon as a user watches your video ad completely. This campaign type works well as a demonstration of your app’s or your product’s features.

To learn more about this subject, please read our article about Mobile Media Pricing.

ayeT-Studios provides various campaign types to acquire great numbers of new visitors. At the same time, you benefit from our own traffic as well as traffic from cooperations with other ad networks. If you look at our services, you will get an insight on how you can buy mobile traffic.