To get started, we collected a few strategies – both free and paid – in this overview:
| Paid Options | |
|---|---|
| App Store Optimization | Ad Networks |
| Social Media & Landing Pages | Influencer Marketing |
| App Review & Promotion Sites | |
| Blogs | |
| Media Kit and Press |
Options to promote an Android or iOS App
Besides the overall strategies, we would like to introduce you to some strategies that specifically apply to both Android and iOS apps.
Android App Marketing
Connect your marketing campaign with Google Adwords! This online advertising tool by Google allows you to promote products via various ad formats, displayed on different channels. you'll promote Android apps with it, too.
There are two campaign types you'll choose from:
- Display network app installs campaigns (text or image app install ads)
- Search network app installs campaigns (text app installs ads on)
- TrueView for app installs campaigns (video ads on YouTube)
Universal App Campaign
This option enables you to market Android apps via different ad formats and on several networks available by Google. Text and visual elements are taken from your app’s app store page (one more reason for ASO). This campaign type is predicated on a CPI bidding system, meaning you'll choose what proportion you're willing to buy users installing or opening your Android app. This way, you'll promote your Android app and increase your marketing budget if the results are satisfying.
Mobile App Installs Campaign
With such campaigns you simply target one network to get app installs. counting on the precise campaign model, you'll choose from CPA, CPV, and CPI as your bidding choice to promote your Android app.
There are three different campaign models, each of them targeting another network:
According to your Android app promotion strategy and your audience , you'll select the campaign type that most closely fits your needs. With Google’s bidding system, you'll adjust it to your current marketing budget. Click here for more information about mobile app installs campaigns with Google AdWords.
iOS App Marketing
Apple offers two options for your app marketing:
Search Ads
With Search Ads, iOS app developers are ready to place their app on top of search results. Since quite half app downloads are generated through search within the App Store, this is often one great opportunity to market your iOS app more effectively.
With its self-service dashboard, creating an enquiry advertising campaign is extremely easy. there's no minimum spend for it and costs only incur when users tap the ad. Apple has set a bidding system for this feature, which makes it possible to line a price consistent with your current budget.
In combination with ASO, you'll benefit of your app’s information (e.g. description) and graphics (e.g. screenshots) through “Search Match”. This feature takes metadata of the app from the App Store for your iOS app marketing. you'll also either use keyword recommendations made by Apple or select keywords on your own, a bit like Google AdWords. it's impossible to vary the ad creative, this data will only be taken from your metadata.
Furthermore, relevance is more important than bidding regarding apps being displayed via Search Ads. Here, Apple again shows that it prefers high-quality to monetization. Hence, when you’ve already done an excellent job together with your ASO, you'll draw on that.
Apple’s Editorial Choice
This is no direct promotion tool for app developers but it should attract them to make the most effective app possible. Apple’s editors choose great iOS apps continually that are displayed in these special sections of the App Store – so Apple will promote your iOS app.
Next to its appearance, features and quality, your app also can get the possibility to be placed by lowering its price for a limited time. So, consider offering a reduction from time to time.
Incent vs. Non-Incent App Marketing
If you would like use app Marketing to push the number of installs for an app, there are alternative ways to try to to so. you'll buy installs and choose from incentivized and non-incentivized types, meaning:
- Users will either receive a reward for installing your application (incentivized)
- they will download your app out of true interest and without being rewarded (non-incentivized)
Both types have different advantages and downsides.
Incentivized App Marketing
In general, you'll choose from two app promotion strategies when driving incentivized installs for your app. One of them is based predicated on the quantity of installs generated in a certain time whereas the opposite one considers the loyalty of your users.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Incentivized App Marketing
As mentioned before, one advantage is that the number of installs you'll generate during a small period of your time and also the resulting boost of rank. Another important factor you must confine mind is that the cost for every quite install:
The CPI (=cost per install) for incentivized installs is much cheaper than that of an app promotion strategy only supported non-incentivized ones. The downside of incentivized installs is that users might download and install your app just for the reward, leading to less user engagement, lower lifetime value and smaller retention rates.
Non-Incentivized
The advantage on one side is that the disadvantage on the other: Since users won’t receive a reward for installing your app, you've got higher costs so as to get a similar amount of installs of an an incentivized campaign. If you’ve just started your app business, this might take an enormous chunk of your marketing budget.
Conclusion :
Now, the foremost important question must be asked: which kind of install is suitable for your app promotion strategy?
Can you choose a way where you simply affect the advantages and leave the drawbacks behind? Take advantage of both of them. The mixture of rewarded and non-incent installs helps your app marketing strategy gather pace up and your app will climb up the charts.
App Marketing Campaigns
The main goal of app marketing is to accumulate new users but there are various ways to advertise an app. These not only differ due consistent with the ad format, but also consistent with who is carrying the risk – the publisher or the advertiser?.
Install Campaigns
With this app marketing campaign type the advertiser pays the publisher for each generated install (CPI). The install are often rewarded for the user or be of non-incentivized nature. If the advertiser wants the campaign to be incentivized, he/she can expect the download rates to be very high. Users install the app so as to urge the reward. For the publisher, incentivized installs are quite interesting, because they only want to deliver installs and don't care about what happens after the installation. For marketers, non-incentivized installs are brighter because a targeted group of users downloaded the app of their own interest. This leads to higher retention rates and consequently a better revenue for the developer of the app.
So, the difference between rewarded and non-rewarded installs also underlines the shifting of the carried risk between marketer and publisher. Rewarded installs pose a low risk for publishers but a high risk for the advertiser. Non-incent installs imply a high risk for the publisher, (as it's not clear what percentage of his/her audience will install the advertised app) and low risk for the publisher.
Action Campaigns
Action campaigns offer a reward to the user, as there's always an objective the user should fulfill. This mobile campaign type allows the advertisers to spend budget as long as the user has fulfilled a selected action in their app. Like that, he/she gets to understand the merchandise a small amount better and might still use it. Although the danger for the advertiser is that the same like incentivized install campaigns, the audience of the publisher might only take the action to urge the reward.
Mobile Video Campaigns
From a marketing point of view, videos as advertisements are very unique because it's so versatile to monetize and to calculate the bid. What advertisers should know first: a study showed, that 71% of mobile game players think that video ads are the well-liked thanks to “pay” for an app.
When using video ads, marketers also can prefer to reward users or to go away it non-incentivized. the chance to decide on the correct bid-type is what makes it special.
The three main bid-types are Cost Per Install (CPI), Cost Per Click (CPC) and cost Per View (CPV).
The three main bid-types are Cost Per Install (CPI), Cost Per Click (CPC) and cost Per View (CPV). Here, the model cost per install is employed within the same way as within the install campaign. CPI video ads will be both rewarded and non-incentivized: the advertiser pays the publisher for delivered installs. The CPC bid-type only pays the user when he/she interacts with the ad and gets directed to a landing of a mobile browser or the page of an app store. because the action of clicking implies less work for the user than installing an app, the reward may be a bit smaller. this will also mean that the user interacting with the video is usually curious about the merchandise . an equivalent applies to non-rewarded video ads. With this mobile campaign type, the publisher carries the risk and therefore the advertiser only pays when a user interacts with the ad.
App Marketing Costs and Budget
Knowing how to calculate your budget is crucial when eager to conduct successful app marketing. First, you ought to select your key performance indicators (KPI) upon what you'd wish to achieve together with your app. Following, we are getting to present to you a number of the foremost common calculations that you simply can use to calculate your allow your user acquisition strategy.
1. Cost Per Install :
The cost per install (CPI) measures the app marketing costs for ads that trigger an installation of your app. CPI varies tons consistent with the ad formats you employ . If you're using non-incent banner ads, you'll presumably pay more for every install than when buying downloads via an incentivized offerwall. If you employ an incentivized offerwall you'll calculate very precisely what number installs you'll get for a particular amount of cash .
2. Cost Per Acquisition
This simple yet interesting formula helps you calculate app marketing costs because you'll measure very clearly how effective your marketing efforts are. it's not limited to a selected model like CPI or CPAU.
For the mobile advertising industry, this pricing type is more commonly used for setting actions like completing a tutorial, reaching a particular level, registering an account or subscribing a newsletter.
3. Cost Per Active User
The cost per active user measures the app marketing costs for reaching users which will use your app actively. Every company must define for themselves what ‘active’ means. during this case, you would possibly also hear the term ‘retention rate’.
4. Average Revenue Per User
The average revenue per user is that the amount of revenue each of your active customers (on average) contributes during a specific period of your time .
App Marketing Solutions
In this section of the article, we would like to introduce and explain app marketing solutions that we developed for our customers.
Programmatic Buying
With Real Time Bidding (RTB), you can buy ad spaces like mobile banners, interstitials, and mobile video in real time via OpenRTB protocol.
Fraud Prevention
We prevent your ad spend from possible fraud with the assistance of proprietary technology, strong partners, and a fanatical team.
We combine automated real-time data analysis and hands-on examination of accumulated historical data by our experts to spot abnormalities and fight publisher fraud. That way, we offer the high level of security for your media buying. Additionally, you'll monitor your performance and data in real-time with our dashboard.
In detail, we fight fraud by:
- Measuring performance discrepancies
- Using third party ad tracking
- Detecting non-human traffic (NHT)
- Monitoring statistical indicators
- Built-in proprietary technology to:
- Analyse abnormal user behavior
- Measure unexpected CTR/CR ratios
- Detect abnormalities in traffic quality in real-time
- Examine suspicious performance distribution
Steamseo's Dashboard
With our self-serving dashboard, we are able to provide our customers with full control over their media buying and marketing outcomes. you simply need to setup a campaign by choosing a campaign type like install campaigns, engagement campaigns, banner ads or mobile video. If you wish to focus on a particular audience, you'll set granular data like targeting location, language, device, OS type and more. to ensure a completely transparent campaign performance, we cooperate with third party tracking providers Appsflyer, Tune, Adjust or Kochava. Furthermore, with our dashboard, you'll react to real-time reports fast and optimize across all supply channels.
the advantages of our dashboard:
- Self-serve capabilities
- Real-time reporting
- Buy from ad exchanges and premium publishers
- Manage and optimize all your ad campaigns with ease
- Optimize across all supply sources
- Precise targeting
- Integrated third party tracking
- Multiple bid types available