Much of marketing is about tailoring a message for the right audience.
App marketing is not very different. There is always a need to identify the right audience.
This need becomes even more pressing when running an app install campaign. Marketers naturally become more serious when there is real investment riding on a campaign. The question of ROI and CAC all come into the picture as marketers try to extract value from their marketing push.
Running a successful app install campaign should start with identifying the right audience. From someone developing a WooCommerce Android app to another trying to go from WordPress to app, audience identification is pivotal.
There are many codified practices marketers use to identify their audience. Generally, this process first starts with them connecting their goals with the audience they are trying to reach.
Something similar happens in app install campaigns as well. The audience must serve the goal of the campaign itself - getting more app installs.
Who are the people most likely to install an app? How does the process of making people install an app really work? What kind of app marketing mistakes do professionals make in the process?
This piece provides perspective on all these questions.
What happens before users install an app?
People don’t just download an app. In many ways, the journey of a person downloading an app is similar to someone buying a product. A buyer’s journey takes place and marketers use funnels to map this journey.
Thus, a person goes through every phase of a marketing funnel before downloading an app. This includes awareness, consideration, desire, and decision.
Where do app install campaigns fit in this process?
An app install campaign typically involves the deployment of paid adverts that contain an ‘install app’ option. The option redirects users to the app listing on the app store and asks them to initiate installation.
It is safe to say that an app install campaigns target people at the decision stage of a funnel. A person still at a higher layer of funnel will not download the app easily.
Lower funnel prospects - The perfect audience for app install campaigns
App install campaigns directly prompt users to make up their mind. People who are still at the awareness or consideration stage of their journey are not ideal targets for such campaigns.
Lower funnel prospects are ideal for such campaigns. They’re already aware about what the app has to offer. They have studied all the validation resources that attest to the app’s competence. Pushing an install campaign to such prospects guarantees a much higher conversion rate and overall ROI.
There is one common scenario that can help us understand how exactly lower funnel targeting works.
Let’s say you are promoting a sports news app. You plan to target lower funnel prospects and create an app install campaign accordingly. You’ve not yet done any type of marketing to target higher funnel prospects to build awareness about your app.
How will lower funnel prospects react upon seeing a sports news brand they have never seen before?
They would probably ignore it. Even though they are lower funnel prospects who are looking for a sports news app, they’ve never really noticed your brand before. You never had any connection with them at the time they were at a higher stage in the marketing funnel.
In other words, they probably won’t let you hijack their buyer journey. They would choose a sports news app that has engaged with them earlier.
Marketing is not a one-step process. Before running an app install campaign, you must have a marketing machine that interacts with prospects in the awareness and consideration stages. The app install campaign should ideally be the final stage of an overall marketing push, not the first.
How to find lower funnel prospects for app install campaigns?
The answer depends on where the app install campaign is being deployed.
Search engines and social media platforms are the obvious places where app install campaigns are run. There are clear tactical differences between running app install campaigns on search engines and social media. However, the principle is the same - target lower funnel prospects.
We will cover how marketers must approach both search engines and social media.
Search engines
Let’s stick with Google for this section as it covers much of the relevant traction search engines get. The following points highlight some ways marketers can specifically target lower funnel prospects.
Remarketing - The Google Ads platform allows advertisers to remarket their ads. This is especially helpful because it ensures that the people who see the app install ads have previously interacted with the brand.
Remarketing is otherwise an essential part of outbound campaigns as well. It grows the efficiency of a marketing push and significantly improves the conversion rate. It is the type of practise marketers must use anyways, not just during app install campaigns.
Keywords - Identifying keywords generally used by lower funnel prospects takes real marketing talent.
Let’s say you have an ecommerce shoe website. You wish to target lower funnel prospects. It is your job to look for keywords that people actively looking for shoes will search.
Upon finding these keywords, make them part of your search ad campaign.
App install campaigns also work similarly. You need to find keywords someone who is ready to download an app from a certain category will search. Discovering these keywords will involve a lot of keyword and competitor research.
Furthermore, adding negative keywords can also help grow the efficiency of the campaign. It removes any segment of the audience unlikely to install the app.
Visual ads - This includes both image and video ads. There is a significant visual element involved in making people download an app. People like having mobile apps with an artistic icon on their devices.
Marketers can play on these themes and use display and video ads to promote the visual appeal of an app. Even for someone trying to convert WordPress website to Android app, visual ads can help a great deal.
Google Ads allows advertisers to run display ads and video ads on YouTube as well. This opens up an entirely new channel of promotion and marketing.
Social media
App install campaigns on social media involve a wide range of demographic analysis. Ideally, the best thing marketers can do is target users who have previously interacted with the brand.
In other words, remarketing is the best strategy for social media app install campaigns.
Take Facebook as an example. Brands today have their own Facebook pages and groups. Marketers can start targeting people who already follow the page of their brand or belong to their groups.
These people are already familiar with the brand. Thus, they are naturally more aware about it and probably trust it. Running an app install campaign targeting such an audience is ideal.
In conclusion
Finding the right audience can solve a great part of all problems marketers face. In the case of app install campaigns, the perfect audience happens to be lower funnel prospects.
This piece offers a lot of guidance on helping marketers identify and target the perfect audience for an app install campaign. It also gives them a strategic outlook on the overall workings of a marketing campaign and where exactly a push for app installs becomes relevant.