The global spending on user acquisition by mobile apps is forecasted to reach $94.9 billion by 2025, which is an increase of 20% from the current spending. User Acquisition(UA) is becoming increasingly competitive with the growing market size. This will make it only harder for app marketers to differentiate themselves and stand out, especially considering how most app marketers these days chase installs and lose sight of conversions.
Moreover, a holistic marketing strategy that includes both Retargeting and UA campaigns needs to be implemented to attain high retention rates and maximize ROI by focusing on quality installs that could convert.
To stand out in this sea of ads, it is imperative for app marketers to build strategically-driven strategies. Furthermore, it presents an opportunity to shift the focus from installs to conversions and concentrate on quality over quantity.
“Quality over quantity” is an age-old advice that all professionals have received at some point. More often than not, applying this advice has delivered fruitful results.
However, have you ever wondered how this plays out in the world of app marketing? Should you focus on installs or conversions as an app marketer? What are the limitations of a quantity-first approach? Would a quality-first approach yield better results?
Install Focus Vs Conversion Focus
Installs:
The focus is usually on the number of installs, which holds the aspect of driving a higher number of installs at high importance for these campaigns. The use of this approach leads to casting a wide net to bring in as many installs as possible, which often leads to losing sight of conversions. It is key to remember that when you are targeting everyone, you are targeting no one!
This approach can result in higher costs spent on identifying and converting high-value users. Although focusing on the number of installs may seem sufficient initially, it essential to consider the quality of these installs and whether these users can convert down the line. Moreover, this approach of focusing on the number of installs can also make your campaigns more vulnerable to fraud.
Conversions:
This approach focuses on the quality of installs and gives more attention to acquiring high-intent users who are more likely to convert. By driving campaigns that are optimized toward conversions and targeted to specific user segments, you can benefit from higher conversions that could ultimately result in improved ROI.
It aims to establish a lasting and impactful presence by attracting not only users who are genuinely interested in the app but also users who are valuable to acquire. This involves attracting users from different categories based on their preferences and behavior, such as having searched for similar apps or used similar apps in the past. Furthermore, it reduces the conversion cost while minimizing the low value and risk of fraudulent installs. This not only leads to better user quality but also increases LTV.
How did RevX improve Swiggy’s new users by 177%?
RevX partnered with Swiggy, which is India’s leading on-demand delivery platform with a vision to elevate the quality of life for the urban consumer by offering unparalleled convenience. Two of the main goals of this campaign involved enabling ideal users to discover and install their app and driving incremental post-install engagement and first order.
RevX increased their new users by 177% and boosted their in-app installs by 2.4X by following a strategy that involved:
Programmatic Inventory to fully integrate with all leading global and local suppliers, which included enabling Swiggy to reach 300M+ users in over 550K verified apps across India, among other aspects.
Audience Intelligence & Predictive Modelling to identify and acquire quality users with a maximum likelihood of placing an order after installing the app through our proprietary AI-powered models.
Creative Strategy to engage users most efficiently, we ran mobile-optimized ads across formats such as banner, native, interstitial, and video.
Fraud Prevention To prevent ad fraud and keep campaigns running with maximum security, RevX’s aiCube technology, designed to weed out ad fraud and suspicious bid requests automatically in real time played a key role.
Read the full impact RevX created over here.
How can the quantity-focused approach affect your campaigns?
As we have seen in the previous section, a quantity-focused approach can result in low-value installs and users without genuine interest in the app. The goal of chasing install attribution has major drawbacks, such as lower conversion rates and the risk of fraudulent installs. Although higher installs can be expected with this approach, this cannot be considered either a cost-effective method or a sustainable approach.
Additionally, users’ lack of genuine interest often results in low retention rates. These low retention rates can be attributed to higher retargeting budgets in the long run, ultimately requiring higher ad spending during the retargeting campaigns. This would also result in losing out genuine conversions that could turn into a loyal customer base for your app due to the negligence of user segments, personalized ads, and a holistic strategic approach.
Targeted Precision: Quality-Focused Approach
The quality-focused approach is aligned with building conversion-focused campaigns that prioritize high-intent users. Although the install rates can be lower in a quality-first approach, the benefits that the app can yield through this approach are very high. The advantages of prioritizing high-intent users can include higher conversion rates while maintaining a low risk of fraudulent installs.
The quality-first approach’s objective is to build campaigns targeted at high-quality users to maximize engagement and conversion rates. In the long run, this aspect of prioritizing high-intent users will result in lower retargeting costs to build high-impact campaigns. This makes this approach a highly cost-effective and sustainable method.
Here’s What RevX Recommends to Drive High Conversions in the Long Run:
A quality-focused approach to reap the benefit of high conversion rates at low costs can be achieved by implementing a data-driven approach and user segmentation.
MMP Data:
The Mobile Measurement Partner data, or MMP data for short, can hugely improve your conversion rates and provide you with valuable insights about your users, such as:
- Creative optimizations that result in high user engagement
- Effective targeting for optimal results
- Track user engagement and critical activities like add-to-cart
- Identify high-intent users ready to convert
- Refine targeting frequency for optimal results.
This MMP data allows you to efficiently segregate your users based on impactful insights, including their preferences and engagement levels. Additionally, this has great potential to boost your performance and conversion rates.
Brand Building With Programmatic:
Creating impactful brand-building campaigns is extremely important as they leave a lasting impact on your target audience that drives conversions and increases customer lifetime value (CLTV) in the long run. Some of the advantages of employing a building strategy in your marketing strategy are:
- Improve the visibility and recognition of your app among your intended audience.
- Establishes a positive image that will set you apart from the competition
- Quicker conversions and foster a lasting connection with your brand
RevX excels at achieving this while offering enhanced transparency by providing visibility into ad placement, building personalized ads based on user interests and behavior, customized campaigns using real-time insights, and improving reach by targeting users in relevant environments.
User Segmentation:
The user segmentation is an impactful tool for taking a quality-driven approach to focus your energy on driving conversion rates. The users can be segmented based on their interactions, behavior, and engagement levels. One way to do this is by considering RFM analysis for your strategy.
RFM Analysis:
RFM analysis, or Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value analysis, is an effective way to segregate your users. It is an analysis based on their purchasing patterns. This includes paying attention to how recently a user has made a purchase, the frequency at which these users interact with the app, and their spending habits.
Moreover, this helps build behavior-driven segregation that will help you allocate budgets toward high-intent users. This lets you focus on building a loyal customer base and generate long-term revenues.
Additionally, RevX’s Advanced Machine Learning Tech enables you to attain a higher ROAS by effectively reaching the appropriate audience at the precise moment with a strong understanding of the user’s behavior, preferences, and engagement pattern. Utilizing multimodal ML algorithms and optimization and following hyper-personalized targeting will greatly enhance the customer experience.
The Takeaway!
In a world where everyone is behind the number of installs, it is extremely important to take a strategic approach by paying closer attention to the quality of these installs. The benefits of creating strategically-driven and conversion-focused campaigns are beneficial not only during the User Acquisition stage but also in the long term especially during the Retargeting stage.
Learn more: revx.io
Hansika Sana
Marketing Manager, Content
