Mobile App Business

Proven ways to increase your ROI
and get your app in the hands of loyal users


Competing For Users
With more than a million mobile apps competing for users,
how do you make certain that your app:
• Is ranked highly enough to be discovered?
• Gets enough cost effective downloads to scale your business?
• Is downloaded by loyal users who are profitable?
And how do you accomplish all this without draining your budget in the process?
If you’re like most companies, you’re struggling for answers.
The good news is that a new technology platform is in use today by top
brands and leading app developers to overcome these challenges, and
build successful, sustainable mobile app businesses.
Although you’re competing with hundreds of thousands of other apps, you
can take solace in the fact that you’re not alone – because your competitors
are facing the same challenges.

Overcoming the Challenges

The costs to find users are too high.
What most app marketers will tell you is, “We took a financial beating trying
to get users. We spent a ton of money and didn’t get any volume at all.” And
many who did get the volume say, “We spent tons of money on volume, but
our cost-per-user was orders of magnitude higher than our business plan.”

Finding users is complex, and we don’t fully understand it.
“We have a great app, but we have no idea how to get our app into the hands
of users. This is all new to us, and there’s really no way to know for sure if
our advertising will deliver the results we need. So we experiment and test
and hope we hit our target.”

It’s all extremely time-consuming.
“We’re having some success, but we can do much better. We just don’t have
the bandwidth to make it happen fast enough. The ad networks are getting us
downloads, but they have no way of telling us if the downloads translate into
profitable users. The problem is that it is much too time-consuming to work
with multiple traffic sources, and we have limited staff to make it happen.
So we feel like we’re settling.”

The market keeps changing.
“Just when we figure out how to market our app, the app stores make changes
that render our marketing obsolete
But how can you ensure that your app achieves the highest possible number
of downloads to support your business model when there are over a half
million apps competing for users?

The best way for your app to be discovered is for it to be listed in the top
ranks within your app’s category. But there are so many other apps battling
for a fixed number of slots on a daily, or even hourly, basis. And every day it
becomes more challenging to compete because the number of slots is fixed
while the number of apps fighting for those slots increases.

The Unfortunate Reality:

You may find yourself in an unfortunate reality that is also faced by your
competitors. You have little choice but to give your money to an ad network
and hope it delivers the results you need. What most organizations are
finding, though, is that they’re not achieving their goals.
So why isn’t this working?
There are several reasons why your approach may not be working to the
degree you require. Here are three of the most common reasons:
1. You may not be working with a full complement of traffic sources.
2. You may not be tracking ad performance and optimizing ad spend
in real time.
3. The fact is that ad networks are not focused solely on your needs.

Why today’s approach may not be working.

1. You may not be working with a full complement of traffic sources.

To achieve peak results, it is vital to generate traffic from a variety of
sources including:
• Ad Networks that display your ads on their network of mobile publishers.
• Real-Time Bidding Platforms that allow you to bid on traffic in real time.
• Incentive-Based Download Programs that allow you to bid on downloads
by users who are incentive to download your app.
By limiting the number of traffic sources you use, you’re at considerable risk
of limiting your results. For example, when working with only three mobile
ad networks, you’ll be missing opportunities to identify potentially higher
performing traffic from many other available ad networks; sources that can
lead to larger numbers of loyal users. In addition, you’re not maximizing your
ROI over a larger audience by identifying opportunities for lower acquisition
costs. And finally, by working with a small number of traffic sources, you are
in danger of subjecting your app to audience saturation.
Successful mobile app marketers recognize that working with several traffic
sources and ad networks increases their success. Casting a wide net across
multiple networks is more efficient than working with one network and can
be more effective by a factor of 3X.

But working with multiple traffic sources is easier said than done.
It is extremely challenging to work with multiple traffic sources, let
alone multiple properties within each source type. Some of these
challenges include:

It’s complex and time-consuming.
Working with just one or two networks is complex and time-consuming
enough. So how can you possibly work across dozens of traffic sources
spanning numerous networks, real-time bidding platforms and incentive
based programs? Working with multiple networks increases the workload
and complexity exponentially. How many people would you have to hire to
manage multiple insertion orders, consolidate different types of reports,
and conduct ongoing performance analysis?
There’s no way to measure user value.Not all users have the same value. Some users have a higher propensity to
view ads, some will complete a registration, and others will make a purchase.
In this regard, it’s important to measure the quality of users acquired
through each traffic source to determine exactly how much each user is
worth, to ensure traffic sources are ROI positive.
Disparate reports are difficult to track.Each network provides a different type of report, tracking different types of
data. For example, some networks report that a download occurs on the day
an ad is displayed. Others report when the app was physically opened the
first time. Data is reported differently from network to network, and somehow
you need to reconcile this. It takes an enormous amount of work to consolidate
all of these reports, and without the ability to do so, you can’t identify the best
value for your spend.
There are numerous technical complexities.Each traffic source requires you to embed tracking code into your app. All
this code can compromise your app’s performance and cause several technical
complexities. Moreover, the need to write multiple lines of code requires
engineering time and resubmitting to the app store for each additional traffic
source, and there are dozens of traffic sources out there.

2. You may not be tracking ad performance and

optimizing ad spend in real time.To get the highest possible return from your ad spend, you must continuously
track and analyze all of your ads’ performance variables and make adjustments,
ideally in real time. It’s complex and time-consuming to do this when working
with just one network, let alone several. You may not have the in-house expertise
or the tools to perform the necessary analysis and adjustments. But if you don’t
track performance and adjust your ad buy in real time, you may be spending
too much or missing out on users from the best performing sources.

3. Ad networks are not focused solely on

your needs.

Ad networks serve, not only you, but also the publishers within their networks
who display your ads. It is in the networks’ best interest to give business to
each of their publishers, and this could be in direct conflict with your objectives.
So while the networks are important to your business, it’s up to you to use
them properly. You must be pro-active about identifying the publishers within
the networks on which to place your ads. Then you have to continually track
performance and adjust your ad spend based on this performance.
More importantly, the networks do not have the ability to focus your ad spend
on delivering the types of users you need most:
Organic Users and Loyal Users.
While it is true that rank and downloads are critical to your success, in reality,
they are just a means to getting what you really need: organic users and
loyal users.
No ad network has a method for understanding how to acquire organic users
and loyal users. Ad networks are focused primarily on two things: ads and
clicks. So it needs to be up to you to place a strong emphasis on driving
downloads from organic users and loyal users. But what are organic and
loyal users.

Organic Users

Organic users are users that actively seek and download your application
from app stores without seeing an ad. According to data compiled from our team, Inc. research, these users are significantly more likely to become
loyal users than those who download your app after viewing an ad.
Therefore, as you develop your user acquisition plan, think not only in terms of
“number of downloads,” but also think in terms of “number of organic users.”
Loyal UsersAt the end of the day, you want downloads by loyal users because loyal users
use your app repeatedly, make purchases, and spread the word on your behalf.
It is loyal users on whom you build your business. A download, or even an app
launch, does not mean that you have a loyal user.
So what is a loyal user? Depending on your business, a loyal user can be
defined differently.
If your company is membership-based, a loyal user might be someone who
registers and becomes a member. If you’re a retailer, a loyal user may be a
customer who makes a purchase. If you’re an app developer who relies on
in-app ad revenue, a loyal user may be someone who opens your app at
least five times, making himself or herself available to see ads.
Rapid and sustainable app-business growth is all about finding loyal users.
However none of the ad networks have a viable method for understanding
how to obtain loyal users.

Best Practices For  Acquiring Loyal  Mobile App  Users  And Growing Your Mobile App Business:

Following are proven best practices for promoting your app for profitable
and sustainable loyal user acquisition and business growth. By employing
these best practices, you can overcome the challenges outlined in the previous
pages, and greatly increase the likelihood of finding the right users at the
right cost.

1. Work with as many traffic sources as possible.

If you are working with only one traffic source type (mobile ad network, real
time bidding platform, incentive based program), or even just one of each
type, it really is too small a universe to be successful. You are missing out on
valuable opportunities to identify the best traffic sources for driving the largest
numbers of loyal users, and to scale your business.
By working with several ad networks, you can also insulate yourself from saturation
on any one network, which typically results in higher acquisition costs.

2. Focus on acquiring downloads from loyal users.None of the ad networks have a method for understanding how to deliver
loyal users, so you must take the initiative. The best ways to get loyal users
are to:1. Define the characteristics of your loyal user.
2. Automate the tracking of these loyal user characteristics.
3. Identify the traffic sources that generated these loyal users.
4. Steer your ad spend toward these traffic sources.
5. Track all of your users’ interactions with your app.

3. Drive and track downloads from organic users.

Organic users, those who actively seek and download your application without
any marketing influence, have a much higher lifetime value than ad-driven
users.

4. Determine your optimal category and rank position to maximize cost

per loyal user :

The answers are simple: It’s the category and rank that generates the most
loyal users for the lowest cost possible. Unfortunately, testing various categories
and rank positions is a time consuming challenge. Here are some tips
for defining your optimal category and rank position:

1.Category

2.Rank – In Category

3.Rank – Overall

5.Understand the number of loyal users generated from each
traffic source.

Based on your definition of a loyal user, gain an understanding of the number
of loyal users you are generating from each ad network and traffic source

 

6. Insulate yourself from variations of available traffic at a given bid. 

Traffic variations, and therefore ad costs, can change on a daily basis. For
example, you may get a lot of traffic for five cents per click on one day, and
the next day that same traffic costs 10 cents per click. Your costs just doubled.
You can insulate yourself from these fluctuations by tracking traffic variations
on a continuous basis, and moving your ads to more cost-effective traffic sources

7. Define lifetime value per user.

8. Define cost-per-conversion.

9. Target best-performing days of the week.

10. Track ad performance based on downloads.

11. Define your app title with the goal of conversions.

12. Write your landing page copy for consumption on mobile devices.

13. Test different creative.

14.Use short and punchy ad copy.

Put These Best Practices To Work For You:

A breakthrough mobile app user acquisition platform has made these best
practices a reality for many of today’s leading companies, from established
consumer brands to fast growing mobile ventures, looking to build scalable
businesses around their mobile apps.

Mobile Apps user acquisition platform was developed by a team
of seasoned entrepreneurs and PhDs, and is used by leading businesses to
overcome the challenges of generating large quantities of loyal app users,
while lowering user acquisition costs by as much as 3X

with Mobile Business ,businesses are able to:
• Easily work with all ad networks
• Track ad performance and optimize ad buys in real time
• Generate more organic and loyal users at a lower cost

Here’s Your Next Step : Mobile Business