The App Marketing team at Yodel Mobile won a couple of awards recently; one for “Most Effective App Marketing ” at the EMMAs and the other “Best App Marketing Campaign” at the App Promotion Summit. The first was for Teletext Holidays and the second for NBC Universal’s Hayu App.
On the surface, there is nothing out of the ordinary in either of these wins. What I was most encouraged by was that we had been recognised for our approach to drive the success of these apps. In both cases, our user acquisition focus was on acquiring organic users and not a narrow focus on paid acquisition.
Why should you take advantage of organic user acquisition opportunities?
The prime driver for user acquisition for most app marketing plans is paid user acquisition, but whilst Facebook, Apple search ads and install campaigns all generate downloads, they come at a financial cost. Most businesses in mobile haven’t got access to the funding that the biggest players in the space are able to invest, so they can only compete to a level.
Smaller app businesses must be smarter to succeed and need to ensure that they have an effective discoverability strategy in place and are taking advantage of non-paid solutions and the free channels that are open to them.
That’s what we did (and continue to do) for Hayu, Teletext and a tonne of other clients. We focused on the searchability and discoverability of their apps, making them more than competing against rivals with larger financial backing in App Store search, AppPack search, and viral sharing. We focus on ASO, app indexing, trigger times, progressive onboarding and smart banners in order to dominate where we can outsmart the others and maximise user acquisition.
Combining organic and paid user acquisition
Imagine what additional impact the big spenders could make if they got their organic cogs greased to work alongside their ad spends.
Well, they would be able to dominate in the space that the smart app marketers are stealing a march on.
However, I wouldn’t be too worried about them for the time being, few of them are likely to be considering the opportunity.
Focus on what you can do for your app and make sure you are taking advantage of all the organic opportunities open to you.
Want to find out more about optimising your app and keeping up with the latest OS capabilities? Make sure to subscribe to our Mastering Mobile Marketing video series. You can also get in touch by visiting the Contact Us page. Follow us on LinkedIn, chat with us on Twitter @yodelmobile, and join our #mobilemarketingUK LinkedIn group.
