How did your business do in 2021?
It’s been a year since my last post. I stopped blogging in 2021 to take care of some personal affairs. But this didn’t stop me from accumulating my growth knowledge. I’ve been fortunate to grow products and dive into more growth and retention/engagement from Reforge’s program.
In recent years, I’ve focused on app growth domains regardless of my daily job or side hustle. Today I want to summarize a thing or two about User Acquisition (UA) tactics that I got from my growth journey.
Each tactic has its pros and cons, they are not mutually exclusive, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It depends on the state of the product, the resources on hand, and the goal in mind.
If I apply a hierarchy and zoom out on the acquisition strategy, it has two parts — organic and paid. Take an app product as an example: Start with organic approaches such as ASO, SEO, social media, and WOM. Follow with paid techniques such as advertising, affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, etc.
The tactics I share here are on my go-to list. Depending on your resources and budget, you can start small and scale up. And they work together to amplify the result. These are great for independent, small app publishers since they often struggle with resource decisions.
- App Store Optimization ( ASO)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media
- Ads: ASA, Google Ads, and Social Ads
- Word of Mouth/Referral/Incentive Program
- App Store Optimization ( ASO)
If your ASO strategy is planned and executed well, it will bring you a steady stream of user growth. The App Store and Play Store provide friendly platforms for app publishers. They let you engage with your potential app users in a way that you can control and within a limited budget. The cost is about creative changes and keyword research; if you don’t have an in-house team, reach out to ASO agencies.
If you are a new app publisher without a lot of marketing dollars to buy ads, I strongly recommend using ASO as your go-to UA plan. You’ll need to be patient, and your hard work will pay off. That’s because ASO is not like ads that give you a massive immediate result in a short time. But ASO does help you to establish the app presence in app stores if you invest time and resources in it. ASO brings the users who really have the “intent” for your product. You’ll find that it’s easier to retain users when they come organically as well as maintain higher LTV (Lifetime Value) in general.
Metrics: # of new downloads, Category/keyword ranking, Rating and reviews, Conversion rate, Unique views. Learn more from Appsflyer.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media
Why bother to have a search engine-friendly webpage? To build your brand for your app. The top downloaded apps from the App Store and Play Store are the apps with branding power. Users know the app name before heading to the App Store or Play Store. Either the app has buzz words or is associated with some branding power. It takes time to build a brand from scratch, but SEO certainly helps. I suggest starting it early.
You can refer to SEMrush’s post about creating an SEO-friendly website. Once your site’s SEO is taken care of, it’s time to work with your team to map out how to get your website visitors to download your app. There are smart banners, QR codes, and SMS techniques that you can implement for your website and drive downloads from web to app.
As for social media, I recommend choosing social platforms carefully. Choose based on your target audience and allocate resources for it. And once you create a social media handle, you won’t leave it alone without managing it or updating valuable content for your target audience. Social media isn’t a helpful tactic without constantly updated content that resonates with your users. From personal experience, managing social media can eat up a lot of time. But the bright side is that if you manage it well, you’ll build up your followers pool, and that increases the power of word of mouth.
Metrics: Keyword ranking, Bounce rate, CTR, Website ranking, Exit page, # of followers. In-depth reading from Crazyegg.
3. Ads: ASA, Google Ads, and Social Ads
Now I prioritize spending money on ads. I like to use the direct ads platforms Apple Search Ads (ASA) and Google Ads as major forces to drive downloads and social ads to drive brand awareness. For iOS ads, I highly recommend checking out ASA; for the Play Store, go through Google Ads.
My approach is to start with ads campaigns in the ASA and Google Ads platforms. I prefer ads platforms that are easy and less complicated in terms of setting up. You can also run A/B tests on the platform as well. (I’m referring to indie/small app publishers.)
When I have the initial results as a baseline, I apply the creative set to other platforms.
The more I understand my users, the more I know what platform to use to reach them.
I use more budget on ads-driven downloads and less on brand-boosting campaigns. Once I kick off paid acquisition, I’ll pay attention to the metric changes, site performance, and app ranking/reviews. And I review the attribution setup correctly, and then I can measure the LTV and channel retention afterwards.
Metrics: Cost per install (CPI), Cost per acquisition (CPA), # of new downloads, Customer acquisition cost (CAC), Cost per mille (CPM), Cost per click (CPC), Return on advertising spend (ROAS). Find out more from App Radar.
4. Word of Mouth/Referral/Incentive Program
Every app publisher wants to launch an app and go viral. What do you have to do to get to this phase?
It’s not magic, and it takes a lot of work.
Personally, I like to cover the fundamentals. My approach is to let your current users know that you care about their experience and that the product is evolving. Then create a mechanism for them to spread the word.
This means you focus on optimizing the user journey and perfecting product features, engaging current users via review feedback, and personalizing email campaigns to ask them to advocate for your app by sharing the app link.
There are many passionate users out there who are willing to share their good experiences, and you’ll be amazed at how effective this approach is.
You can also incorporate a referral campaign with incentives for current users. The rule of thumb is to make the incentive equal for both referrer and referee.
I recommend using this tactic with caution. You start it when you see the app has a positive NPS. You should also have a well-structured team for customer support and operations as well as agile product development teams because it may backfire if something goes wrong or someone doesn’t promptly respond.
Metrics: K-factor, NPS from PMA.
There are many app user acquisition tactics. Building an app is complex and growing. It is challenging, but you will succeed if you think about it strategically.
Remember often one method that works for another app might not necessarily work for yours, and you may have to tweak the tactic a bit for your particular product.
The important thing is starting small, learning from the result, and scaling it until you find the golden formula for your app.
What are your go-to UA tactics?
I love to hear about yours. Let’s help the apps we love to grow!
