Author: Steffen Meyer, Mobile Marketing Content Specialist
With inflation ramping up costs and recessions haunting Europe, businesses are tightening their marketing budgets. The growth of digital ad spending, as reported by Insider Intelligence, is now projected to increase by less than 10% for the first time in 14 years.
In turn, app marketers need to be far more efficient with their spending and refocus on measures that bring the highest Return on Investment (ROI) – and these are not only found in your campaigns but also outside them.
Our comprehensive checklist serves as your invaluable guide to navigating these challenging times and fine-tuning your paid marketing strategies. Within this resource, you’ll find expert insights and links to additional in-depth resources on our site. So better bookmark this page now.
Outside of ad campaigns
1. Check your App Store Optimization (ASO)
App Stores are the only distribution platform for users to download apps, so every user has to go through them. But with 4.42 million apps available for download, you need to make a good first impression on the user, or they will download an app by one of your competitors.
The conversion rate (CVR) is mission-critical for your paid campaign efficiency, so:
- Improve visual layouts on screenshots and videos
- Highlight features in the most understandable and appealing way
- Keep your brand and brand values in focus
- Make the best use of Apple’s Custom Product Pages
We at Customlytics have a proven track record of successful optimizations with keywords being lifted into the top search results and additional downloads in the tens of thousands of users per year.
So start doing ASO. It lays the foundation for your ad campaign’s success.
2. Check your Product
The best ASO won’t help you if users aren’t satisfied with your product and stop using it. But if you can get more active users from the same amount of acquired installs, it will help with your ROAS. For this, start to analyze your user behavior by looking at:
| User Flow | Heatmaps | Session Recordings |
 |  |  |
These insights will help you decide which parts to optimize and which tests to run (don’t forget to use a control group).
One key element is the right onboarding: We created five different onboarding flows for Telekom’s Magenta SmartHome App and the conversion rates rose from 17.5% to 83.1%. Just imagine, only 17.5% of users that downloaded your app might be completing the registration process – when it could be 83.1%.
Furthermore, you should consider gamification to make your app more sticky. If you plan to do so, answer these 6 questions to avoid common mistakes and have a look at our 8 gamification strategies that will make your app super engaging.
With the help of Mobile Measurement Partners (MMP), you can monitor your success more easily. Click on the following links to learn more about how to coordinate your teams when implementing one, why and how to customize them and which challenges they face.
3. Check your Customer Retention Marketing
Longtime readers of our blog know this curve:
On average, 80% of users never open an app again after downloading it. To avoid this user churn, you need to keep more people engaged with your app, and for this, you need a retention strategy that utilizes various communication channels, like:
- Push notifications
- Mailings
- In-App Messages
- Newsfeed
- Internet of Things
- Text messages
A good retention strategy defines a) which channels to use, b) for what message and c) for what users.
Don’t just send out push notifications and hope they will somehow reach and activate your users, but create user personas, plan campaigns according to different tastes, set your goals, look at the data and recalibrate if necessary.
Since this is very complex to do manually, there are tools out there, like Airship, Braze, CleverTap, Leanplum and MoEngage. Also, check out our whitepaper to learn more.
Within your ad campaigns
1. Check your Creatives
You can tweak the settings of ad campaigns as much as you like, in the end, their success hinges on the ability of your videos and images to captivate the right audience. Investing in creative content can significantly enhance your campaign’s success, often surpassing the benefits of simply increasing ad spending.
A good creative doesn’t always need high-quality cameras and an expensive film set. Depending on your brand, user-generated content could be the way to go.
In any case, it is wise to remember storytelling techniques and not just rely on the latest AI tool to do this job for you.
2. Check your campaign types
Even though Meta, Apple, Google or TikTok might be the most obvious choices, you should have a look at different ad networks as well. Additionally, you should be aware of the different possibilities they offer. We covered a few of them in these blog articles:
- Master these 5 new ad features to become a TikTok marketing pro
- Climb the Optimization Pyramid to reach TikTok’s full app marketing potential
- 4 Instagram ad tools app marketers should know about
3. Check for fraud
Ad fraud is a serious problem in paid marketing. According to one study, up to 20% of the budget is lost to ad fraud, when the budget is above 1 million dollars. But too many marketers do not even know about it.
If this is news to you as well, read our blog articles about basic, advanced and AI fraud. While you may spot some of these malpractices manually, many of them require more sophisticated counter-measures that are executed by MMPs.
Master Marketing with our Marketing Master Map
It is absolutely essential for successful paid campaigns to fit into your overall marketing strategy. To get an overview of how to employ the right messages via the right channels at the right time, get our Marketing Master Map for free.
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