Performance Marketing and Mobile Apps: 4 Tips You Need to Know

In the past, online advertisers were forced to purchase ad space at a set rate and hope that users interacted with their content. Marketers had no guarantee that they would ever generate any leads from these ads. Fortunately, those days are long gone!

Performance-based marketing has become the most popular online advertising method available today. As the name suggests, you only pay if your ad performs. The best part is that you get to set a custom budget and performance metric for your campaign. 

While performance marketing can benefit any online advertiser, this method is especially useful for mobile app developers.

The Insights ABM team has compiled a list of tips for running a successful performance marketing campaign for your app. We help companies with online performance marketing in Dallas and have successfully managed several app advertising campaigns.

When you’re designing your performance-based marketing campaigns, here are the things that we suggest!

1.   Choose the Right Metric

App advertisers cannot choose a generic performance metric. Instead, they must select a metric that is relevant to the unique demands of selling an app. 

You should always set clearly defined targets for your campaigns. Your target goals should include: 

• New user volume
• In-app purchases
• Retention

At the end of the day, each of these goals should be helping you to increase your return on ad spend. With that in mind, we recommend choosing a performance metric such as:

• Video views
• Clicks
• Installs
• Actions (i.e., completing a level)
• In-app purchases

When you select one of the metrics above for your performance-based campaign, you will accumulate spend every time a user completes a task in that category. For instance, if 10 users install your app on a given day, then you will eventually be billed for all 10 actions.

2.   Use the Best Channel

In addition to choosing the right metric, you also need to select the best channel for your app. There are multiple options available, but some of the most popular include social media and paid search ads on Google.

Social media advertising is especially effective because many users access these platforms from their mobile devices. If your ad catches a consumer’s eye, they may download it on the spot. 

While Facebook is the largest social media platform, you may also want to branch out to Instagram or other sites depending on your audience. The platform you’ll have the most success on will largely depend on the type of app you are releasing, however.

3.   Target Specific Users

You probably designed your app with a specific demographic in mind. It is important that your marketing efforts work to get these ads in front of your ideal audience. 

Performance marketing makes it easy to target specific users. Instead of simply aiming at broad demographics, you can target specific personas. Performance marketing algorithms leverage personal user data to “retarget” your audience. This means that your ads will pop up on multiple pages as these users continue to browse. 

4.   Test Secondary Channels

After you have gotten your performance marketing campaign up and running, it is time to test out secondary channels. Limiting yourself to one or two networks can make it impossible to scale your campaigns. Multi-channel campaigns have a purchase frequency that is 2.5 times higher than single medium advertising.

When you’re preparing to expand, find out where your consumers are most active. Let’s say that a high percentage of your target audience uses Instagram. If you are not using performance-based marketing on that platform, then it is time to start.

Online Performance Marketing in Dallas

As you can see, a lot of effort goes into creating the perfect performance-based marketing campaign. While you can certainly go it alone, the better choice is to partner with Insights ABM. Our innovative team will provide you with a custom marketing strategy that will make your brand stand out!

Let’s make things happen for your mobile app. Contact us today to get started.