This Is How You Drive Quality App Installs Without Losing Money

MediaPost has a great look at the value of quality mobile app installs, and offers some tips for business owners and developers looking to drive quality installs without paying through the nose. The whole article is definitely worth a read, but here’s a summary of the main takeaways:

Take Your Apps to the Movies

For some moviegoers, the trailers are the best part of the whole show. Who doesn’t want to peek around the curve at all the exciting (hopefully) movie events slated to drop in the months ahead. If the main event is subpar, at least you have the promise of better flicks ahead to buoy your spirits after the letdown.

App trailers work by the same principle. Just as movie studios use feature trailers as implicit votes of confidence in their upcoming content stable, savvy app developers use app trailers to tease hot new concepts and convince (with or without justification) viewers that upcoming apps really are as awesome as they sound. For best results, embed your app trailers with clickable or easily searchable calls to action.

Explore Your PPE (What?) Options

Pay per engagement (PPE) is an innovative marketing strategy with roots in the tried-and-true subscription model. PPE apps basically follow the freemium model. Instead of asking for upfront payment, they ask for skin in the game only after users complete a specified action, such as purchasing a separate service offered through the app, paying for a piece of premium content, or buying credits through an embedded game.

Given their inherent barriers to conversion, PPE apps typically don’t generate eye-popping revenues and generally have high acquisition costs. But their acquisition quality metrics are off the charts — and, for many types of marketers, that’s what matters most.

Invest in Retargeting

Mobile retargeting is a great way to bring dormant app users back into the fold. All you need to do is invest in retargeted mobile PPC ads aimed at users who’ve been away from your app for a set period of time: a week, a month, whatever. The concept isn’t all that different than those “We miss you!” emails you’ve been using since 1998 — just way less annoying, and way better at keeping your brand top of mind.

Deep Link Nine

Deep linking is a relatively new, really simple concept personalization concept: links to specific pages within your apps. Deep linking is a great way to improve geotargeted campaigns or drive specific buyer personas to take specific actions around your brand. In other words, it’s catnip for your numbers guys.

It’s Not a Quality Install Without Quality Analytics

None of the preceding app install strategies would be possible without analytics. If you’re not measuring and analyzing your mobile apps’ performance on a regular basis, you’re simply not getting the most for your money. Pay special attention to attribution analytics, which assign user actions to specific sources or campaigns. Once you know where your traffic originates, you can figure out why some sources are more effective than others and improve your overall app campaign’s ROI.

How are you planning to drive quality app installs in 2016?