We’ve had a chance to work on & see very different channels for a variety of apps over the years. As we’ve evaluated these over a period of time, we’ve noticed that an effective acquisition strategy encompasses 3 key pillars.
Yes, there are tactical minutiae that are numerous – and to many these 3 pillars may be obvious. However we find it liberating and freeing to see that everything we do in user acquisition falls under the broad umbrella of one of these 3 pillars.
Get the high level strategy around these 3 pillars right -> and the tactical details will follow in logical progression, even if technology changes & advances over time. Without further ado, here they are.
Audience:
Who are we targeting? Are these the users that can be the most profitable? In many online and offline platforms, understanding the age, demographic and interest profile of users can be crucial to an acquisition campaign’s profitability. Sometimes, just picking the right channel can drive enormous efficiencies – as can be the case with many offline media.
I’ll point out that even within seemingly ‘automated’ targeting systems such as Facebook’s lookalike audiences, choice of audience can have a huge impact. With Facebook’s lookalikes, we’ve seen a huge difference in performance between say lookalikes of high value purchasers and most active users. Yes, automated targeting is efficient – but what you automate is crucial.
Economics:
While audience and creative can help you acquire users, economics dictates how profitably you acquire them. This comes down to figuring out -> how much can you pay to show the right creative to the right user, and get her in the door.
Oftentimes this takes a deep understanding of the value of your users, ideally an LTV – and working back to how much you can afford to pay per purchaser, install, click or impression(or ideally all of these). Once you understand these metrics, it’s helpful to have a process of optimization – or of improving your CPA, CPI or ROAS (which optimization process could be automated, manual or somewhere in between).
Creative:
What are we saying in our ads? What format are our ads presented in? What is the look/feel/aesthetic of our ads? Getting this right – and as we like to say on our team, “finding winning creatives,” can be critical to user acquisition campaign’s success.
Finding winning creatives sometimes takes iteration – and letting automated tools like Facebook and Snap ads do their work in surfacing winning creatives from among a pool of creatives. It also takes building a deep understanding of a customer – and understanding what value propositions to surface in our ads – and how.
Important as it is to speak to the right people, it’s just as critical to say the right things in the right way.
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This is the high-level framework through which we approach all our acquisition activity -> and even if the individual tactics we employ on a day to day basis can vary, internalizing this framework helps us zero in on the things that fundamentally matter.
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