Learn What User Acquisition is and How to Do It

Ask anyone in the mobile app marketing world and you will know user acquisition is among the most challenging tasks. For most app models, user acquisition is about getting the user to install the app. It sounds fairly simple. Isn’t it? Then what makes it so challenging?

User Acquisition: Definition

Let’s start with the basics. User acquisition is defined as the process of bringing a new user to the app. Depending on the app model, you can define various user interaction points as successful user acquisition. For example, a video streaming app will claim a user acquisition when the user starts their free trial, while for a free news app installing the app is acquisition.

This stage is fairly before the conversion point where the users make any contribution to the revenue stream of the app. However, user acquisition is still an appreciable achievement for the app. As the app has better marketing potential now in the form of push notifications, custom ads based on app engagement, in-app advertising, and more. With more users on the app, the chances of nudging the user down the funnel and conversions are also higher.

How to Push User Acquisition?

Since there is hardly any doubt over the need for user acquisition in the course of building a sound revenue stream, we can quickly jump to the steps that will help you gain more users.

Optimize earlier marketing stages

Before users reach the user acquisition stage, an app marketer would like to nurture them by branding ads and scaling stage. A finely thought execution of campaigns in these stages can boost your user acquisition campaigns considerably. So, do not ask users to jump to your app as abrupt messaging won’t get the results that you are looking to drive.

Keep your brand awareness campaigns, scale ads, and then targeted user acquisition campaigns in a way that supports each other. Along with better brand recall, it boosts the user’s interest in your app.

Target multiple platforms

Different users have different journeys. It’s even more complicated when it comes to mobile apps. Some users will need to be shown ads across formats and platforms to attract them to use your apps, while others might go to the app store and search for the solution they want to find your app. Then there are search engines, referrals, social media, and more platforms where users can discover your app.

Given that most of the app categories are tightly packed with choices, you can’t miss any platform as your ignorance is your competitor’s gain. So, go out in the market with a full-fledged strategy that is serving your app’s UA campaign. Customize your ads and organic actions as per the platform to leverage them to their maximum potential.

Use the right metrics to measure campaign performance

As mentioned above, different app models have different user acquisition events. When you run ad campaigns to increase the number of user acquisitions, you should be more attentive to these numbers. Do not limit your campaign tracking or analysis impression, click, or installs. It can block your view from quality user acquisition.

Some of the ad partners and Demand Side Platforms even provide you the choice to pick payment models based on certain in-app actions. It enables you to build a marketing campaign that is more goal-oriented for your app business.

Smoothen your onboarding

Onboarding is the user’s first point of engagement with your app. Usually, applications offer a series of welcome screens in which they explain the features and functionality of the app. Your user acquisition significantly depends on how impressive is your onboarding process.

Keep the onboarding process smooth in a way that the user is intrigued to spend more time on your app and engage in functionalities offered. You can gamify the onboarding process as that’s one of the most engaging ways for users. Along with that, you can customize the steps depending on the user as a personalized experience is more likely to be admired by the user.

If your onboarding process has multiple steps then ensure that you are tracking the user engagement at different steps. By understanding where your users take the most time or leave the app will help you optimize the process and gain more users faster.

Focus on quality acquisition

How do you define the quality users? Quality users are those who are going to benefit your revenue and remain loyal customers. Since user acquisition is one of the initial stages, maintaining quality here can help the later stages of conversion and retention.

There two ways to optimize the quality of users. You can look for the users in the conversion and retention stages to track the user data points of quality users. Similar user points can be targeted at the UA stage. Another option is to look for the campaigns and messaging that brought the users on the app. Suggest a similar strategy flow in the later stages as that can convert the users.

Final Note

User acquisition is almost a neverending task for app marketers. You need to keep the number of installs increasing while ensuring that MAUs and DAUs are also growing. As your app gains popularity and users, you might like to change your approach. The abovementioned points are generalized steps of acquiring quality users. For a more strategic approach depending, you can contact the RevX mobile marketing platform.

I'm a digital marketer by trade and an artist at heart. I'm here to help businesses go mobile and I use my articles to provide quality content & tutorials to assist marketers more efficiently than before.