Arpit Jain is the Founder and CEO of GreedyGame. Arpit’s tech-preneurship journey started way back in 2013 when he was attending his undergraduate classes at IIT Ropar (2008-12 batch). He worked with his college mate Arink Verma to create a solution that allows mobile publishers and advertisers to scale up the user base, safeguard against ad fraud, and build a monetization model that does not disrupt the user experience. The result was- GreedyGame, a leading Mobile-First Native Ads platform.
In the digital-driven world, applications dominate the landscape. Right from the alarms that wake us up in the morning, to our grocery shopping, cab bookings, and OTT platforms for entertainment; apps rule not only our smartphones but our lives as well! While building an app can be a challenging journey, publishing and marketing it is a rollercoaster ride altogether. Various aspects and guidelines are to be considered before we actually take the leap of launching the app in the market.
The ultimate guide to app monetizing
Ranging from the goal behind launching the app, associating with the right demand partner, to adopting the appropriate user acquisition and monetization strategies; the app publisher needs to consider various parameters.
Once the app has been published, the next important step is to market it effectively and drive revenues. Here we have enlisted the ultimate guide that will ensure the app marketing is streamlined and in-app ad revenues can be garnered easily-
User acquisition
The workability and success of any app lie in its user base and engagement. Hence, it is imperative that once we have published an app, we have the appropriate user acquisition strategies to build a highly growing and engaging user base for our application. There are two routes to attain this goal- organic and paid.
Organic user acquisition by App Store Optimization (ASO)
ASO is an integral part of the app marketing and growth process. This approach helps improve the visibility of the app on the app store thereby leading to a surge in the number of downloads and user base. We need to target the right keywords whilst following the SEO rules. We then have to incorporate those in our communication; especially in app descriptions. This stage will help us in appearing in relevant searches as well as in important traffic searches on the app store.
Adding to it, analyzing and learning from the best practices adopted by the top apps in the respective category (competitive mapping) can be another viable way to acquire users organically. Furthermore, A/B testing all-the-store listing aspect and creative screenshots are other ASO strategies that can upscale the app’s user acquisition process.
Paid user acquisition by Universal App Campaigns
They are one of the efficient and quick ways to acquire the right user base at optimal costs. The paid model by UAC streamlines the app marketing process. It helps in easy promotion of the app across Google’s properties including Search, Google Play, YouTube, Discover on Google Search, and the Google Display Network. By just including a few textual lines, a bid, and considerable assets, the rest of the process is optimized by Google’s Machine Learning mechanism.
Usually, it is recommended that a hybrid approach should be adopted. It is believed that a combination of the organic and paid routes will help in improving the retention rates on the app.
Choosing the right demand partner
To ensure that our app marketing and bidding process is seamless, it is essential to associate with the right demand partner. The partner should match up with our business needs and should follow the industry-best practices. This is important as we would want to ensure that a fair and rich bidding ecosystem is created and available for our app to grow and flourish!
Conceptualizing the right monetization strategies
Monetizing the app is indeed the ultimate goal behind publishing the platform. It is now a pre-requisite and is in fact helping in creating a fair and open ad ecosystem. There has been a shift from waterfall mediation to the bidding model. As a result, every impression has an opportunity for earning maximum revenue!
To maximize the in-app revenues, the need for the best app monetization emerges at the forefront. One of the major ways to do so is by Google ad exchange that helps app publishers in earning higher ad revenue by providing them with higher filler rates with premium demand. It offers ad exchange that is programmatic or real-time bidding. As per eMarketer’s reports, Google is the market leader in online advertising for over a decade. It is projected to occupy a 29% share of digital ad spending at the global level. Hence, Google ad exchange will be one of the financially viable and cost-effective strategies for app monetization.
Native ads are yet another feasible app monetization strategy. They combine well with the remaining content without disrupting the users’ activity on the app. Hence, they lead to an increase in downloads thereby spiking revenues significantly.
Policy violations in apps
As an app publisher, it is critical that we ensure that the policy violations are adhered to and taken care of. Complying with the Privacy policies and GDPR before launching our application on the app stores is essential to ensure the protection of the users and their data. What also needs to be understood is that the respective app stores have their distinct policies and so does every country. Hence, we have to ensure following the policy guidelines keeping all these aspects into consideration.
Programmatic Marketing
In simpler terms, programmatic marketing refers to the automation of the marketing efforts of the app publishing. The concept works with the sole aim of creating highly targeted and tech-savvy marketing content for specific target groups. It has emerged as a new-age marketing tool that leverages the power of technology specifically automation. It helps conduct real-time bidding process (buying and selling ads through real-time auction)and has successfully replaced human negotiations and intelligence.
This strategy enables us to purchase ad inventory so that we can advertise to specific users with specific messaging. The objective of this solution is to increase transparency and efficiency between the app publisher and advertiser. Statista in its recent report highlights that programmatic marketing is becoming an indispensable digital tool at the global level and ad spending will grow in the times to come!
Summing up
Once we have published our app and all the above strategies have been meticulously devised and implemented, the next logical step is to evaluate our progress. This is a critical stage as it will help us gauge the objectives that were initially set, the success of the strategies executed, as well the outcomes achieved. Measuring goals versus consequences with the metrics that have to be pre-decided will help us decide the way forward strategy.
Monetizing an app once it has been published is no less than a roller coaster ride. It requires a lot of research, hard work, patience, legalities, and technicalities. However, with the right demand partners and appropriate strategies in place, we can successfully achieve these goals!