TapSense - Best practices for iOS app marketing

Best Practices for iOS App Marketing

www.tapsense.com info@tapsense.ocm
App Marketing Basics / Getting Started
What do I need to get started?
1. Ready to Promote your Mobile App
2. Identify Target Customers
3. Messaging and Creative
4. Select and prioritize distribution channels

1. Ready to promote your mobile app?
Your app strategy has been effective and all growth so far has
been organic. Now that the product team has worked out all the
kinks, you’re ready to start marketing the app. But where
should you start? Should jump right into paid? Are there free
channels you can explore first?
In this guide we will provide expert advice on how to approach
your app marketing. First exploring how to maximize free
channels and then expanding to paid channels.

2. Identify target customers
Identifying your target customer is the essential first step.
Developing a good understanding of your who your target
customer will help make sure that you tailor your messaging
to them and target the right channels.

3. Messaging and creative
Does your app have a clear and easy to understand value
proposition? One that you can market effectively? On iOS,
mobile specific value propositions are the most successful.
Understanding your mobile specific value proposition is essential
to succeeding in app marketing.
Some examples: Redfin pushes the location based feature of
their app. Audible offers free audiobook download. The financial
times gives consumers a discount on a digital subscription.

4. Select and prioritize distribution channels
Free Channels
First, utilize all the free channels effectively to
get app downloads.
• Email Marketing
• Refer-a-Friend
• Your Mobile Website
• Social Media
• Direct Publishers
• Mobile Ad Networks
• Demand Side Platforms
• Paid Social Media
Paid Channels
Use paid channels to complement your free
channels.

App Distribution: Free Channels | Email
Email, the most under used app marketing channel
With over half of all email now opened on a mobile
device, driving app downloads from this channel should
be an essential part of every app marketers strategy.
Most internet based companies have made a huge
investment in email marketing. There is no better way to
reach your existing audience and help migrate them over
to your iOS app.

Stats say 44% of email is now opened on a
mobile device Litmus
– ”Email Analytics” (June 2013)
Pro Tip: Add app conversion tracking tags to app store
download links in all your marketing emails. This will
allow you to track and measure conversion from email.
http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics
App Distribution: Free Channels | Email

App Distribution: Free Channels | Referrals
App refer-a-friend programs
Refer-a-friend type programs are increasing in popularity as a
way to drive viral adoption of iOS apps. There are a few
platforms that have recently emerged such as Yozio, who
provide a turnkey way to do this through both email and text.
Referral remain one of the best channels to accelerate the
growth of high value users. It’s a channel that more app
marketers should take advantage of.

Pro Tip: Add conversion tracking tags to refer-a-friend
systems in your app to track and measure conversion
from this channel
App Distribution: Free Channels | Referrals
http://blog.buzzreferrals.com/2012/07/referral-marketing-stats-you-need-to.html
The Wharton School of Business found that a
referred customer has a 16% higher life-time
value.

App Distribution: Free Channels | Your Mobile Website
Move users from your mobile website to your app
Many large PC based business invested heavily in the
mobile web, for good reason. It works cross platform
across iOS and Android and it utilizes most of their
existing infrastructure.
But now with the iOS app explosion, migrating user to an
iOS app is way to increase user value by providing them
a more robust users experience. It’s a low cost and
effective way to increase your installed app based,
before moving to paid user acquisition.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2265547/46-of-Searchers-Now-Use-Mobile-Exclusively-to-Research-Study
Pro Tip: Add conversion tracking tags to app store
download links on your mobile website. This will allow
you to track and measure conversion from mobile web.
46% of Searchers Now Use Mobile Exclusively to
Research.
App Distribution: Free Channels | Your Mobile Website

App Distribution: Free Channels | Social Media
Leverage Social media for app marketing
Social media can be an effective direct response channel
for mobile app marketing.
“71% of People Use Mobile to Access Social Media”
Adobe 2013 Mobile Consumer Survey
Twitter and Facebook have made huge improvements to
the mobile user experience, making it an excellent
platform for mobile app marketers to tap into.

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/infographic-the-twitter-stats-marketers-need-to-know-35375/
500 million users have sent 170 billion tweets.
Pro Tip: Add conversion tracking tags to tweets and
Facebook posts systems to track and measure
conversion from social media.
App Distribution: Free Channels | Social Media

App Distribution: Paid Channels | Media Planning
Developing a media plan and strategy
Once you have exhausted all your free channels, most app
marketers will need to expand their efforts into paid
marketing in order to keep growth on pace. The first step
when starting paid marketing is to evaluate different traffic
sources and develop a media plan.
Most mobile media plans combine these channels:
Mobile Ad Networks
Direct Publishers
Publisher Networks
Demand Side Platforms

App Distribution: Paid Channels | Publishers, Ad Networks, DSPs
Picking the right paid channel
As you develop your media plan you will want to consider the
following when selecting channels:
1. Can you leverage existing channels and relationship that
you have on the PC side to get better service?
2. Are there specific marketing requirements such as geo-
targeting that you need to consider upfront?
3. Do you have a rough estimate of how much you can
spend on a monthly basis?
Access Over 300+ Pubs From TapSense
Traffic Source Examples

App Distribution: Paid Channels | Developing Creative
Developing great mobile advertising
Developing great mobile creative is an iterative process with
many different elements to consider. The next two pages present
four examples of breakthrough creative that drives downloads of
high quality users.

Mobile creative examples
Simple and effective
sweepstakes messaging
is always popular.
Leveraging the NBC logo
partnership also adds a
significant level of
credibility to the ad.
Expedia’s lifestyle
focused creative does
a great job at
differentiating in the
crowded digital travel
retail space.
1. 2.

Mobile creative examples
Viator’s use of well known
landmarks and
destinations makes this
ad easy to understand.
Paris a popular
destination globally.
Flickr can easily
leverage all the
fantastic content they
have access to
through their users,
this ad is quirky and
eye catching. A perfect
fir for the brand.
3. 4.

Measure, Analyze, and Optimize
Total marketing measurement and analysis
Measurement across all channels email, social, paid and
organic is the best way to get a really good
understanding of your LTV (Life Time Value) and ROI
(Return on Investment) from marketing.
Channels Downloads Registrations Purchases
Paid 1,200 462 27
Social 56 12 1
Email 1,560 1,002 234
M-Web 345 276 43
Referrals 670 503 125
Total Measurement Example
There are lots of tools now that provide these features
out of the box. Optimizing to downloads isn’t enough.
Comparing all channels with down the funnel post click
data will allows marketers to get the whole picture.

App downloads come from
various channels such as
Social, Email, Paid…
iTunes is black box. It
doesn’t show where the
downloads come from
TapSense attributes
downloads across channels;
optimizes marketing.
Measure, Analyze, and Optimize: Conversion Tracking

Measure, Analyze, and Optimize
When optimizing campaigns there are two major levers that
marketers have:
1. Channel optimization: This is adjusting your spend
allocation between different publishers in order to achieve
the best Return on Investment (ROI).
2. Creative optimization: This is the process of developing and
testing different creative with different messages, images,
buttons, etc.
A/B testing is a simple way to test changes to your
campaigns against a control to determine which
ones produce positive results.
Optimizing your campaigns

Tips For Success
1. Update your creative and messaging often:
With digital media it’s easy to develop and test lots of creative variety. Creative burn happens faster as you
increase budget and acquire more users.
2. Focus on acquiring users not clicks:
Pay attention it just your CTR is a rookie mistake. Platforms now exist that give deep insights in users quality in
addition to volume.
3. Test a new paid channel every month:
It’s easy to become complacent, but the best app marketers constantly test and try new channels all the time.
As a rule of thumb it’s best to try out one new traffic each month.
4. Focus marketing efforts during peak season:
Retailers are a great example, they aggregate most of the marketing efforts around holidays and key shopping
days like Black Friday. Planning well in advance for these events helps to ensure marketing success.
5. Get help from consultants and agencies
Seeking the help of professionals and consultant who specialize in areas such as mobile creative development,
mobile media planning, or mobile marketing can have a big impact.

www.tapsense.com | info@tapsense.ocm
About TapSense
TapSense: Measure Everything and Prove Your
App Marketing Works
TapSense is a mobile app marketing platform that provides unbiased third party measurement of app downloads across free
and paid channels. Through a single dashboard, app marketers can manage and optimize mobile campaigns across
hundreds of publishers. Over 100 customers have succeeded with TapSense, including: Fab, Redfin, Trulia, Expedia, Viator,
Amazon and eBay.
TapSense was founded in 2011 and is based in San Francisco, California. Investors include top Silicon Valley venture firms,
Ron Conway's SV Angel and Maynard Webb, a board member of Salesforce and Yahoo.

www.tapsense.com | info@tapsense.ocm
About TapSense
About the Author
Gregory Kennedy is Vice President, Marketing at TapSense. He has over a decade of experience in
digital media. A former UI designer and creative director, Gregory is a sought after speaker at mobile
events including Business Insider's Social Commerce Summit, Mobile Monday Silicon Valley, iOS Dev
Camp, and Vodafone Developer Day London. Prior to TapSense, Gregory was the Director of Global
Marketing for InMobi, the largest independent mobile ad network.

TapSense - Best practices for iOS app marketing

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