Everything You Need To Know About A Mobile Marketing Agency

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• Conducting an Effective Competitive Analysis

  December 08, 2020
  As Steve Jobs was known to say “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Certainly not to be taken literally, a tremendous amount of value can be gleaned from embracing the successes (and failures) of your competition. Investing in researching your competitors mobile marketing can pay dividends on multiple levels, both in generating ideas for you to try, as well as those to avoid. So, before you set out to create your next great mobile advertising campaign, here are some expert tips for conducting an effective competitive analysis for app install creatives. Why Do a Competitive Analysis? Thumb-stopping ads that convert aren’t just born, they’re made. Much more goes into them than simply amazing design and copy. A steady diet of testing is a hallmark of any high performance, high scale mobile advertising campaign. If we want our creatives to perform we must be constantly testing them against ourselves, as well as keeping a close eye on what the competitors in our verticals are up to. With the arrival of iOS 14, including its inevitable depreciation of IDFA, our targeting options are bound to become fewer. Add in Google UAC, as well as Facebook Automated App Ads and the reality is abundantly clear that our targeting options moving forward are beginning to diminish and our creatives are becoming more important than ever in your campaign performance.   If we want to get it right we need to test more, and that requires producing a substantial amount of creatives. One piece of creative per campaign won’t cut it. That can require producing up to 20 different types of concepts and executions per campaign in order to find the best audience and messaging. Obviously being able to generate so many fresh and quality ideas is no simple task, especially for smaller creative teams or agencies. One effective method for navigating this challenge is to spy out what others are doing, evaluate their performance, and either adopt or adapt their tactics to suit your needs. Who Should Perform My Audit? The task of auditing of your competitors’ creatives is not as simple as just assigning it to your creative director or designer. The project is one that requires a solid left-brain/right-brain approach. This is because it needs to take into account the evaluation of both creatives and the analytics associated with them. Sometimes this can be the same person, however, it’s important to recognize that not everyone has that skillset, in which case you’ll want to make the project a team effort if the possibility exists. Key Factors In Your Competitive Analysis Ok, so let’s get down to the nitty gritty regarding what you want to be looking at when auditing your competition’s ad creatives, as well as some ideas for what you can glean from them. Messaging Something important to take note of when evaluating a competitor’s ad is not just what it’s saying, but how it’s being said. For example, are they using trust signals in their creatives such as testimonials? Are they pointing to ratings and reviews from the app stores? The value of social proof cannot be understated, have you been overlooking taking advantage of yours? Is there anything about their voice that sounds familiar? Perhaps a tweak to yours is just what you need to stand out from the crowd. Calls to Action Analyzing the CTAs of a competitor’s ads is an excellent way of mapping out your competition’s marketing funnel and seeing how they match up creatives to campaign objectives. For example, a competitor ad with a call to action of “install” is a good indication that this campaign is designed for user acquisition. However, an ad with calls to action of “open” or “use app” most likely are the sign of a remarketing campaign. Now that you see how the competition matches its creatives to objectives, you can better strategize how to layer your own ad messaging. Colors and Backgrounds   With the power to influence emotions and behavior, color is more than just an aesthetic choice when it comes to ad creatives. How is your competition putting it to work in their design elements and backgrounds? Are they sticking to colors strictly from their brand’s style guide?  Are they using ones that are inconsistent with their palette for the sake of standing out? Are they using illustrated backgrounds, gradients, or actual photography? All these are definitely questions worth investigating, but perhaps most of all, are your ads too closely resembling those of your competitors? Text Usage   What role does text play in your competitors’ ads? Are they using text as overlays on top of the images or videos in their ads or is the media left to speak for itself? On another note, although Facebook lifted its 20% limit on the amount of text allowed on ads we continue to find ads perform better by sticking to it. Characters Usage   Captions and headlines are an important component of app install campaign creatives. They provide both context and are also an invaluable element in encouraging your audience to engage with it. Both typically adhere to certain limitations in terms of characters that you can use when crafting them that vary by platform. With Google the character limit is 90 characters for captions and 30 characters for ad headlines. For Facebook the limit is 90 for captions and 25 for headlines. However, whereas the 90 character limit for Google marks the maximum you can use, for Facebook it simply marks the number before the remainder of your caption is truncated with the familiar “see more...” prompt. With that in mind, how is your competition utilizing these character limits especially when it comes to Facebook? Also, not to be overlooked are emojis, and how your competitors are utilizing them. Logos   The use of logos in a video ad can be tricky. Do you put it in the first few seconds where they have the best chance of being seen at the risk of not grabbing your audience’s attention, or do you tack it on to the end where it runs the risk of never being seen? This is a good example of where you can look to the competition and see what they’re doing. Additionally, when it comes to static images, where are they being placed on the image and how prominent are they appearing? Buttons  Analyzing your competition’s use of buttons is really helpful for generating ideas for “swipe up” Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram stories. The key item to take note of is in the measures your competition is taking to make these buttons look and feel more native to the app and less commercial. Be it in the way the text is decorated, the message is worded, and more. Start & End Cards With Facebook carousel ads you can elect to either instruct Facebook to display your carousel in a set order, or to show the images in order based on best performance. Do you compose your carousel with images that only work in a certain sequence, or do you populate it with frames that are able to each stand on its own no matter where in the order it appears? Looking at what your competition is doing is a good way to get an idea of what works. While it isn’t possible to know exactly for sure what they’ve chosen, you can tell by the flow of the cards in the carousel whether they’ve set the order themselves or turned the reins over to Facebook. Special Offers Much like analyzing your competitors’ CTAs, investigating special offers as part of their ad creatives is also a good tip-off as to how they view their marketing funnel and KPIs. How are they incentivizing new users to download the app? What’s in it for an existing user who has gone dormant to come back and re engage? Additionally, is a special offer something you should be offering if you aren’t already, and if not, could it explain why your performance is lagging theirs? Use of Movement  How is your competition using motion pictures? Are they opting for short animated GIFs over video files? What is the average running time length of the video they are using? What aspect ratio are they presenting their creatives? Are gravitating towards a single type such as 1:1, portrait, or landscape? Overall, are they using more static or video, is there anything that stands out about their creative mix? Where Competitors Are Advertising Knowing where your competition is advertising is another valuable piece of information to have when it comes to conducting your audit. The benefit you can derive from this investigation is two-fold. First, as we know, social platforms can differ with respect to both the demographics of its users, as well as the experience one expects to derive there. Therefore, looking into how your competition tailors its message to each respective platform can be helpful in how you do the same. Furthermore, through the process of seeking out all the places your competitors are advertising you may end up uncovering where users are hanging out that you might not otherwise have thought to check. Performance Data As we mentioned above performing a competitive analysis is equal parts creative and analytic assessment. As such, there is also some performance data you should be gathering about your competitors’ ads as part of your audit. Some of these metrics to be looked at include impressions, click-thru-rate (CTR), and clicks. Only by looking into these numbers can we get a better look into an ad’s actual efficacy. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases gaining access into these insights requires a subscription to enterprise-level tools, something we’ll discuss in the next section. Additionally, the duration of how long an ad has been running (or was running) is an excellent indicator for which creatives your competition has tested and deemed to be effective. Obviously, the longer the duration the ad has been running, the more likely working well since the advertiser has continued running the campaign. Hunting For & Gathering Your Data From imagery to engagement pretty much anything you want to find about your competitors’ ads is available online. Some of this information can be collected using free resources, while others require premium tools. Free Ad Intelligence Tools As the leading platform for social ads it’s no surprise that Facebook Ads Library is an absolute must-use resource for conducting your competitive audit. Best of all, it’s free. In short, the Facebook Ads Library can show you any ad, either currently active or going back to May of 2018, for any Facebook page. Therefore, pretty much any qualitative information you are looking for about your competitors’ ads is all at your fingertips. Furthermore, with Facebook Ads Library you can even see how much your competitors’ Facebook pages have spent on advertisements, and even the duration of time they’ve been running. It truly is a treasure trove of data.   Unfortunately, one area it does lack in is being able to access conversion and other performance data, which require premium 3rd party tools in order to ascertain. However, as far as being able to inspect everything about the actual creative of your competition’s ads, Facebook Ads Library has everything you need.   Good to Know: Twitter’s Transparency Center is a great resource where you can learn about Twitter Ads that are either currently running or have run on their platform. Paid Ad Intelligence Tools While free tools like Facebook Ads Library and Twitter Transparency Center can provide you all you need when it comes to evaluating the qualitative aspects of your competitions’ ad creatives, they do fall short with respect to the data gathering. Therefore, if you want to dive deeper and acquire more granular details of every piece of creative content captured, such as device type, impressions, which publishers spend the most on advertising campaigns each week, and more, you will need the help of paid ad intelligence tools. These powerful resources tend to be expensive depending on your plan, and require a high level of experience to get the most out of them. As you’d expect from an award-winning mobile marketing agency such as Moburst, we’re experts in all they can do (including some proprietary tactics and solutions of our own).  Documenting Your Findings & Bringing It All Together Once you’ve completed the gathering of your information, be it qualitative or quantitative, it’s time to complete your analysis. A key element in this process is to construct a tracker document. This way you’ll be able to view screenshots of all the elements discussed earlier along with the insights about the ads your competitors are running. By doing so you are now in the perfect position to take note of what you are doing both differently and the same. Finally, with all these new found insights and ideas generated by your audit you should be fully stocked with plenty of new ideas to test yourself and see how well they perform after you put your own unique spin on them. Key Takeaways At Moburst, we are no strangers to conducting analysis on the creatives of our clients’ competitors. In our opinion this is one of, if not the most, important steps in generating higher performing assets for user acquisition ads. A properly conducted audit can be effective in developing original new concepts, uncovering fresh new approaches, as well as provide a significant source of financial and time savings. Paid app install campaigns are the most widely utilized method available to marketers looking for acquiring users for their app. As a result the chances are very likely that your competitors have already spent countless hours and budget creating assets, running campaigns, and testing. In other words, they’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for you, providing an extensive supply of concepts for you to work with. Now all that’s left to do is sift through them, identify the best performing ads, and you’ll be left with a ton of tested ideas that you can leverage for your own campaigns. When it comes to mobile app install creatives, staying on top of what others in your vertical are doing can go a long way in your success. Conducting an effective competitive analysis requires the ability to evaluate both creatives and analytics, so make sure whoever the person (or persons) you choose is up to the task.Interactive Ads:  are they using poll ads, playable ads, catalog ads.  In short, never stop learning from your competition. Take note of their behavior and leverage their experiences, both their successes and failures to your advantage.
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• Working With A Mobile User Acquisition Agency

  December 04, 2020
  Originally published on 08.08.19 and updated on 12.04.20. It’s one of the most frustrating feelings for app developers: you’ve created the most amazing product, yet barely anyone is using it. Perhaps it’s time for some expert help? Full-service mobile user acquisition agencies are the gold standard when it comes to mobile marketing. They’ll help you with everything from crafting your strategy to achieving your desired metrics. Usually, they have their own proprietary technology that they’ve developed over time to drive results. The best mobile user acquisition agency will increase your user base quickly and dramatically, while raising brand awareness. They’ll help you segment your audience for a highly targeted approach with the right message at the right time. The more relevant the audience, the better they’ll engage with your app. A win win. As a mobile user acquisition agency ourselves, we’ve worked with some of the best app developers who are passionate about what they do, which in turn has led them to unparalleled app success. So, we think we know a thing or two, and we’d like to share it with you. Throughout this article we’ll look at the role of the mobile user acquisition agency, the difference between mobile app user acquisition and web user acquisition, and the benefits of using an agency instead of going at it alone. Mobile User Acquisition: Challenges Faced The two biggest app stores, Apple App Store and Google Play, have nearly 5.5 million apps between them. Standing out from the crowd in such a saturated, highly competitive marketplace is difficult. This is before you have to deal with conversion difficulties once you do have the user’s (short-lived) attention. The staggering amount of competition has other implications, too. For example, if an app in a category is featured by Apple, or is on a top 10 list, it makes it a whole lot harder to compete with. Wouldn’t it be great if users organically found your app, installed it, and became lifetime fans? Unfortunately, this is very rarely the case. User acquisition has become a key battleground for app developers. A full service UA agency can help you with all parts of the acquisition funnel by taking a holistic approach. This means that the UA team works with the ASO team, who work with the Creative team, and so on. Considering that all of these elements interplay to acquire the most users, this is an invaluable asset. What are some tricks a mobile user acquisition agency can help you with? ASO: App Store Optimization covers a range of things including keyword strategies, localization and creative assets - it’s all about generating the most organic installs. It’s crucial to app marketing since the majority of users discover new apps in the app stores. Why will your app bring users more value than your competitors? Show them. The better the first impression the higher the acquisition rate. Reviews: everyone knows good reviews are positive for brands, but not everyone knows that they impact your app ranking in the app store algorithms. Every time you receive a positive review, the algorithms bump your ranking higher than a competitor. A higher app ranking = higher visibility. Higher visibility = higher acquisition. It’s all the insider knowledge like this that makes agencies worth the bucks (especially since the algorithms are dynamic and you need to keep on top of them to know the tricks). ASA: Apple Search Ads are a way of bidding on keywords to make your app the first result in Apple’s App Store search listings, even above the number one organic spot. There’s no better way to stand out and reach the most users than gaining the top spot. However, ASA is a complex world and mastering it requires expert knowledge. The key is to be truly successful without wasting money, which an agency is best equipped to help with. The wrong tactics can do more damage than good. Expert knowledge: let’s face it, you probably don’t have the same depth of user acquisition knowledge as a UA agency. They dedicate their everyday lives to it. And since you likely won’t have the budget to outspend the big guns either, you’re going to have to outsmart them to attract new users. So you need an agency, right? Dynamic awareness: the mobile marketing landscape changes constantly, so working with an agency who’s top priority is keeping up with and leveraging these updates means you can be confident you’re always maximizing your potential. An agency can help you make the most out of every opportunity. Changing preferences: how you reach your audience is important. Do you just use Facebook? Or have you migrated to Instagram and Snapchat to reach your users and bump up your installs? Each channel requires different creative strategies that an agency can help with. How is User Acquisition Measured? “What can’t be measured, can’t be managed”. Thankfully, user acquisition can be accurately measured using some of the following success metrics: Comparison Glossary Metric Mobile Web Cost Per Acquisition ✅ ✅ Cost Per Install (installs can also come from web, but this is used as a metric for mobile not web) ✅ ❌ Downloads ✅ ❌ Retention ✅ ✅ Engagement ✅ ✅ Reviews ✅ ✅ Revenues ✅ ✅ Churn Rate ✅ ❌ Daily Active Users (DAU) or Monthly Active Users (MAU) ✅ ❌ Lifetime Value (LTV) ✅ ✅ ROI ✅ ✅ Conversion Rate ✅ ✅ (more…)
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• Marketing Strategy Tips for the Holiday Season After COVID

  November 16, 2020
  ‘Tis the season to get gifting, Holiday Season is in full swing. Stretching all the way from Black Friday at the end of November to the post-Christmas sales that kick off the new year, this season of shopping is a consumerist paradise for individuals and brands alike. In-store shopping throughout the Holiday shopping season has a stereotype. And it’s not exactly a positive one. Think huge crowds, endless queuing, elbowing and snatching. People want the sale bargains or Christmas gifts and they’re willing to do anything to get them - even camp outside the storefront overnight if necessary.  This isn’t exactly social distancing friendly, is it? However, with global economic activity at its peak during this period, it can’t just be sidelined.  Naturally, a shift towards mobile is inevitable, and not just in response to COVID-19. A trend in recent years has seen Black Friday sales shift more towards online than traditional in-store shopping, so the current restrictions in place worldwide are only going to exacerbate an already present migration. With huge stores such as Walmart and Target closing their doors on Black Friday for the first time ever, there’s only one place left to turn: online.  And where took up a hefty chunk of online purchases made on last year’s Black Friday weekend? Nearly 40% of Black Friday orders were placed via smartphone in 2019. Given the circumstances, it’s set to be an even higher number for mobile this year.  Perfecting Your Mobile Marketing Strategy for the Holiday Season In the run up to the Holiday Season at the best of times, it’s crucial that you get your marketing strategy spot on. Now, amid a global pandemic, where many companies are scrambling to make up for lost profits and minimal media spending earlier in the year, it’s even more important to tailor your strategy to bring the most installs to your app. Endless online promotions send a staggering number of users to the app stores to get in on the Holiday shopping action.  Q4 sales are always through the roof, so advertisers always dedicate a lot of budget to it. This year, with the new economic landscape COVID has provided us with, you need to think about how to strategize most effectively in a season dramatically different to its predecessors.  The App Marketing Landscape in Today’s Economy With the early onslaught of the pandemic, nobody knew the direction the economy was heading in, but back in Q2 and Q3 it seemed grave. Advertisers panicked and many media budgets were cut, particularly through March - September. In fact, Q2 and Q3 ad spending was nearly zero.  Now, with the economic climate having turned out better than advertisers initially anticipated, you may have found yourself left with a much larger budget than normal for Q4, to make up for the fact that your spending was so low in previous months. All of that leftover budget needs spending before the end of the year (or your CFO might not be so generous with the numbers next year). In many cases, budgets are nearly double what they would have been in previous Q4s, essentially making this year’s the strongest ever.  We predict that in these circumstances, the billions of dollars of sales generated by Holiday shopping won’t take too much of a hit. Throw into the mix the increased use of smartphones (what else are we meant to do with restrictions and lockdowns around the globe?) and that Cyber Monday became the first day ever when consumers spent more than $3 billion on their smartphones, we think it’s safe to say this number is set to stay on track. Or even out-perform previous years.  After all, if you can’t head to a shop to do your Christmas gift shopping at a time when people need cheering up most, where will you head? Online. And there’s nothing more convenient while you’re cosied up on the sofa with a glass of wine, browsing a gift section or two, than mobile apps.  To back this up, it’s been proven that COVID-19 didn’t dull the shine for mobile spending. Mobile spending actually remained the fastest growing channel throughout the worst affected months, with 94% of marketers considering mobile ads effective.  So, after all the worry between March and September, it seems that the current economic climate isn’t actually a disaster for the app marketing landscape after all. Let’s delve into how to deal with the strongest Q4 yet in the world of mobile marketing. Diversify your Ad Networks and Boost your ASO We now know that there are very high budgets to play with in this year’s Holiday Season. From that we can assume that some aggressive competition and hugely expensive ad spending will be occurring. What can you do to avoid excessive spending at this time? Firstly, it’s good to know that the most common mobile ad networks are Facebook and Google. Due to the much higher search traffic, spending will be much more expensive (and more competitive) on these platforms. Other platforms will have much lower download costs, so we recommend trying to work on a wider range of networks, e.g. Snapchat, Pinterest, Quora and TikTok. Our top tip: don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Diversify yourself and work with various ad networks for optimal results without excessive spending.  Secondly, pay attention to user intent during this period. Shops have much more search traffic and conversions during this time because there are many more high-intent users who are actually making purchases. Where do these users come from? The App Store and Google Play Store, where users are driven to via huge Holiday shopping deals. Consequently, it’s wise to heavily push your app optimization (ASO) on both stores.  How Does Seasonal Optimization Benefit Apps for The Holidays? At Moburst in October - December, we encourage our clients to implement new screenshots and icons in the app stores to match the Holiday spirit. This could be anything from snowflakes to Santa Claus or a Christmas tree. This shows your app is up-to-date and relevant, thus making it more appealing for users to download. It’s best practice on both the ASO and Creative fronts. What’s more, this period can also benefit heavily from updated metadata. Adding newer, more relevant keywords to your metadata, including words such as ‘discounts’, ‘sale’, ‘deals’, 'gifts', or even a term as explicit as ‘Holiday Shopping’ itself, can help you optimize your app and rank for these keywords at a time with tough competition. These keywords often increase in search volume during this time since they’re precisely what users are looking for, so if your app ranks for them you’re increasing the likelihood of higher traffic to your app page. We also know that time-sensitive deals resonate well with getting users to convert. Nobody likes the feeling of missing out (we’ve all heard the term FOMO for a reason, right?) and so having the keyword phrases ‘Christmas Sales’ or ‘January Sales’ present a sense of urgency that users need to download your app now, see the deals or miss out. In the UK, you could refer to the 'Boxing Day Sales'. It’s commonly known that urgency generates more sales, so it’s worth taking this on board for your mobile marketing strategy, too.  Here at Moburst, we also like to look at different search trends since user intent is different throughout the Holiday season compared to the rest of the year. At this time, it’s focused on gift giving. This is originally driven by Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, then closed with New Year Sales; they’re what drive more users to the app stores.  Shining A Spotlight on Performance Players Performance players, e.g. gaming apps, saw amazing results throughout the pandemic. The cost to acquire users over this period was significantly better than usual since most companies in other categories weren’t spending a lot between March - September, meaning there was far less competition.  Take travel apps for example, such as Kayak or Expedia. They had no need to try to acquire new users since travel had mostly halted, and so they could stop spending money on media. Therefore, for everyone, the cost of media declined. On the flip side, performance focused apps spent more than travel apps because it was prime time to take advantage of the decreased costs.  The Holiday Season Impact on Performance Players It’s important that your media budget is spent in full before the end of the year, so that you’ll be granted access to the same budget, or higher, the following year. This is another reason why at the end of every year, with media budgets being used up, the cost of advertising is always higher.  However, now is a time when performance players usually scale down their budgets. Performance players don’t depend on the same consumer frenzy that is driving everyone else to scale up, producing high costs on ad networks. With the added factor of COVID leading to many companies spending even more this Q4, the following few months are set to be even more expensive than usual. Which means even less incentive for performance players to keep their media spend high. The above applies unless a performance company has a very specific deal or promotion during the holiday season. Usually, though, their offerings aren’t seasonal and their profits don’t depend on holiday sales to the same extent as e-commerce apps, for example. E-commerce apps will be trying to sell more products at a time when everyone is buying gifts, and so will take a more aggressive approach to Black Friday and Cyber Monday media buying. They’ll definitely scale up to capture as much of the user intent (which at this time is gift buying) as possible. As a result, we’ll probably see another surge in the cost per impression, cost per click and cost per media, which generally happens in Q4 anyway. It therefore makes little sense for our performance clients to keep their spending up. The same user can cost $5 in December vs. $2 in January. In a nutshell, you don’t spend during the most expensive time of the year unless you have to. Performance companies don’t have to, so they generally don’t.  Remember the Long Game: Brand Awareness and Engagement Sure, the Holiday season and its many sales brings with it increased sales for your product(s). But the real winner is the customer, who’s come away with a bargain while you’ve reduced your profits. That’s why the aim of the game with seasonal sales is really brand awareness. It’s imperative that your marketing strategy reflects the long game, keeping all of your efforts true to your brand. It’s not a time to throw your brand image out of the window in the name of big discounts. In order to take this holistic approach, you need to ensure the user journey your app offers is at its A game. There’s no room for clumsy user experience here, that can see users drop off like flies. It’s all well and good acquiring new users, but what’s the point if you can’t retain them? Engagement is just as important as acquisition. Perfect your user journey, and the users are far more likely to stick around with your app even after the season of giving. We believe this holds even more significance this year when the option for in-store shopping is reduced. There’ll be plenty of people who usually prefer to shop in-store, but can’t or won’t right now. For you and your app that’s great news, but only if your user journey is on point enough to get them to convert.  This means testing is key. The more you test your app, the more you can weed out any friction in the funnel to conversion or anything that would deter users from continuously using your app.  What’s more, many Holiday shoppers move between various devices before making a purchase, meaning your cross-device tracking is essential. Our tips include linking web and mobile app shopping carts, focusing on omni-channel marketing and using short emails as reminders of what’s waiting for customers in their cart.  Retailers that targeted mobile shopping saw the biggest Black Friday conversion wins in 2019, with mobile driving the most traffic. So it seems that focusing on the above is the way to go.  Key Takeaways All in all, COVID-19 may have turned the year upside down in many ways, but the app marketing landscape in the Holiday Season seems to have come out on top.  To sum it all up, you should make sure you’re diversifying your ad networks, considering platforms such as Snapchat and Tiktok as opposed to just sticking to Facebook and Google. You should also be boosting your ASO, particularly with seasonal optimization in your app icon or metadata to show your app is updated and relevant.  Beyond that, keep in mind what’s going to benefit your app in the long run, and it’s not a bunch of one-time users making the most of a bargain. It’s all about luring the users in with a deal and then showcasing what a great app you have in order to keep them around as engaged users. In order to achieve this, you’re going to want to perfect the user-journey and tracking. 
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• How to Get the Most Out of Twitter Ads

  November 03, 2020
  They may not be as talked about as Facebook or Google, but if you’re a marketer running mobile app install campaigns, you may want to give Twitter Ads a second look.  When used correctly they can generate quick wins that many marketers are missing out on, in addition to boasting some compelling advantages to the alternatives, such as other major ad networks.  Before we get started though, it’s important to note that Twitter Ads are not necessarily “vertical agnostic” when it comes to their efficacy, and not every industry is the right fit.  Although, for apps in the shopping, finance, and news spaces (not to mention politics) they are seemingly almost tailor-made. Campaign Strategy & Optimization Name Your Price Per Install One interesting feature that Twitter Ads offers is the ability to learn about your audience at no cost to you when using a CPI model.  This is because unlike some of the other social platforms you can choose to be charged exclusively for app installs generated by your campaign right out of the gate.  This differs from other platforms that make you pay for impressions or clicks while its algorithm runs its “learning phase.”  In fact, Facebook doesn’t even offer installs as an option to be charged by in the beginning and won’t (for lack of a better word) unlock it until you’ve reached its algorithm’s threshold of data needed to determine who are the best people to show your ad. Furthermore, platforms such as Google (UAC campaigns) even suggest locking yourself in for a period of 7 to 10 days and hold off from doing any optimization when it comes to your budget while it conducts its learning phase. This contrasts with Twitter which allows you to test out their system for free.  Well, not exactly for free, but allow us to explain.   Rather than pay for the actions you aren’t interested in and will eat through your budgets, such as impressions and clicks, Twitter lets you save your money by only paying for those you do, in other words, app installs.  From our experience, it is the exception to all the other major social platforms in providing this option immediately from your campaign’s launch. This includes Apple Search Ads as well, where no matter how much time and money you invest you’ll never be able to achieve this payment method, and will always be paying for taps. Something to Consider:  For startups, the defacto “free trial” Twitter Ads offers could be a helpful resource both when it comes to budgeting for user acquisition, as well as for calculating customer LTV. An App Install Campaign Cure-All?  Well, Not So Fast Now, to be clear, we are not suggesting that the learning phase isn’t an essential element of your campaign. In reality, it’s a near impossibility to achieve any success with it at scale without allowing a platform’s algorithm to do its thing.  Additionally, if you don’t find your app install “sweet spot” when it comes to the bid, you can conceivably be running a campaign indefinitely that generates nothing.  While it’s true that you won’t incur any financial expense in doing so, the amount you’ll be spending on your time, an ever depreciating asset, is certainly an expense worth considering.  Worst Case Scenario, Go Back to School As mentioned earlier, if you have a lesser known brand or perhaps one that is not necessarily in one of the more popular verticals that appeal to Twitter, this “fire away in the dark hoping to hit something” approach may result in you spinning your wheels and wasting time.  If that’s the case and you find yourself literally going nowhere, simply switch over to a different model, such optimized action bidding (OAB), where you pay for clicks but bid for installs.  That way you’ll gain more reach and exposure, while still maintaining a lower amount you’ll pay on a cost per install.  In short, you’re back to paying for the algorithm’s learning phase, much like you would be doing on any other platform.  However, once you feel confident that you’ve found the right CPI benchmark, now you can revert to the charging/payment model again, and resume paying only for what you want. More Targeting Flexibility Every social platform offers a certain set of capabilities when it comes to reaching your intended audience including via interest, or lookalike audience.  While Twitter has these as options too, it also offers unique ways to reach the right people not exactly available on other networks.  Some of these unique targeting capabilities include by keyword targeting, by interest targeting, by handles, and even by current events.  In short, when it comes to targeting, Twitter is really a hybrid offering everything the others can do, plus a few other tricks of its own. Keywords One of the more compelling features of Twitter targeting is its ability to do so by keyword, something that is in fact not even an option when running a universal app campaign (UAC) on Google.  The same also applies to Facebook where search intent isn’t taken into account, thereby taking the ability to target by keyword off the table, and instead puts the impetus back on either core lookalike audiences or interests.  Obviously, with Apple Search Ads you can target by keyword, however, you are limited to either exact or broad match.  With Twitter, these constraints don’t always apply, meaning you can reach people based on keywords in their search queries, recent tweets, and even tweets they have recently engaged with.  In fact, something very special happens with Twitter when you add your list of keywords and hashtags.  Almost magically, its algorithm interprets its users’ search intent for you!  While some marketers may say this is a drawback because it prevents you from being able to gain more keyword granularity and see the exact effect for each keyword, the tradeoff is an easier and more manageable process.  This can be especially beneficial if you’re an organization without the resources to devote to continual optimization and report analysis. Interests Just like Facebook, when it comes to targeting by interest, Twitter allows you to do the same.  However, unlike Facebook, Twitter is much more flexible in allowing you to leverage it to create an “audience persona.”  Essentially, it provides you a way to create a de facto lookalike audience without needing a mass core audience list to base it on.   With other social platforms, deciding on who you want to reach means designating core interests to target.  This allows you to get very specific, however, can also be somewhat “hit or miss.”  Similarly, Twitter allows you to target by specific interests, however, it also provides a robust list of categories to choose from, followed by a plethora of subcategories to drill down into, enabling you to get more precise in the type of mind behind the eyeballs seeing your ad.  So, rather than treating interests as mere qualifiers that groups of people fall into, you can use them as attributes that combine to define a larger and more delineated audience. Pro Tip:  Create different ad sets for these different user personas.  You know who you’re after - now go get ‘em!  Handles Another powerful feature Twitter Ads offers marketers is that unlike other social advertising platforms, you can directly target followers of your competitors.  This contrasts to Facebook, for example, that when using its native UI, only allows you to target either followers of your own page, or those that resemble those who do (or who have previously interacted with one of your other assets linked to Facebook).  However, with Twitter, you can literally target by any handle that you wish.  This affords marketers an amazing opportunity to achieve wide ranging brand awareness with their mobile app install campaigns, especially for those without a large Twitter following.  Whether it’s a direct competitor of yours or an account whose followers would be likely users of your app, simply put, followers of these handles are low hanging fruit that is ripe for the taking.   Important to Remember:  Make sure any handle you’re targeting is one with a legitimate following, otherwise you may blow through your budget marketing to bots! Real Time Events & Conversations Because Twitter is different from other social platforms in the way its users engage with it, it also presents another unique opportunity when it comes to targeting your audience.  This is because with its fast-paced back-and-forth sharing of thoughts and ideas Twitter is truly a hotbed of discussion.  Consequently, this presents an excellent opportunity to reach people based on things happening in real-time and take advantage of the buzz.  This is especially true for example with political and sporting events where user participation in the discourse is active.  As a result, Twitter is constantly updating, identifying those of its users who are talking about these hot items, and thus providing marketers with the chance to compose special lists to reach out to in real-time if the event gets big enough on Twitter.  This differs from a platform like Facebook where you may be trying to reach someone with your ad who chimed in on the Super Bowl this year, but instead it finds its way to someone who did so in last year’s big game.  Additionally, Twitter also provides marketers with a means for getting in front of users whose interest in a topic is based on recency.  By leveraging its lookback feature, marketers can single out users who have actively sought out the topic of conversation within the past 28 days.  This can be another fantastic way to take advantage of opportunities such as in the weeks leading up to holidays while they are fresh on users’ minds. Pro Tip:  While Twitter can pretty much do anything every other social platform can offer and more when it comes to targeting, limit each campaign to only one targeting option in order to avoid creating an overlap.  A Creative Way to Remarket The internet is filled with articles providing pretty much the same exact message when it comes to your Twitter Ads’ creative.  These typically offer the familiar guidance to make sure your campaigns are engaging, to use high-quality visuals with contrasting colors, and if possible to make your ads fun.  For that reason, we will not discuss that here. Plus Twitter makes it easy to size them correctly with its Twitter card library.  However, something that is worth taking a deeper look into is how Twitter’s unique user behavior presents some interesting ways in which to structure your creatives. On platforms like Facebook, for example, posts that get engagement almost always must include some sort of media such as an image, GIF, video, or even a combination of them all in the form of a carousel.  Text with no accompanying visual very seldom has any chance of garnering significant engagement or going viral.  However, because Twitter is engaged with as a news service, as much as (if not more than) a social network, users are very likely to pay attention to content that does not include media. This creates an interesting use case for marketers to leverage Twitter to develop an effective funnel for their audience simply by taking a less-is-more approach.  So what does that look like?  The answer, a tweet with no media and just text.  As we just mentioned, Twitter is unique from other social platforms when it comes to the type of experience users expect to get from it, which includes tweets with no visuals.  A promoted tweet of this style has the potential to be perceived more as organic content rather than an advertisement, and thus draw engagement.  Plus, thanks to the retweet button, content on Twitter is incredibly easy to share and thus increases your brand awareness.   Combining those two factors creates an amazing beginning to your marketing funnel.  First, you achieve brand awareness with easily engageable and shareable content that most importantly does not look like an ad.  Then later you can go back and remarket to that audience who interacted with the tweet using a traditional creative featuring a visual asset that can be easily constructed from one of Twitter’s app install ad cards. Think Outside the Box:  Use emojis, ASCII-art, cool fonts, or even upside-down text to give your promoted tweet-with-no-media some personality and help it stand out from the crowd. Twitter Art using ASCII character codes Key Takeaways Clearly, Twitter is an underappreciated avenue for acquiring mobile users that can be a great source of wins for marketers.  It not only provides excellent opportunities to reach new users but when leveraged correctly, one with seemingly less competition than the others.   Unlike other social platforms, Twitter allows advertisers to set up their app install campaigns to be charged only when their ad results in an install at a specified price, thus allowing you to conduct your learning phase without cost.  Take advantage of this “free look” to experiment and determine your ideal cost-per-install.  If you find you’re not able to locate that “sweet spot” and are just wasting your time, simply switch over to the OAB method, pay to allow the algorithm to do its learning, and then switch back to the payment method and leverage your new-found data.When it comes to targeting Twitter really is the best of all worlds, offering the same features as the other platforms, as well as its own unique ones including keyword, handles, interests, and time-sensitive events.Not only does Twitter allow you to target by keyword, but its algorithm will even interpret user search intent for you.Build specific “user personas” for your audiences by choosing interest categories and then drilling down into them to select even more.  Treat them as attributes that combine to define your ideal users, rather than just listing off what their potential interests are.Because Twitter gives you so many topics to work with, it really is a playground for growth hackers when it comes to experimenting, learning more about your ideal users, tweaking, and scaling. Targeting by handles is a great way to build a lookalike audience without having a core audience to base it off.  However, just make sure you’re targeting accounts with actual people following them and not bots.Make the trend your friend, by leveraging the option of targeting those engaging in hot topics of conversation on Twitter both in real-time, or who have expressed an interest in them over the past 28 days.Take the long view when it comes to creatives on Twitter.  Start by using tweets with no media to spark engagement with your brand, then go back and retarget those users later for the actual app install. Many marketers fall guilty of bailing on their Twitter Ads campaigns too soon due to not seeing the desired results fast enough.  So be patient, be diligent, keep our best practices in mind, and you’ll be reaping the benefits of adding Twitter Ads to your mobile marketing strategy no time.
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