There are 6.4 billion smartphones worldwide. People spend an average of 4.2 hours on mobile apps, and people in the US also spend 5 hours on their mobile app. This remarkable period of time is used for a wide range of activities, from; searching solutions to small daily problems to getting answers to simple questions. This provides app creators an enormous opportunity to reach their users and grow their apps through mobile app advertising platforms.
When you build a mobile app and start your marketing journey. using the right tools and positioning your app accordingly becomes critical. To make the most of your marketing efforts, certain marketing tools are required to reach your users and gain traction, and ad platforms are extremely important.
According to Technopedia, an ad platform is an “intermediary between mobile publishers and advertisers.” These platforms allow you to publish text, graphic, or animated advertisements on mobile platforms, websites, and applications. If you follow a good strategy and apply all the requirements correctly, ad platforms provide an opportunity for you to target your ads, while tracking and gaining users.
How to Choose the Right Mobile Ad Platform?
When you’re choosing the right platform for your mobile app, the field and the category of your app should be considered first. For example, an ad for a business-related app may not perform well in a social media channel like Instagram. Instead, you need to define;
- What are your advertising goals?
- Who’s your target audience and which platforms do they often use?
- Also, what’s the solution and the value you’re providing for them?
The answers to these questions will guide you toward the elements that can be used in your app creatives, content, platform choice, and branding.
Let’s discover the marketing platforms you can use for mobile apps.
Apple Search Ads (ASA)
ASA is the tool of Apple that helps people discover mobile apps when they search on the App Store. This channel works with the keywords and helps you to reach your users, who’re interested in the solution your app provides. Marketers can bid on specific keywords on ASA, and reach people who’re interested in the apps related to these keywords.
This is a powerful acquisition tool because impressions are exposed to users who’re searching for functions your app has to offer. This means that if you can position your app in the right keywords and your app delivers, you can reach good conversion numbers quite easily. According to Apple, 65% of downloads on the App Store happen after a search and 70% of users on the App Store find the app they need via the search function.
Google Ads
Another advertisement platform that can be used for mobile apps is Google Ads. The platform reaches a network of more than 2 million websites and applications alone, also 70% of mobile searches result in a customer taking action within an hour, which makes Google Ads another beneficial platform you can consider for your ads.
This platform is a great fit for your advertising efforts, if the target of your app can be considered as a mass community, Google Ads creates a great opportunity to reach a large number of users. But if the mobile app you’re advertising has more of a niche type of category, you may consider other platforms first before you start with Google Ads.
Social Media Channels
Social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Tik Tok, are great platforms to identify, understand and reach the target users of your mobile app. Each social media channel provides an opportunity for different apps and can help you to reach different users, and communities that might find your app useful and beneficial.
According to this CMO survey, brands will almost double their budget allocated to social media advertising by 2023. You can use social media platforms for different purposes such as; brand awareness, increasing social media following, gaining more installs or subscribers for your mobile app and so on. As a social marketing type, influencer marketing is also another option for showcasing your mobile app by an influencer with a dedicated following, in the category of your mobile app.
- Think about your target, how do they identify themselves?
- Which social media platforms can you find them, and which one do they spend most of their time on?
- How does your app help them solve their problem?
These questions will give you the information you’re looking for. After finding the right social media channel to showcase your ads, you can start your advertisements as well as use different traction and management tools for each.
Affiliate Marketing
According to Investopedia, Affiliate Marketing is an advertising model in which a company compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. App creators can start a partnership with bloggers, influencers, businesses or websites and showcase their mobile app by this way. Partners earn per product they sell, or this metric also can be calculated with clicks.
E-mail Marketing
Email Marketing is simply the act of sending commercial messages to a group of people, and is one of the oldest marketing platforms we’ve been using for a long time. The first email was sent in 1971. Through the years, the platform has seen many developments and in the early 2000’s, it has become the email we know, and this marketing platform never goes out of style ever since.
Email campaigns we receive to our inbox are a result of automated Email Software such as; mail segmentation, mailing lists, newsletters, and personalized campaigns. If you’re adding this channel to your marketing strategy, consider your main purpose by sending emails. The most common ways you can use email marketing is to build trust, loyalty or brand awareness. You can also educate your audience on the value of your brand or keep them engaged in between the upgrades of your product.
It’s understandable that the art of choosing the right marketing platform for your mobile app, showcasing a high quality ad with eye-catching content and visual creation is not an easy feat; it takes a lot of time, effort, expertise and experience. However, your app will be discovered by your users, if you can take these actions in the right way. When you’re choosing a marketing platform for your app, you should also make sure you can do the rest and measure your ads by analytic services and Mobile Measurement Platforms (MMPs).
