App Promotion with AdWords & DoubleClick

Do you have an app that’s important to your business but are struggling to know where to start with the promotion of this crucial revenue stream? Then why not turn to digital channels. Through a host of new features across the AdWords and DoubleClick stack, reaching, and crucially re-engaging potential customers online is just getting easier and easier.

We check our phone on average 150 times a day1 and the average time spent on a phone per day is 177 minutes2, so it’s hardly surprising that having your brand front and centre on these devices is becoming more and more important to advertisers. But there are a lot of apps out there (over 3 million mobile apps currently available for download!3) and one in four apps downloaded is never even used4. So the question is, how to get users downloading, and subsequently re-using, yours?

The most important thing is to make your app discoverable everywhere, be it searching Google, on the Play Store, browsing the web, using other apps or watching videos on mobile devices. It’s also important not to forget that once the app has been downloaded we also need to be able to track usage and promote re-engagement with seemingly lost users.

Promote with Paid Search

1 in 4 users discover an app through Search.Universal App Campaigns in AdWords are a great vehicle through which to reach your customers. The two primary places to run Search campaigns are on Google Search itself or within the Play Store (see examples below). Both can be extremely effective; used as part of a Universal App Campaign for Tesco for example, the cost-per install for the groceries app dropped 38% and we drove 5x more total installs. See the full case study here.

Mobile-specific Display Creatives

Display is also a fantastic way to reach new audiences and raise awareness about your app. When running an app install campaign, why not take the opportunity to invest in some high quality rich media mobile creatives?

Image source: https://www.richmediagallery.com/detailPage?id=11823

There are so many amazing new creative features available for mobile phones and tablets which are bound to increase engagement with your offering. Why not investigate scratchy surface (like the above example), shake, tilt and touch responsive ads, or an interactive game. With the breadth of the DoubleClick targeting suite at your disposal, including enhanced in-app possibilities, finding the right audiences for you is more efficient than ever.

The option to send traffic straight to the Play or iOS Store to download makes the process user friendly and seamless, which is essential on such a typically impatient format.

Video App Install Campaigns

With over 550 million active monthly users on mobile, YouTube is becoming an invaluable asset in app promotion. It massively widens your online coverage and you get the opportunity to sell your ad with a short promotional video. Through TrueView, you have the option to run a pre-roll video ad accompanied by an ‘Install Now’ button and star rating, linking directly to the Play Store. This is a brand new feature in DoubleClick and another massive avenue to explore in the ever-evolving world of app promotion.

Track Success & Re-engage!

While volumes of downloads are fantastic, it’s just as important to make sure that the app is actually being used. Be it an ecommerce offering, in which you want to track revenue and attribute value, or simply a service that helps you to connect with loyal customers, there is always more to consider in order to calculate the success of a campaign. This is where the GTM SDK (or Google Tag Manager Software Development Kit, for those who have digested one too many acronyms recently) comes in. This is a piece of software that allows you to tag up your app and subsequently track user behaviour within the app.

Other than attributing value through revenue, this also allows you to create smart lists of people who have fallen out of contact with the app and target them for re-engagement. Target previous downloaders and deep link them to a relevant page within the app itself, segment your users and speak to them with personalised messaging that gives them relevant information rather than a generic nagging message, or notify them of new features and exclusive offers. There are a number of ways in which you can intelligently continue to communicate and engage your loyal customer base, such a crucial and often ignored ingredient in the recipe for app success.

To read this blog written by Tom Parker on the Periscopix website, please click here.

References:
[1] Kleiner Perkins Caufeld & Byers, 2013 Internet Trends Report
[2] Flurry Analytics, Comscore, Q4 2014
[3] Statista, "Number of apps available in leading app stores," July 2014
[4] Google/Ipsos, Mobile App Marketing Insights: How Consumers Really Find Your Apps, May 2015