App Marketing: Six Data Points Illustrating Impact

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a number tells a story in just a couple digits. Here are six data points that provide a few stories and perspective on the impact of different app marketing activities.

iOS ASO – First Five Description Lines: +25% CVR

+25% was the improvement in the product page view to app unit conversion rate that we achieved just by changing the first few lines of our app's opening description.

The Bottom Line: While visual elements will typically provide the highest yield in conversion rate optimization, don't neglect to optimize your description, which is far easier to work with and can represent low hanging fruit.

Appboy: +27% CVR

+27% is the preliminary improvement in the conversion rate of new installs to purchases we've seen after leveraging engagement tool, Appboy, to create a slew of in-app messaging and push notification campaigns. By continuing to optimize factors in our campaigns such as creatives, triggers and segments, as well as by using Appboy's Canvas feature, we expect to continue improving this number.

Adwords Exact Match: -28.9% CPI

-28.9% was the percentage by which our optimizations were able to reduce the CPI for one client's Adwords search network app install campaign, while also increasing install volume by 551%. (96% was the percentage of non-branded traffic from this campaign).

The Bottom Line: There are many, many levers to pull in order to effectively optimize a PPC campaign; chief among them is a predominant use of exact match types and sparing use of broad match type.

Google Play ASO – Experiment: +4.63% CVR

+4.63% was the realized lift in the store visitor conversion rate after we applied the result of one September Google Play experiment; however, Google had pronounced a winner within just four days, to the improvement tune of +9% to +49.5% improvement interval.

The Bottom Line: Google Play's Experiments engine is a great, free tool to A/B/C test your app listing, but oftentimes projected test outcomes will not hold up in the real world. Run a B/A test (i.e. testing the applied variant with the old control) after applying a result to confirm that the test continues to hold true, and measure the real impact after applying the results by comparing your pre-post conversion rate. Also, try not to change any other elements when applying experiments for best analysis.

ASO: +67% Average Category Ranking

+67% was the average improvement in category ranking for one client after a onetime title and keywords optimization.

The Bottom Line: Keywords matter. Your title is the most important place to rank keywords, and the keywords you optimize for should consider both the character count and combinatory value in addition to the search popularity of the keyword itself.

Apple Search Ads: +201% Impressions

+201% was the average weekly percentage increase in impression volume from optimizations made for our clients' Search Ads campaign. This was accompanied by a 43% increase in conversions, as well as a 15% increase in CPT and a 16% increase in CPA.

The Bottom Line: Like Adwords, it's important to use exact match keywords in your Search Ads campaigns. Most critically for Search Ads campaigns, it's vital to 1) review your search terms 1-2 times per week for negatives/new keywords, 2) increase your bid (for exact match keywords) in controlled increments until you are happy with impression volume and cost and 3) leverage broad/search match for keyword discovery. Check out our videos on how to structure your campaigns and tips for boosting ROI. Also, be aware that broad and search match can cause your ads to show for your own brand terms, which can obscure the true performance, unless you use negative keywords.

 

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Incipia is a mobile app development and marketing agency that builds and markets apps for companies, with a specialty in high-quality, stable app development and keyword-based marketing strategy, such as App Store Optimization and Apple Search Ads. For post topics, feedback or business inquiries please contact us, or send an inquiry to hello@incipia.co.