Beyond the Mainstream: Alternative UA Strategies for Mobile Growth
From search and social to mobile DSPs, mainstream acquisition sources are table stakes for mobile marketers up against fierce competition, economic uncertainty, and an evolving privacy landscape. To combat these headwinds, a diversified media mix will be crucial for unlocking new users and opportunities for profitable growth.
By testing alternative user acquisition (UA) sources, mobile marketers can maximize their ad spend while also minimizing the inherent risk tied to heavy reliance on a handful of high-performing channels. Leading mobile marketers are expanding beyond the walled gardens and in-app environments, leveraging new UA channels to reach incremental audiences that meet their ROAS goals.
Alternative UA Strategies for Mobile Growth
Expanding your UA strategy can unlock new audiences, promote brand discovery, and drive higher-quality installs. Check out the advantages of alternative channels such as influencer marketing, content partnerships, and rewarded traffic, and learn why they are best used together below.
Influencer partnerships
Influencer marketing is a great channel for building trust and demonstrating the features of your mobile app. However, with TikTok’s recent decision to suspend personal creator accounts from linking out to app store pages, you’ll want a nimble partner who can adapt to emerging challenges in the influencer arena.
We recommend working with a partner (like Fluent!) that can connect you with vetted influencers and help to build a fruitful collaboration. Not only will you save time otherwise spent doing outreach and research, but you’ll also receive support during the approval and launch process, ensuring your campaigns are set up for success.
And remember – when it comes to selecting influencers, more followers will not always mean more money in your pocket. Consider working with nano- and micro-influencers – creators with 1,000 to 50,000 followers. They come with a lower price tag, more deeply invested followers, and an engagement rate up to 60% higher than macro-influencers.
Sponsored content
Content partnerships offer a form of audience engagement that is authentic, targeted, and a strong driver of conversions. This subset of performance marketing enables you to capitalize on the trust of a publisher’s audience, using editorialized content as a vehicle to promote your app offering.
The beauty of custom content or inclusion in a listicle-style article is the ability to educate users on the benefits of your app. Make sure to craft messaging that outlines what makes your app unique and include a clear CTA directing users to the app store to download and start using your app.
Just as you’d partner with an influencer who plays in your niche, you’ll also want to identify publishers whose content aligns closely with your brand. Once your campaign is live, publisher partners can leverage first-party audience and performance data to identify which content angles resonates most with readers and optimize to help you reach the right users.
Rewarded offerwalls
While incentivized traffic may get a bad rap, rewarded campaigns benefit both advertisers and consumers; developers get their app in front of a highly engaged audience, and users receive rewards in exchange for actions like installing an app or reaching level 11 of gameplay.
Rewarded offerwalls – an ad channel that presents users with various offers – have come a long way since they first arrived on the scene in 2007. From simply driving app installs to prompting in-app engagement, app developers can leverage rewarded campaigns to reach their upper funnel and downstream goals.
Delivering high volume at a fraction of the cost of channels like paid social, rewarded traffic campaigns can help to introduce your mobile app to incremental audiences. And because users must opt in to complete an offer, the experience is far more user-friendly than interruption-based ad formats like full-page interstitials.
Alternative UA Strategies in Action
So what does it look like when all three of these channels work together in perfect harmony? Just ask one of our top clients in the competitive skill-based gaming space.
A real-money gaming company partnered with Fluent to drive highly engaged app users, measuring success based on Day 6 ROAS. Using a combination of influencer campaigns, rewarded offer wall placements, and custom content, Fluent unlocked new audiences, delivering on both quality and scale.
Throughout the campaign, each channel demonstrated different strengths – while influencer partnerships led the pack in terms of sheer volume, rewarded traffic and custom content exceeded ROAS goals by 70%. Together, all three channels contributed to a well-rounded user acquisition campaign grounded in performance.
Partner with Fluent to Drive Growth for Your Mobile App
For advertisers on the hook for driving ROAS in a shaky economy, a diversified UA approach will be key. When implemented effectively, the right combination of influencer, content, and rewarded campaigns can help your mobile app break away from the pack – all with the guarantee of results that comes with a performance-based pricing model.
Leveraging a multi-pronged approach, Fluent’s suite of performance solutions enables leading app developers to diversify their UA strategy and convert highly engaged users – but don’t take our word for it. See how we helped mobile gaming client, Rewardify, crush their ROAS goals by 30% here.
Ready to rise above the competition and scale your mobile app? Get in touch with us here.