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July 26, 2023
Mobile user acquisition is more challenging than ever. Business of Apps reports that there are now more than 7 million mobile apps in existence1, each competing for a place on your devices. As industry experts like Deconstructor of Fun call 2023 the year that “organic discovery will be declared dead,"2 it falls to mobile app marketers to navigate the world of user acquisition in pursuit of profitable growth.
From privacy-centric paid social campaigns to loyalty-boosting rewards, user acquisition experts must use every tool in their arsenal to ensure they serve the right ad to the right audience at the right time. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about mobile user acquisition strategy, channels, acquisition metrics, and more for you to get started in driving users to your app.
Mobile user acquisition (or “UA”) refers to the process of bringing new customers into an app, platform, or service through paid and organic marketing channels. For user acquisition managers, the goal is typically to bring in new users at a lower cost than what they will eventually generate in revenue.
In a competitive mobile landscape where millions of apps vie for users' attention, acquiring users efficiently and effectively is essential for the success of any mobile app.
The two key pillars of mobile user acquisition are:
While paid user acquisition remains tried-and-true for acquiring users immediately during an active campaign, organic strategies are a a slower, evergreen effort to attract users in the long-term.
🌟 To learn more about how mobile user acquisition has evolved over the years, read What is user acquisition & how is it evolving?
The cost of acquiring a new user varies primarily according to the marketing channel you choose and the type of game or app you're marketing, but generally mobile app CPI (cost per install) falls anywhere between $0.80 USD to $5 USD. Going wide may reach more potential users, but those users are less likely, on average, to convert into high LTV customers than those on more targeted, niche channels.
Mobile app user acquisition cost
Mobile games user acquisition cost
🌟 For a deeper dive into mobile user acquisition costs, read How much does mobile user acquisition cost in 2024?
Paid user acquisition strategies largely rely on app publishers paying to run advertisements promoting their games and apps, ideally within digital environments in which their target users congregate. Examples of user acquisition platforms include in-app ad networks, social media, and app store search ads. According to Mistplay’s 2023 Mobile Gaming Loyalty Report, these ads are the most common way players find a new game to play. In fact, mobile game advertisements help nearly half (49.75%) of players find new mobile games.
Pros of paid acquisition:
Cons of paid acquisition:
Organic UA aims to attract users without relying on traditional advertising. The gold standard here is word of mouth: Recommendations from friends or family drive 34.83% of user acquisition for mobile apps, and social media posts and discussions account for another 24.68% (according to the 2023 Mobile Gaming Loyalty Report).
However, marketers can take concrete steps to help cultivate grassroots momentum. By focusing on app store optimization (ASO), for example, they can tap into the 39.43% of players who find new games by browsing the app store and its top charts. Other ways to build positive buzz include content marketing, community building, referral programs, and a focus on the best possible user experience.
Pros of organic acquisition:
Cons of organic acquisition:
Because paid and organic user acquisition have strengths and weaknesses that balance one another, an optimal mobile app growth strategy combines the two.
Paid UA can serve as a foot in the door, getting users to your app in a flurry at launch or other key moments. That increased traffic can feed organic visibility. The more users your app brings in organically, the less you'll need to spend on paid user acquisition, leading to healthier long term margins.
🌟 For more on how to mix paid and organic user acquisition for your app, read Paid vs Organic User Acquisition: How to Find the Right Balance
Paid social media advertising serves as a powerful user acquisition channel for mobile apps, offering granular targeting options based on user demographics, interests, and behaviors. Through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (Twitter), mobile app publishers can efficiently reach their target audience and drive app installations at a controlled cost.
Facebook and Google once dominated paid social channels, but modern user acquisition experts have found diminishing returns and stiff competition taking root on these platforms. As a result, the field has evolved to favor a broader, more diverse set of channels for social marketing – especially when targeting a younger and more technologically proficient audience.Some social channels for paid user acquisition include:
In-app advertising is a mobile user acquisition channel that displays ads to users within other mobile apps, allowing app publishers to reach a highly engaged audience directly within the mobile environment. By leveraging in-app advertising, marketers can target users based on their behavior, interests, location, and other relevant data to ensure that ads are displayed to the most relevant audience. This targeted approach can lead to higher conversion rates and improved return on ad spend (ROAS) compared to other traditional advertising methods. In-app advertising also provides valuable insights and analytics data that can be used to optimize campaigns in real-time, leading to more effective user acquisition strategies.
In-app ads can be displayed in various formats, such as:
Overall, in-app advertising is a powerful mobile user acquisition channel that offers a direct and engaging way to reach a large audience of mobile users within the apps they already use.
👀 Related reading: Clicks to coins: Your guide to in-app advertising for mobile game monetization
Rewarded channels for user acquisition involve incentivizing users to engage with an app in exchange for certain benefits and in-app rewards. This strategy encourages users to complete specific actions such as watching videos, completing surveys, or achieving specific milestones within the app to receive rewards like virtual currency, premium content, or power-ups in a mobile game. By offering a value exchange, rewarded channels drive user engagement, increase retention, and attract high-quality users who are more likely to remain active and monetize within the app.Some channels for reward-driven user acquisition include:
👀 Related reading: What is rewarded advertising and why does it work?
Influencer marketing is a powerful user acquisition channel that uses social media personalities and content creators to endorse products or services – like your mobile app. According to Statista, influencer marketing ad spend worldwide is forecasted to reach $56B USD by 2029.While follower count of influencers is important to determine reach, authenticity of content is the cornerstone of successful influencer campaigns. Therefore, collaborating with influencers well-versed in your industry/niche is crucial. Types of influencers for mobile user acquisition include:
🌟To dig into more UA channels like Connected TV and programmatic advertising channels, check out our article on 10 User Acquisition Channels Marketers Need to Know in 2023
Defining the target audience is really the first and most fundamental aspect of your user acquisition campaigns. Understanding who your ideal users are based on the demographics, interests, behaviors, and preferences helps tailor your marketing efforts to reach the right people effectively. A good place to start is by identifying these traits for your existing playerbase (if you have one), or the playerbase of a similar app. By creating detailed user personas and segmenting your audience parameters based on that, you can ensure that your ads (and app) resonate with your target audience and get UA results.
Once your campaign is live, continuously refining and updating your target audience based on who is interacting with it can help eke out extra installs. Keep track of how you’re updating your target audience over the course of a campaign to ensure that your future paid campaigns are even relevant and impactful from launch.
Creative plays a pivotal role in the success of your mobile user acquisition campaigns. With ad creatives often being the first point of contact between users and your app, designing them to both capture attention, relay the value of your app, and create a positive brand impression is also essential in driving conversions. By crafting visually appealing graphics, interactive animations, and persuasive copy, you can effectively communicate the value proposition of your app to potential users.
Creative optimization through A/B testing is also a must for maximizing the effectiveness of your campaigns and finding ways to eke out extra impact. By refining and testing different ad creative – such as UGC-style skits, animated videos, or in-game footage – publishers can identify which elements resonate best with their target audience and drive the highest engagement and conversions.
When it comes to timing of your creative tests, Matej Lančarič suggests that apps with monthly creative budgets under $50,000 roll out four new creative concepts per month in addition to testing-driven iterations on past concepts. Budgets over $1 million should aim for at least 20 rollouts per month.
Another crucial optimization element of campaigns is app store optimization, in which a publisher will test the designed and written elements of the app store listing in an attempt to attract more users to download the app.
Similar to the creative in your ad campaign, the app store details – from the game title to the keywords used – all come together to convince users that your app is worth downloading. And similar to creative optimization, ASO involves optimizing various elements of an app store listing to increase its discoverability and attract more users.
Some key components of ASO include:
🌟To learn more of the keys to successful mobile user acquisition, read 5 key components of effective mobile user acquisition campaigns.
Videos and banners placed on in-app ad networks, search, and social – these are the core tactics for modern user acquisition. But progressive publishers have begun branching out into new approaches, earning impressive rewards for doing so.
Regardless of industry, referrals have proven an effective way to better retain high-quality customers. Mobile games are no exception: GameRefinery observes that games like Match Masters, Dragon Mania Legends, and RAID: Shadow Legends have helped player bases thrive over time by giving meaningful rewards to players who invite their friends to join them18. Those rewards are often tied to feature use beyond install, unlocking more benefits as referrals progress through the game. Some publishers have also found success with re-engagement referral campaigns, in which players are rewarded for inviting lapsed players back into the ecosystem.
Games and apps often inspire their fans to create authentic, engaging content of their own. Videos, fan art, and more created by fans can take off on social media platforms like TikTok, and marketers can harness their popularity for user acquisition so long as they maintain authenticity. If they must branch out from genuine UGC, they can emulate the look of UGC in ad creative to achieve similar outcomes. For TikTok, Apptamin explains19, that could mean an actress speaking into her earbuds microphone the same way regular users do as she complains about a relatable topic tied to the game. This approach appears to consistently yield compelling results, and dedicated industry UA agencies like yellowHEAD have continued to up their investment in the strategy.
Out-of-home (OOH) marketing is an increasingly popular strategy among high-level publishers, pushing their games to billboards, posters, and other real-world signage. While it remains atypical, some notable examples have found success with the approach. Supercell incorporated OOH in a 2015 multi-channel campaign for its game Clash of Clans. Industry expert Eric Seufert says the approach likely made sense for the publisher20: "If Supercell has already reached everyone it can through in-app ads, then there's nowhere left to go but more traditional forms of media acquisition." If you’re fortunate enough to manage a game that has come up against the limits of in-app ads, moving into physical space could be a worthwhile expansion.
🌟 To learn more about new frontiers in mobile user acquisition strategy, read 11 mobile game UA strategies for progressive publishers.
CAC is a user acquisition metric that refers to the total sales and marketing cost required to earn a new customer over a specific time period. While CAC can be calculated by campaign, this is a more overarching metric than CPI, as it takes into account all sales, UA, and/or marketing costs spent to get users.
How to calculate CAC:
(Total sales and marketing cost) / (Number of customers)
CPI compares your app ad spend to the number of installs within a certain campaign to track how much it cost for a specific campaign to drive an install. This can often be a predetermined price that you agree to pay a publisher every time you generate a new install from an ad served by that publisher.
How to calculate CPI:
(Total ad spend for a campaign) / (total number of installs driven from the campaign)
ROAS tracks how effective your UA campaigns are in terms of acquiring users that drive revenue in the game (largely through IAP or IAA).
There are two specific types of ROAS based on the monetization model your game uses:
How to calculate ROAS:
(Revenue generated from acquisition campaign monetization) / (Cost of acquisition campaign)
LTV is a user acquisition metric used to track the average revenue a user will generate over the average user lifetime with your app. This is often the “north star” metric for app publishers and has multiple levers to pull – such as increasing average DX retention for an IAA-based app, or increasing spend for an IAP-based app.
How to calculate LTV:
(average monthly revenue per user) x (average user lifetime in months)
A fruitful mobile user acquisition strategy will have a combination of various well-coordinated tactics, channels, and creative constantly being tested and optimized. By continuously monitoring performance metrics, analyzing your competitor’s ad campaigns, and tweaking your own approach, you can refine your mobile UA strategies to attract high-quality users, drive app installations, and achieve your ROAS targets.
If you’re a mobile game publisher interested in trying a loyalty-first UA approach to hit your ROAS targets, Mistplay can help – just like we did for did for Love & Pies publisher, Trailmix.
Contact us to learn more about unlocking the power of your player loyalty.
