Utility app or tools are one of the most popular app categories for smartphones. They offer a range of features from something as simple as changing the color of flashlight to something as important as your device security. Utility app category covers a myriad of apps, including antivirus apps, VPN apps, lock screen animation app, mapping apps, phone performance booster apps, usage time tracker apps, and many more.
It implies that the target customer for such apps can be equally different as well. You cannot pinpoint the audience demographics that will bring profit for your app. Complex audience targeting will mean a complex marketing plan. If that’s not all then add the aspect of competition as well. The market is flooded with app developers in the utility category.
So, how should a marketer go about it? What is the right way to get more installs as well as drive higher profits by increasing paying users?
In this article, we are discussing steps that you need to adopt to build a marketing plan that helps you meet your marketing and sales goals for the utility app:
- Choose the right ad partners
Most of the mobile ad market is dominated by categories, such as ecommerce, games, etc. So, some of the ad partners may not have the relevant experience or skillset to give a boost to your utility ap. So, it will take some crucial time for the DSP and other ad partners to learn effective methods. Meanwhile, your money will be spent.
Instead of that, you need to choose the ad partners with sufficient experience in marketing for utility apps. In case, they do not have the experience, it should have the right features and a payment model so that you are not charged until the results start showing some growth.
- Identify the right audience set
More than demographics, such as location, gender, and age, what matters for your utility app is understanding the intent of the user and then nourishing it with the advertisement. However, the challenge remains with the identification of an audience set with the high-intent of adopting paying services of your utility app.
There is where technology can provide you the right solution. Adopt the technologies, such as RevX’s Audience Intelligence that is capable of building the audience based on their intent and behavior. It utilizes several audience insights to co-relate with your app’s offering. It enables your campaign to be more targeted right at the top of the funnel and drive higher conversions.
- Choose high-quality inventory
When it comes to inventory, most advertisers look for the one with a large number of users as it offers a greater reach. However, a greater reach is not always beneficial if they are not getting the right results. Consider the case of a website or an app that places ads in the spaces where user attention is not caught. No attention will mean no conversion.
Inventory that brings better conversion should always be your choice. Some of the metrics can help you parameters the inventory quality in terms of the app are if they are listed on the reputed app stores, which category, what’s their rating. Some Demand Side Platform offers these choices within the campaign setup dashboard.
- Retarget the users
App marketers make a gruesome mistake if they settle for the app install numbers. The number of installs won’t make for the business profit if your utility app is not able to bring users to use the app and buy the services. Even in case you are monetizing it by running ads on your app, you will need more active users to keep the money flowing.
Focus on retargeting ads to increase your Daily Active Users (DAUs) and Monthly Active Users (MAUs). Since you are targeting the users you have already installed your app, you will have more data points to leverage. Also, do not wait for the retargeting to start for a certain period of time after installation. It is better if you can retarget and guide them for further actions right after installation.
- Keep experimenting
Well, that’s a consistent task for markers in every segment. You can adopt various approaches in the steps mentioned above to utilize different platforms, ad formats, and channels. However, always maintain a track of the experiments that you are performing.
Maintaining the record of your experiments will help you learn and optimize the campaigns for better performance. Although most of the modern DSPs are capable of automated training to improve their targeting and conversion, the humanoid touch will help it further.
Wapping Up
Depending on the solution offered by the utility app, it can target almost every smartphone user. However, how your drive profit from it remains a task at hand. The steps mentioned in the article try to offer a more focused approach to driving the results that matter. Programmatic advertising is able to deliver almost all these steps while reducing human efforts to a significant extent.