User Acquisition (UA)

User acquisition (UA) is the process of bringing new users to a mobile app through marketing, so that the app business gains new users or customers from marketing-driven activity.

What is user acquisition?

UA activities fall into a few main types, split by paid and owned media.

Paid media marketing

This type uses media channels to show direct response ads whose creative encourages people to install the app. Common examples of paid user acquisition are posts, banners or targeted ads on social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, or video ads running on mobile app networks.

Paid media marketing also covers influencer marketing, which uses the fame or influence of well-known individuals to reach potential new users in their networks. In this case, marketers have to invest money to use the channel.

Owned media marketing

Owned media marketing uses content the business already owns to attract users.

Examples of owned media include email, SMS, QR codes and reward-based referral invitations. A UA campaign built on owned media might convert existing web users into app users through email targeting, or add in-game banners that invite players to share the game with friends in exchange for in-game rewards.

App store optimization

Also known as ASO, this is an important part of the marketing budget for growing organic installs, and a core element of user acquisition.

Like SEO for websites, ASO focuses on optimizing the title, description, keywords and other parts of the app store listing to rank higher in the store. ASO usually sits with the UA manager and can be handled by an in-house team or an outside ASO agency.

Why user acquisition matters

The top three reasons to set up a UA strategy are:

1. Growth
2. Declining organic installs
3. Greater visibility in the app stores

Put simply, growth is at the core of any mobile business, because every one of them depends on attracting new users and getting the most value out of them.

The app market is dominated by freemium, where most apps are downloaded and used for free. That makes scale necessary: an app needs a large user base to grow the small minority, about 5% of users, who generate in-app purchase revenue.

This matters even more given that many users stop using an app after a short time or uninstall it altogether. Retargeting and re-engagement campaigns do a lot of the work of keeping users, but a strong UA strategy is what brings in high-quality users from the start.

User acquisition also helps offset the recent decline in organic installs across the mobile market. With the total number of apps worldwide still climbing (3.8 million on Google Play and 2 million on the Apple App Store as of 2018), growing organic installs at scale has become extremely hard. UA fills the gaps that unpaid activity leaves behind. With competition this fierce, marketers have to spend money to make money. The way to do that is to rely on data to make sure the investment pays off.

Finally, an effective UA strategy helps an app climb the store rankings, because install volume is one factor in the store algorithm. In recent years its weight has dropped in favor of quality-based signals such as ratings, reviews, uninstalls and engagement. Getting unpaid users from the app stores keeps getting harder, yet installs, especially the ones marketers drive and control through their budgets, still help lift an app’s ranking. That creates a bigger opportunity to grow organic installs and, in the end, attract more high-quality unpaid users who keep the app profitable.

A well-planned and well-executed UA strategy leads to more revenue from the company’s services, and the business needs it to succeed.

How to optimize user acquisition

Successful user acquisition depends heavily on continuous, data-driven optimization. UA in particular runs on constant testing and on readjusting campaigns over time. The purpose of data in UA is to identify trends and patterns for your app and your goals. Without a well-designed UA plan, you end up guessing all the time and wasting money.

The focus has shifted from quantity to quality, meaning more attention to post-install user engagement as the input for future acquisition. Marketers therefore rely on mobile measurement and attribution tools to tell high-quality user sources from low-quality ones, and to allocate future budgets accordingly.

Even on a limited budget, spending more time on your attribution data helps you scale both organic and non-organic traffic, so the money you put into marketing keeps paying off.