A brief discussion on APP promotion and operation: How to place advertisements accurately?

Preface

As of the end of March this year, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the total number of smartphone users in my country has reached 1.29 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.6%. Among them, the number of 4G users increased by 60 million in the first quarter, and the number of 4G users in my country has reached 160 million. With the rapid development of mobile Internet , connected with software and hardware upgrades, people have become accustomed to doing everything with their mobile phones. Mobile Internet has penetrated into every aspect of our lives, including food, clothing, housing and transportation.

So, as a practitioner in the mobile Internet industry, especially friends in the APP operation and promotion circle, how can you accurately acquire users among the massive number of mobile phone users? In such a great era of mobile Internet, when promoting apps, we should stand at a different height to look at the overall situation. We cannot promote them just for the sake of promotion. The question worth pondering is how should we operate them well? How to be a good user? Everything is for the users, everything for the users. The same is true for promotion.

Well, what I want to talk about today is how we can use the lowest cost to find accurate users and obtain first-hand traffic when choosing channels?

1. What should be considered: How to choose an effective channel?

APP promotion channels are mainly divided into two types: paid and free cooperation. In an era where traffic is king, free promotion has basically lost its original meaning. What I want to say is that in the mobile Internet industry, time is actually more important than money. Although free channels are free, they take time. The cost converted into time and manpower is still very high.

So I will not give examples one by one for free channel promotion . Today I will mainly talk about paid channel promotion.

The mainstream APPs on the market are now divided into three main types based on the development environment and the operating system, namely iOS version, Android version and WP8 system.

Therefore, we should also take this factor of different systems into consideration when choosing channels, so as to avoid wasting the traffic you paid for and affecting your analysis of channels when analyzing promotion data .

First of all, what are the app promotion channels currently available?

1. Download channels from the app market

(Mainly introduce Android, because the iOS channel is relatively single)

According to the statistical data analysis of iResearch Consulting, the current average daily download volume of Android applications is about 130 million. This is also because the application market and major PC software managers and download stations started early and have cultivated users' downloading habits. Therefore, for apps, various software download platforms have become the preferred application download channels.

Generally speaking, users' first downloads come from recommendations and exposure searches. Some promoters study the ranking rules of certain markets and optimize keywords, comments, star ratings, download volumes, etc. More powerful promoters directly occupy a large number of popular APP names so that users can hit these popular APP names when searching for keywords, making their search results rank higher, and optimize the rankings ( brushing ) to increase exposure.

In order to meet the promotion needs of promoters for the currently popular third-party application market channels, there are agency companies that provide this kind of professional promotion service. Of course, you can do it yourself without spending any money, but it is labor-intensive. If you don’t understand why this is the case, you can go back and read the preface.

The promotion costs and fees of the application market download channels are roughly 0.5 yuan to 1.5 yuan if calculated by CPC; if calculated by CPD, it is about 2 to 5 yuan; as for CPT, it ranges from several thousand to tens of thousands per day depending on the location, but I do not recommend this CPT method. Of course you can do it if you have money.

Channel advantages: relatively high user quality, large quantity, and rapid acquisition of users

Channel disadvantages: low retention and conversion rate. It is even more difficult to develop applications for targeted users. There are more than 200 companies in the market and only about a dozen in the mainstream market. It is difficult to choose a reliable one. Framework cooperation can reduce prices but the maintenance cost is high.

2. Advertising alliance and wap traffic channels

Advertising alliance is a very common way of promotion. I have always recommended this channel to my friends in the circle because I have worked in the alliance for some time and I know it well. Although many people have raised many doubts about this channel, for example, it is difficult to control the true and false effects, the volume is too small, and it takes up too many resources, but I want to say that if you put the energy of researching how to do ASO into researching this small channel, I think everyone will open up a new channel. There is a reason why the advertising alliance can still survive so freely despite numerous doubts.

Next, I would like to share with you some of my personal insights.

Currently, the larger alliances include: Umeng (don’t think that Umeng is just a data statistics background, it is actually an alliance), Ebrun, Weiyun, Youmi, admod, Limei, etc. There are even more small alliances. I know of no less than 100 alliances in the market. With so many alliances and so much traffic, how can we make good use of them?

To put it simply, channel promotion is exposure. Try every possible means to display your products in front of users. So what are the best exposures? Video is the most intuitive, followed by pictures and text. The most commonly used are pictures and text. According to your own products, you can choose different advertising alliances, choose different websites and locations to place them, adapt the corresponding text and picture content, and continuously optimize by trial and error. After trying and erroring two or three channels and the results and volume are stable, you can choose to launch the campaign on a dozen or so channels at the same time.

When choosing a small channel like this, be sure to find more than one, because there are many scammers in this channel. For generally reliable and high-quality channels, you can put forward your desired requirements (volume, retention, activity, agreed settlement date, etc.), then set the price, sign the contract, and then pay. Our authority is relatively free. This kind of channel actually lacks first-hand products. We are like an intermediary, bringing together website owners with a large number of users and then looking for products. There are really quite a few people who rely on this kind of circle to make a living. Some major leagues are very professional in analyzing user behavior data, and their analysis is much more precise than what we do.

Cost: cpc 0.3~0.8 yuan, cps (activation cost 1.5~3 yuan)

Channel advantages : fast growth, relatively low cost, people who want to exchange volume prefer this channel, generally pay after cooperation

Channel disadvantages : Cheating exists, media maintenance costs are high, and user quality is average. The communication and monitoring costs are high. This method requires monitoring orders to ensure user quality, and the operation is relatively complicated.

3. Social marketing channels

In addition to the traditional channels mentioned above, in recent years, using social marketing channels such as Weibo, WeChat, and social news media to promote APPs has also become a very popular choice. Friends in my circle basically discuss promotion plans around these channels every day. The number of channels is indeed considerable, and many products that were initially sold through such channels became "rich overnight" to exaggerate, because the users our products need are basically in these channels. For any product, no matter how precise the users you need are, they are hidden in these channels. Having said that, how can we make effective use of such channels? How can we avoid some problems?

As a result, one of the most common problems faced by social channels is the inability to measure the actual number of downloads generated through word-of-mouth communication. In addition, the spread of word-of-mouth marketing is actually closely related to the product itself. Whether the product is truly valuable and can stimulate users to use it is also a very important part. However, the value of marketing lies in magnifying the advantages of a certain aspect of the product, or packaging a gimmick. This requires careful planning by product and operation personnel, and conducting marketing in a step-by-step and rhythmic manner to achieve good results.        

Channel categories: Tencent ( Guangdiantong , Zhihuitui), Baidu (Baidu Tieba, Baidu Baitong, Baidu Direct Express), Sina ( Fenfentong , Fuyi, Jiugongge ), Toutiao information flow, Momo information flow, NetEase, Sohu, etc.  

Cost : Each channel has different promotion methods, including bidding models, exposure, display, click and download, etc. However, if it is basically calculated as one download, the range is relatively large, 3-15 yuan/download.

Channel advantages: Accurately acquire targeted users, high user quality, good brand exposure, and controllable results

Channel disadvantages: There is currently no comprehensive and effective statistical background to analyze costs. If we only judge the costs based on the data of the day, the costs appear to be relatively high, so that we cannot judge what the effect of this channel is.

4. Manufacturer pre-installed and flashed

It is a good choice for many large and powerful companies. Lakala is controlled by Lenovo, and pre-installing Lenovo phones is an internal resource replacement. If you want to expand external manufacturer resources, it is not the preferred channel if you do not have sufficient funds.

Cost: The payment price is between 0.5 yuan and 1 yuan according to the pre-installed amount, and the CPA payment is between 1.5 yuan and 4 yuan according to the activation.

Channel advantages: large volume and not too high average cost.

Channel disadvantages: high follow-up costs, wide range of user types, and a lower proportion of accurate users compared to other channels.

two. How to place advertisements?

There is a sentence that everyone who works in the channel knows well. This sentence makes all the bosses helpless and even becomes an excuse for some people. This sentence is: We know that half of the advertising costs are wasted, but no one knows which half.

So how can we maximize the effectiveness of advertising?

Determine the time and distribution of the product's target population. Now we are talking about precision marketing. This statement is correct, but no one can do it, because no matter how capable you are, you can't know everyone's behavior all the time, let alone so many users. So when choosing a product delivery channel, we must first analyze your target users' behavior, preferences, interests and other factors, and find where they are hiding. After doing this, we will find the column position corresponding to the selected channel and cooperate with relevant material text to do precise delivery. Secondly, the simplest is the most effective. If the advertisements placed deviate from the browsing habits of the target user group, they will also fail. More importantly, channel promotion requires the cooperation of media communication, but at the same time, it is necessary to avoid bombarding with bad advertisements, which will also ruin the users.

Now I will analyze for you how to judge whether a channel is successful or not during channel promotion.

1. Brand exposure

Exposure reflects the number of times the advertiser's brand appears in front of the audience and is the prerequisite for generating clicks and feedback. A large amount of brand exposure helps deepen the audience's understanding of brand products and thus enhance brand influence.

2. Download and activate ( ranking and retention)

Download activation is mainly aimed at professional and gaming customers, whose main promotion needs are to get their products on the charts and acquire more real users. Use various promotional methods to make the client's products rank at the top of the list. Usually, the ranking on the list determines the number of users who actually download the products.

3. Order sales

Mainly targeting e-commerce customers, customer conversion rate is an indicator that e-commerce professionals are most concerned about. How much effect does the real money advertising have? How many orders have been brought in? In order to achieve the effect of increasing order sales, the display method and content of the advertisement need to be deeply aligned with the user's usage habits.

4. Promotions

In order to enhance brand influence, clients such as education and automobiles often promote their products through promotional activities such as training and test drives.

Usually, advertisers spend the most budget on ranking, reaching 50%. Generally, new products need to be ranked first before they are put on the shelves. According to operation experts, the number of downloads of new apps must reach more than 100,000 to enter the top 100 of the list. If they are not ranked, it will be difficult for new products to be seen by users.

three. Summarize

The above are two issues introduced by Brother Chai about how to choose channels and how to place channels for app promotion. Later, I will also talk about how to achieve precision channel marketing that is not very accurate. In the channel promotion industry, don’t expect to try to copy after reading a few articles. Each product has its own different promotion ideas. In today’s rapidly changing Internet development, new possibilities will emerge at any time. Finding a promotion plan that suits you among these possibilities is the most critical. Any good product has a core, so I think the secret to success on the Internet is to get a sticky, low-cost promotion plan.

Finally, I would like to say that for a truly good product, the number of active users will continue to increase even without promotion, and the better ones will even increase dramatically. Internet products in particular are mainly oriented towards product user experience rather than marketing. Of course, I don’t deny that good marketing promotion will make good products more quickly accepted by the public. Therefore, a good product is the prerequisite, and promotion is only to let more users who don’t know it but have needs know about it.