3 tips for paid APP promotion!

Last year, I had an interesting work experience. I went through the process from knowing nothing about "paid APP delivery" to bringing in more than X00,000 high-quality new customers to the APP from external investment channels every day. While maintaining the daily customer acquisition volume, the "customer acquisition unit price" has been reduced to 1/3 of the previous level, and the "new member next-day retention rate" has been increased to 2.4 times the previous level! It opened up a high-quality customer acquisition channel for the APP and successfully reversed the team’s impression that paid promotion channels were “high priced and poor quality”. (PS: The specific data is too sensitive to be disclosed, please forgive me)

Due to work adjustments this year, I did not continue to delve into this field. I have only been working in this field for a few months, so I dare not teach others how to do this. This article mainly summarizes and shares the work experience I have accumulated in the process of going from being confused to clarifying my work ideas and then getting business results from the perspective of brand investment . I hope it can help friends who are just getting started like I was at that time. This article mainly contains three parts:

1. Identify key indicators for external investment

II. Introduction to Common Delivery Settlement Methods and Channels

3. Customer acquisition unit price and quality management. Enter the text below:

1. Identify key indicators for external investment

Paid promotion, to put it simply, means spending money to buy traffic. Everyone’s inherent impression of this channel is “you spend money to get things done, money means quantity” and “large quantity but poor quality”. If other growth methods fail to achieve the expected growth targets, the brand would not want to use this method to increase sales. There is nothing wrong in describing this channel as "spending money to get things done". The only thing that can reflect the channel's operating capabilities is whether it can spend the least amount of money and bring in higher quality users. Therefore, two key indicators are generated: customer acquisition unit price and customer acquisition quality.

Customer acquisition price

Let's do some calculations. Suppose you have a budget of 1 million yuan, and you can attract 200,000 new customers when the customer acquisition cost is 5 yuan. If the customer acquisition unit price is reduced by 0.5 yuan, the number of new customers you can attract will increase by 11% compared to before. Optimizing the unit price of customer acquisition is the continuous goal of channel operations. In the paid advertising industry, the price per customer acquisition has a bottom line but no upper limit. Depending on the industry the APP you want to promote is in, the user participation threshold and the new customer growth space, each APP will have its own customer acquisition price range. What channel operators need to do is to continuously test through various methods and explore the bottom line of the price range while meeting the volume and quality expectations.

For example: The user base of Douyin and Alipay apps is already very large, basically covering users in first-, second-, third- and fourth-tier cities, and there is very limited room for growth. If you choose to do paid advertising at this time, it should be to acquire new users in the lower-tier markets. In order to reach and strengthen the exposure priority and intensity of a relatively small number of specific users, the customer acquisition price they need to pay will be very high. From the perspective of user participation threshold and customer acquisition quality, Alipay's new customers can only be relatively guaranteed to be retained if they meet conditions such as registration and card binding. However, Douyin only requires registration or browsing videos, and the threshold for new customers is relatively low. Therefore, Alipay's customer acquisition unit price will definitely be much higher than Douyin's, or even more than double.

Customer acquisition quality

No matter what value your APP provides to users, as long as it can retain users, there must be a key node that allows new users to continue to retain. Generally, the monitoring dimension of the quality of new users will be designed based on this key node. For example: The value that shopping apps provide to users is that they can buy their favorite or cost-effective products. The key point that allows this type of APP to retain new users continuously lies in “the user’s first order behavior.” Then the monitoring dimension of customer acquisition quality can be defined as " new user order rate ." It should be noted that the purpose of monitoring the quality of customer acquisition is to enable us to identify the pros and cons of the delivery channels in a timely manner and make adjustments, so the monitoring cycle should not be set too long. It is recommended to monitor the day of addition, so that the delivery strategy can be adjusted based on the delivery data the next day. Furthermore, the assessment standards for customer acquisition quality are not necessarily the stricter the better. Because the stricter your requirements are, the higher the unit price of acquiring customers will be, and the daily customer acquisition volume will be relatively smaller. There will be different target demands in different stages of launch. If you are pursuing rapid growth in the current stage, you need to relax the quality requirements appropriately.

II. Introduction to Common Delivery Settlement Methods and Channels

After mastering the key indicators of paid delivery, the next important thing for newcomers is to fully understand the delivery settlement methods and delivery channels in the market, and then combine the core user characteristics of the APP and the delivery goals to select appropriate delivery methods and channels for testing. This discussion mainly focuses on paid delivery on the Android side. I will introduce several commonly used settlement methods and corresponding channels. As I understand it, there are two types of APP paid promotion: one is brand display delivery, and the other is effect-based delivery. Brand display placement aims to increase user exposure. For example, on Double 11 every year, we will see Taobao ads on the opening screens of major apps. This type of placement is generally led by the marketing department, and aims to increase user exposure through the Double 11 event. There may be requirements for traffic generation, but the transaction results of the traffic output will not be looked into further. Performance-based delivery aims to increase the quantity and quality of customers at a deeper level under exposure. User growth teams generally use this type of delivery. What we are discussing today is also performance-based delivery, mainly introducing three commonly used settlement methods:

CPA:

Pay by action. Actions can be defined, and the unit price is affected by the defined actions: download price < activation price < registration price; generally defined as activation (download and open the app);

As far as I know, there are three sources of CPA traffic: 1. Traffic that agents pay to collect in small and medium-sized application markets, website apps, etc.; 2. Some large agents also have the ability to build their own websites to gather traffic; 3. Agents directly publish activation tasks on the task platform. The main profit model of CPA agents is to earn the difference;

If you want to control the quantity and quality of new customers in the CPA channel, you can do so by expanding the number of cooperating agents and eliminating agents with poor output quality.

CPD:

Pay by download. It should be noted that when the "download open rate" is too low, CPD is far less cost-effective than CPA, but its customer acquisition quality is relatively stable.

Mainstream application markets, such as Huami, OV, App Store, 360, etc., all support CPD delivery; there are many other promotion methods provided by the application market, which we will not expand on here.

The embarrassing thing is that subcontracting is not allowed when investing in CPD through the app market channel. Although the app market will provide a background to view download data, when we pay for placement in the app market, some natural downloads will be downloaded through paid channels. What can be felt is that, assuming that the additional volume brought by paid delivery is 10,000 from the background, but compared with the volume of natural downloads when the channel is not promoted, it will be found that the pure additional volume during delivery is only 1/3 of the background display volume or even less. At this time, when we calculate the unit price of customer acquisition through this channel, we cannot directly use the price displayed in the background. We should use "total paid price on that day / pure new volume on that day = actual unit price of customer acquisition"

CPC:

Pay per click is often used for settlement when placing information flow. It can acquire a large number of customers and the unit price of customers is also relatively high.

The quality of the delivery is mainly affected by the delivery content, delivery skills (targeted audience, delivery time, bidding, technical connection, etc.) and the on-site acceptance strategy, which places high demands on the agent's material production capabilities and delivery expertise;

Commonly used information flow channels include Guangdiantong (Tencent), Massive Engine (ByteDance), Baidu Information Flow, Ali Huichuan, Weibo Fanstong, Kuaishou, Qutoutiao, etc.

Guangdiantong: Tencent’s subsidiary, mainly social media and information media, the delivery channels are divided into internal and external channels. Internal channels are Tencent’s own traffic area, including WeChat, QQ+ Space, Tencent News and other media, with good user quality and high prices, and no investment in competing products; external channels are Tencent’s external traffic, the unit price is relatively cheap but the quality is also poor

· Massive Engine: owned by ByteDance, mainly focusing on video media; Douyin, Xigua, Pipixia, and Huoshan belong to Toutiao’s “internal advertising”, while Pangolin Alliance belongs to Toutiao’s “external advertising” and also the external traffic.

· For apps like Guangdiantong and Bytedance that cover the user’s information flow through multiple product matrices, the value they provide to users is relatively diverse and the number of users they cover is relatively large, so it is relatively easy to dig out target users from them; for apps like Kuaishou and Qutoutiao that provide relatively single value to users, the user profiles they can cover and the user’s visit mentality are relatively fixed. When placing ads, it is necessary to determine which information flow is more suitable for promotion based on the target customer profile.

Once we have mastered these delivery settlement methods and related information, we need to negotiate with the agents based on our total budget amount, delivery target scale, expected customer acquisition unit price, and target user characteristics. Here are some tips:

If the total budget is not much, only a few million, give priority to CPA channels. The unit price is low enough and the volume should basically meet the needs.

If the target users are from the lower-tier markets, give priority to platforms with similar user attributes such as Kuaishou and Qutoutiao.

If you want to quickly increase the volume, with more than 100,000 new users per day, give priority to information flow channels...

3. Customer Acquisition Unit Price and Quality Management

When we talked about the first section "Identifying the key indicators for external investment" earlier, we mentioned that the two most important indicators are: customer acquisition unit price and customer acquisition quality. Part 3 focuses on the management methods for these two key indicators.

Customer acquisition price management

Lowering the unit price of customer acquisition is the continuous goal of channel operations. However, the purpose of lowering the unit price is not to pursue an absolute low price, but to find a balance between the scale, quality and price of the product. On the basis of achieving volume and quality goals, reduce customer acquisition prices. The main management methods are:

1. Reduce the overall customer acquisition price by increasing the proportion of low-price channels. It is recommended to invest in multiple settlement channels at the same time to avoid one-pronged approach. On the one hand, it can share the risk of volume acquisition to avoid a situation where a certain channel runs out of stock, resulting in a situation where the entire channel is empty on the same day; on the other hand, it can comprehensively consider the volume acquisition situation, quality and price of each channel, and adjust the channel delivery ratio to achieve the management of the unit price of customer acquisition.

2. Add multiple agents to the same settlement channel to form a competitive relationship between agents and constantly explore low prices. As a friend who is just getting started and lacks industry experience, you must not listen to only one agent's opinions just because you are familiar with them. It’s not that the agent intentionally conceals anything, but the fear is that an agent’s past experience will limit more possibilities. Adding multiple agents to deliver at the same time can, on the one hand, help us quickly accumulate industry knowledge through communication with different agents; on the other hand, it can promote agents to explore low prices together through the exchange of effective information between agents; for example: Agent A has a relatively low customer acquisition price and relatively good user quality. After in-depth analysis of the reasons, we summarize and synchronize the results of the summary to other BCD agents to promote other agents to improve their delivery mechanisms. Of course, this kind of benign promotion of self-interest must be guaranteed by a mechanism, otherwise it will be empty talk . The specific mechanism may be achieved by dynamically adjusting the proportion of agent investment amounts. Based on the delivery targets at different stages, a reward and punishment mechanism for agents should be set up regularly. If the agent's customer acquisition unit price is lower, or if it shares a delivery strategy with better delivery quality, the corresponding delivery amount ratio can be increased; if an agent's customer acquisition unit price continues to fail to reach the target, its delivery amount should be reduced. etc.

Customer acquisition quality management

In the operation of external investment channels, if the work content is ranked according to the degree of difficulty, increasing the scale of customer acquisition is the easiest to achieve, because where there is money there is volume (except for apps with high coverage such as Alipay, Douyin, and Taobao); lowering the unit price of customer acquisition is relatively more difficult, but there are also many strategies to achieve the goal; the most difficult thing to do is to optimize the quality of customer acquisition, which is also the biggest challenge in channel operations. I have summarized two methods that can effectively improve the quality of customer acquisition:

1. Strictly control external investment content

2.1.1. The expression direction of the delivery material directly determines the quality of customer acquisition. The design direction of the material requires prior communication between channel operations and agents, and must be strictly controlled, because it directly affects users’ perception of the product. If you don’t exercise strict control, the agent may just follow their experience in advertising for other brands, or pick up the latest popular materials and add your APP LOGO to the advertising. If you want to acquire high-quality customers, the design direction of the materials must be planned in combination with the core value that the APP provides to users. For example, Pinduoduo’s external investment materials are generally "XX good product Pinduoduo only costs 9.9 yuan." It is very consistent with the core value that Pinduoduo provides to users: e-commerce shopping and low prices. After users are attracted by low-priced product advertisements and download Pinduoduo, they can immediately feel the low-price information, and their retention rate will not be too bad.

1.2. Manage user psychological expectations. The user's psychological expectation value after seeing the delivered material is correlated with the download rate. As the psychological expectation gradually increases, the download rate will also increase accordingly. Therefore, in the materials produced by general agents, the value obtained by users will be exaggerated accordingly. What we need to control is: do not raise user expectations excessively. If user expectations are raised excessively on the material side, users will be lured into downloading but will not be satisfied within the app. They will feel cheated and their retention quality will naturally be poor. For example: many APPs have red envelope materials that can easily receive cash red envelopes of 88 or 100 yuan that can be withdrawn. However, after downloading, there are only a few yuan or a few cents, and many actions need to be completed before the cash can be withdrawn.

2. Be prepared to receive new users on the site . There is a complete gap between when the users click to download on the advertising platform and go through the download process and when they actively open the APP. Therefore, how to ensure that new users can accurately find the corresponding content of the advertising materials they are interested in after opening the APP is very important for improving the quality of customer acquisition. The following two methods have been proven to be effective:

2.1. Plan the area for new employees to be accepted;

After designing the direction of the materials according to the value provided by the APP, you need to classify the materials, combine them with the layout within the APP, and plan the area for new people to take over. The more important position is of course the APP homepage, which is also assisted by the search area and the receiving area of ​​a secondary channel. The type of material with the largest volume has a more eye-catching corresponding location on the site. In addition, the user path to be taken over must be short enough. The longer the path, the worse the taking over effect.

Of course, if users are required to open the app and then click or search before they can see the follow-up content, the follow-up effect will definitely be limited. Is there a better way? some! It is said that many large companies are already experimenting with the "what you see is what you get" strategy for externally invested materials, that is, after users click on a material on the advertising platform, download and open the APP, they will automatically jump to the follow-up page. This strategy has high investment costs and good returns, and is more suitable for growth teams with very high promotion budgets. Because of its investment in technical resources, it requires a high level of willingness from agents to cooperate.

2.2. Provide guidance on accepting delivery materials;

In addition to doing a good job of taking over within the APP, we may also have some requirements for external materials to help improve the quality of taking over, that is, adding guidance on the taking over path to the materials. There are fewer path guides for graphic and text materials because pictures can carry little information. Writing a long paragraph on the picture may even have a counterproductive effect on the click-through rate. In addition, the proportion of video materials is gradually increasing, so the main focus is on providing guidance on the acceptance of video materials. After the key information is expressed in the recommended video material, the path introduction is introduced by screen recording + sound, such as: "Download and open XXAPP, click XX area or search XX to receive the benefits"

PS: The on-site acceptance here mainly refers to the acceptance of new customers. Because for the delivery to old users with a terminal, it is possible to click on the materials from the advertising platform to awaken the client to the designated page, and there is no difficulty in acceptance.

The above are my three-point summary of the external investment and new customer acquisition work in the past few months. Let’s review it again: When newcomers enter the industry to do external investment, they must first quickly “identify the key indicators of external investment work”, then fully understand the investment settlement methods and channel characteristics, and then find multiple agents with different settlement methods, conduct tests at a brisk pace, and quickly accumulate their own industry experience in the testing process. After the official launch, based on the customer acquisition unit price and quality management methods, we will continue to explore low customer acquisition prices in terms of external investment scale and quality!

Author: Ai Lingsha

Source: Ai Lingsha

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Three tips on the paid APP promotion process