THE ENGINEERING OF EFFECTIVE FACEBOOK MOBILE APP INSTALL ADS IN A FULLY AUTOMATED AND CROSS-CHANNEL ACQUISITION ECOSYSTEM

Out of millions of apps in the Google Play store and in the Apple App store, how can your app win a space on the users’ mobile screens so that the users can see your icon every time they unlock their mobiles? Facebook mobile App Install ads are a crucial lever in the app marketing plans not only because they are among the biggest sources of app traffic but also because they give to app developers and marketers the opportunity of collecting a large number of comments by the app users (much bigger than any research user panel). With Facebook mobile App Install ads there is indeed a chance for the marketing teams and product teams to work together on improving the app by listening to the users.

Facebook App Install ads are delivered across the inventory of Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network. Facebook App Install ads land directly to the App Store, Google Play, and Kindle Fire store. Let’s walk through the key components of high-converting Facebook mobile App ads in a fully automated and cross-channel acquisition ecosystem.

1.   Tracking

Of course, the tracking must be the first pillar. Setting up the tracking accurately and extensively is the prerequisite to collect the right data for your customer acquisition machine. Make sure that the Facebook software development kit (SDK) for iOS, Android or JavaScript is added to your app. In this way, you will be able to measure installs and app events, to enhance the targeting options and re-engage users, inter alia. Moreover, if you aim at deep diving more into the campaign performance analytics (e.g., more dimensions and metrics) and especially you aim at getting the full aggregated picture across several ad networks, then you need to work with a Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP). In this way, you will be able to get analyses across all the acquisition channels, for example; some Facebook certified partners are Adjust and AppsFlyer. 

2.   Campaign structuring and bidding

The second pillar is the campaign structuring and bidding (structure and bidding go hand in hand). Facebook App Install ads must follow the industry best-practices of all the Facebook campaigns.

Firstly, you must decide which users to drive your mobile website and which users to drive to your mobile app. In order to maximize the overall profitability of your mobile campaigns, you must analyze the unit economics of different segments by comparing the average margin per user (AMPU) of mobile website audiences and of mobile app audiences segment by segment (e.g. by ages, interests, locations etc…).

When you know which audiences you will target with the app ads, you must generate different campaigns for different steps of the conversion funnel, from the bottom-of-the-funnel campaigns, i.e. custom audiences, to the top-of-the-funnel campaigns, i.e. lookalike audiences. Each campaign’s audience must be a disjoint set: the audience of one campaign must not overlap the audience of another campaign; in this way, you can precisely calibrate and control all the settings (bids, budget, placements, creative assets, etc…) for each audience. Moreover, each campaign’s audience must be large enough to report the minimum number of conversions needed for the oCPM bidding strategy algorithm (oCPM stands for optimized Cost-per-Mille; with the oCPM bidding strategy the ad is shown to people who are more likely to take your target action). In general, you need to feed the algorithm with at least 15 conversions per ad set per week (of course, the more data, the better for the smart algorithm). If there are not enough conversions to create an audience, then move backward in the conversion funnel; e.g., if there are not enough orders, then optimize based on items added to the carts.

Basically, you have to play with Venn diagrams to properly calibrate your granular structure. All in all, your Facebook mobile campaign engine must be set up and kept with a perfect system of checks and balances in order to drive the traffic to the most profitable users (mobile web vs. mobile app) and to collect the right data in a fully optimized and automated ecosystem (with not overlapping audiences and enough data for each audience).

As for your bottom-of-the-funnel campaigns, your custom audiences must be segmented enough; there is not a one-size-fits-all formula but, generally, you need 3-4 custom audiences. For example, you can segment your audiences according to the average basked value, the product/service category and the conversion funnel step. You could also firstly start with 1-2 custom audiences and secondly send out e-mails to these users to get to know them better and segment them further. If you have enough data, you must always avoid starting with a lump list. The custom audiences must always be at the core of your targeting options because the custom audiences are already connected to your products/services (e.g., they visited your page after reading a content marketing piece about your brand) and because the Facebook retargeting technologies are superior to the usual online retargeting technologies. In general, online retargeting technologies rely on cookies which are not 100% precise (e.g., there can be flaws when several users are sharing the same computer or when the users are moving among devices - desktop, mobile or tablet -) whereas Facebook targets real people cross-device. As for your top-of-the-funnel campaigns, Facebook has introduced the value-based Lookalike Audiences since June 2017. If you upload the Lifetime Value (LTV) of your current customers, then the smart algorithms will aim at reaching people with the highest probability of being valuable customers in the long term (e.g., users who will repeat the purchases).

Finally, after assembling the perfect campaign structure and bidding strategy, you can start fine-tuning your campaign set-up. For example, if you are risk adverse (or you are focusing more on ROI than on volume), then choose to target only users who are using Wi-Fi (with fast connections you are sure that the users can download your app after you paid for their click even if there a lot of data to download).

3.   Creatives and non-keyword ASO

The third pillar is the set of creatives and non-keyword ASO. Once you have laser targeted which audiences you want to talk with, you must decide how you want to talk with every single audience. You must overcome banner blindness: you have to find the right message for each target audience such that your ad will cut through the noise, will force the users to stop scrolling and will generate emotional responses. The variables you can change in the equation to maximize the CTR are the Ad Image, Headline, Ad Copy & CTA - Call to action -. Launch ads with punchy taglines, action-oriented descriptions and compelling, bright, eye-catching visuals (generally, if you use images or video where a mobile is shown, then the users will immediately realize that an app is promoted before even reading the USP -Unique Selling Proposition- and the CTA). The get insights for your creative asset starting point, you could also analyze the creatives of the direct and indirect competitors with tools like AdEspresso. Moreover, always think as a consumer: e.g., it might be worth testing the addition of a social proof in the ad copy (such as a well-known magazine where your app was featured) to minimize the perceived risk the users can have when they consider downloading your app. The better the starting point for your creative optimization, the faster you will find the optimum: the combination of creative variables which reach the global maximum in your CTR function. It is quite unlikely (close to impossible) that your starting point is equal your optimum. However, if your structure is properly built, then you will have campaigns which are granular enough to convey different messages to different buyer personas / target audiences but large enough to collect traffic and to rely on the analytics to refine your message by testing (e.g., probably with some audience you get more creative by using a fanciful tone).

Immediately after clicking on Facebook ads, the users land on your app store page. You must work on improving also your non-keyword ASO by fine-tuning the icon, screenshots and app description in order to capitalize on the additional traffic you won with the optimized creatives. 

4.   Testing

The last pillar is testing. Your customer acquisition machine will get momentum and traction if and only if you leverage statistical tests. The machine gears will rotate at full speed if you fuel the engine with the proper statistical tests for growth hacking and mapping (as a rule of thumb, never take a decision if the confidence level is lower than 95%).

In your team testing must be a recurrent task: always book some of your team’s time to tweak and test your targeting and creatives based on the reporting data. Actually, testing will increase the traffic you can acquire and convert on your site but testing will also reduce your CPC. For example, better creatives will drive a higher number of clicks and a lower CPC. In fact, the main factor in the function of the relevancy score is the CTR. The higher the CTR, the lower the actual CPC which results from the marketplace auctions. Therefore, you need to work on increasing the CTR with A/B significance test (or some variants like A/A/B tests). Of course, every time you increase the CTR of your ads, you must be sure that the Conversion Rate (CR) does not fall (it would be too easy to just increase the CTR by writing “100% discount today”, for example).

Regardless of which is the life stage of your campaigns (growth vs. maturity), always get creative and test. Creativity must explode not only in the ad design but also in the audience targeting. With behavioral analytics research you might find out that a specific behavior is strongly correlated to your final goal: for example, 90% of the users who bought your product also completed the tutorial on the app. With nonlinear user journeys, you need creativity to connect the dots. Moreover, copy and CTA testing is one of the weapons to combat ad fatigue by keeping your ads fresh.

Final thoughts

Based on the right tracking, campaign structuring, bidding strategy, creative assets and non-keyword ASO, you can set-up and put in motion potentially successful Facebook mobile App Install Ads. With a constant testing and decisions backed by the analytics, instead, you can drive your campaigns in the right directions. All the Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms will maximize their potential if and only if the campaigns are accurately built (Are the campaigns reaching the right audiences? Are they collecting enough data to make decisions? Etc…) and properly kept (an ongoing maintenance is needed also for the best cars). However, when establishing where you want to steer your campaigns, you must take into account that the goals of Facebook campaigns must be different from the goals of other channels. Why? Because the SEM users (as an example of pull marketing users) are already one step further in the conversion funnel (if they are looking for “buy a smartphone”, then their user intent is clear and they are ready to buy) while the Facebook users are generally at the very top of the conversion funnel (they are just scrolling their news feed without any clear purchase intent). Moreover, Facebook must not be evaluated as a standalone channel but in combination with the other channels in the portfolio. The best solution is a data-driven inter-channel attribution model which is factoring all the touch points (including ad impressions). In this way, you will be able to estimate how much is the actual impact of Facebook in your marketing mix; e.g. if a user is bombed with your Facebook ad impressions in the news feed in a specific time period, then he/she might eventually go directly to your site even without clicking on your Facebook ad or even if the “last click” is not on your Facebook ad.

In conclusion, if you want killer Facebook App Install ads, then the engineering of your customer acquisition machine must be based on tracking (including cross-channel correlations), structure, bidding strategy, creative assets, non-keyword ASO and the machine must be fueled with constant testing. With this machine, you can start capture more users for your mobile app and eventually increase the users’ engagement with your brand.