You could say that Twitter has seen better days when it comes to their growth rate, as many of the popular media outlets and analytical magazines are reporting that, Twitter’s user growth is in fact on a very thin line.
Despite more than doubling its revenues to $250m (£148m) in the first quarter, Twitter’s user growth is slowing and shares have plunged more than 10pc, it was announced on Tuesday. You can watch that small video report here.
However, there are roughly 200 million mobile users that are averaging 350 million tweets per day, which makes it a very appealing place to go to when it comes to advertising and marketing. Especially so, when we’re talking about marketing our own applications. Such a large mobile user base means only one thing, if people want/like your app - they’ll install it right away.
The first time we got to hear of the Mobile Install Ads was back in November, 2013 - BusinessInsider wrote an article which went into little bit of detail about the new platform, and how it’s being pushed out now, because Facebook reportedly has been able to make a huge revenue gain from offering the same way of advertising.
Just a couple of months later, Twitter finally announced the new way of advertising to the public. In their announcement, they clearly state that everything is being handled by the MoPub’s advertising exchange, which means that you’re able to expose your apps to more than 1 billion unique, mobile devices.
You can try and rely on 3rd party services to take care of all the marketing aspects for you, but you can also try and implement the following tips in order to create your own successful mobile advertising campaigns, which are guaranteed to boost your application downloads and installs the next day.
Know Your Audience / Demographics
Trying to advertise your application for every single Twitter user is not going to be a great start, and you’re most likely going to lose a lot of money along the way. You should beforehand know who your audience is, and where it is coming from. This can be easily achieved if you’re monitoring any sort of analytical activity of your website and product in general.
Don’t Invest Everything at Once
One of the most common rookie mistakes is that advertisers just want to pour thousands of dollars into a platform, and then expect millions of dollars in return revenue. This is not how it happens, and especially not in the market of mobile app installs. It’s a delicate market that should target only those people who’re genuinely interested in your product.
- Test the market multiple times, with different types of demographics and settings. Make sure to document everything, and only then begin to make bigger decisions.
- Create campaigns for multiple countries at the same time, with a low budget for each. See how much impressions and installs you’re getting.
- Combine all that newly found knowledge into more wise decisions for future campaigns. This is very crucial when it comes to big networks like Twitter and MoPub itself.
Call-to-Action on Your Images
Okay, now that all of that is out of the water, one thing that I’ve found very useful when it comes to maximizing the potential of my mobile install ads is very simple. I add call to action text on my images as well, because the ‘Download’ button is there by default. Anything as simple as ‘Install Now’, ‘Get This App’ will be sufficient enough to increase your overall CTR.
The problem: Twitter doesn’t treat images as genuine links, but it will trigger some attention within the user who clicked on the image, to make him further explore your application. It’s all about telling the user what to do, before he even does it.
Making the Most of Twitter Mobile Install Ads
At the moment, it’s a very delicate market, and there is yet to have any big development in this. I’ve only used these ads a couple of times myself, and from the overall experience and results, most of my installs have ended up costing me anywhere from $1 to $1.50 per install. I think that is a pretty good investment, given that you’re able to sustain that new customer for longer than a day or two.