mobile app advertising

Mobile app advertising: Best practices to generate high ROI

If you’re going to gain the attention of today’s consumer, you need to move fast. This is where mobile app advertising can give you an edge. Mobile app advertising allows you to create smaller, stronger interactions with customers. It can help you close a sale while the customer is out shopping or gain brand awareness through video content. The top three best practices for mobile app advertising are designed around creating an impactful user experience during the small window of opportunity for a sale.

advertising with mobile appsThere are a lot of benefits to mobile app advertising, but there are also a few challenges. Mobile is popular and is reaching market saturation. That means that advertising in the segment is also starting to mature. Just about every major brand offers an app to their customers, but consumers only use a limited number of apps. Brands that want to get the best ROI from their mobile app marketing strategies need to focus on creating strong, timely messages.

Best Practice #1: Mobile App Advertising Should Focus on the Experience

Today, there are millions of apps available, but one thing has remained consistent since back when choices were limited: Consumers love games. The mobile app market will be worth about $189 billion by 2020, and 55% of that revenue is expected to come from games. Smart marketers can use the popularity of games to gain mobile app users. Making apps fun and functional doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are a few simple ways to do it, and improve the customer experience using mobile apps.

  • Reward users for generating content: This is a good option for retailers in that it encourages visits to a location. Users might “check in” or even take a photo of themselves in exchange for a coupon or other benefit.
  • Create UPC scavenger hunts: A fun way to get a customer engaged with your product can be in scavenger hunt form, in that they receive some kind of shopping reward for scanning the UPCs of certain products as they find them in the store.
  • Consider augmented reality: Augmented reality (AR) took off with “Pokemon Go” and advertisers have since found ways to capitalize on the public’s enthusiasm for AR. Consider IKEA’s Place app, which allows users to overlay a piece of furniture into their own living space using their phone’s camera. This is fun for the user, but it’s also functional as it helps them decide between styles. This was such a clever idea, it became the number one most downloaded branded app in 2016, with just more than 6 million installs.

Mobile app advertising needs to be all about the user experience. These users have the option to download or not download your app. Often the key to getting those downloads is creating a fun user experience. That being said, you shouldn’t ignore tried-and-true mediums as well, such as video.

Best Practice #2: Leverage Video When Advertising in Mobile Apps

Video represents 73% of all Internet traffic now, and mobile video viewing is rapidly overtaking desktop viewing. Ideally, any mobile app advertising program will take this into account when it comes to hosting content. Video advertising has the highest click-through rate of all advertising and, in certain circumstances, offers an increase in conversions of up to 80%. There are a number of ways to take advantage of the popularity of video, including:

  • Non-advertising videos: Not all video has to be advertising. A good way to humanize a brand, create brand awareness, and connect with viewers is to offer how-to videos or an inside look at your company.
  • Sponsoring content: Red Bull sponsors the content of more than a few extreme sports celebrities, which is how they’re able to offer branded content without having to create it themselves. Brands can do this on a smaller scale by offering products for review or working with popular YouTube personalities.
  • Mix media: Adding a video to a text-based article or via social media can be a good way to reach new audiences while also leveraging the power of video. About
    500 million people watch videos on Facebook every day, while 82% of Twitter users have viewed a video on the platform.

Video needs to be incorporated into your mobile advertising strategy if you’re going to get the best possible ROI. Video viewers have higher conversion rates and are more likely to make a purchase than non-viewers. You can boost that conversion likelihood by teaming that video with another necessary component of mobile advertising: geo-locating.

Best Practice #3: Travel with the Customer in Mobile Apps

It’s not enough that mobile apps are on a consumer’s phone, they also need to connect with customers at the right time. One of the main reasons consumers don’t use their rewards programs is because they don’t remember they’re members. The most successful rewards programs, however, have gotten around this by turning to mobile and some, like shopping apps such as Shopkick, are designed to discreetly notify the user that they’re in a location where rewards are available.

For example, an app user goes to the store. The second they enter, geolocation technology notifies them that they received a reward just for walking in the door. This puts the user in a positive mindset, as they’ve been rewarded for something they would have done anyway. It also encourages them to take out their mobile device and use the app.

The most successful rewards programs … are designed to discreetly notify the user that they’re in a location where rewards are available.

The ability to travel with the consumer allows the app to taper its interactions to the most critical moments and allows it to get the consumer’s attention without pestering them when they are attending to something else.

Using fun advertising that leverages video and allows you to time your messages are key components of a mobile app advertising strategy. The best shopping apps are designed to use all of these components together. Brands can post their video advertisements and use geolocation to reach out to a consumer at the right moment. They can also provide the user experience needed to keep customers coming back to a brand.

Shopkick provides an app to our partners that allow them to consolidate their mobile efforts while seeing a strong ROI. For more information, contact us.

Photos courtesy dolgachov, Dean Drobot.

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Dima Volovik

EVP of Product and Engineering

Dima Volovik is the EVP of Product and Engineering at Trax Retail — Shopkick.

Dima Volovik is the accomplished product and engineering leader who led teams to deliver innovative and commercially successful e-commerce products, marketplaces, and enterprise solutions for Amazon, Comcast, Fandango, and Universal Music. Before joining Trax, Dima was the Director at Amazon, where he led product development and Engineering for Amazon Appstore and Amazon Prime Video, CTO at Fandango, and Paciolan, head of technology at Golf Channel/Golf Now, and Global VP of Direct to Consumer Technology at Universal Music Group. Dima’s expertise includes developing consumer products, marketplaces, and enterprise solutions.

Dima grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he received his MS in Electrical Engineering from Azerbaijan Oil Academy, and he currently resides in Los Angeles, California, with his family.