User acquisition strategies that work in the current age of privacy and regulations

You’ve spent a small fortune getting your game created, developed, and launching it to market, but you’re now faced with the daunting challenge: acquiring new users and keeping them engaged.

Have you got a User Acquisition (UA) strategy that works for your product?

If you haven’t already, don’t stress! We have put together a few tips on a UA strategy that works, taking into consideration the current state of mobile app privacy and regulation. 

A key metric to look out for in paid ad conversions are how many users install as a result of the paid ad campaign and the resources your devote to creative production will play a significant role in the success of the campaign. 

Ad creatives should be worked on and optimized (A/B testing) to ensure the best quality ads are in front of your prospective users at each stage of the customer journey. The good news is there are now highly intelligent automated platforms to help analyze performance and optimize for each user cohort. Playable ads, for instance, have skyrocketed in popularity for hyper casual advertisers for two reasons:

1. It provides users an interactive element – the ability to demo gameplay before download. 
2. It provides marketers with advanced A/B testing and iteration technology. Some creative production platforms provide no-code optimization and an easy way to swap out or introduce particular elements that may be resonating with a player or segment. 

Targeting

Targeting and personalization are also essential in where your ads are featured and which demographics are consuming them. IDFA deprecation has led to new methods of targeting such as behavioural interest modelling technology. This helps businesses remain compliant with user privacy and through dynamic creative optimization technology (DCO) to better target user preferences. 

Contextual advertising is also an important factor in reaching the right audience,  so having ad content that is accurately placed on web pages that complement the content of your ad – for example, having an ad that promotes a theme-park style game, would perfectly sit as an ad on a theme park’s web page – contextual is a smart way target users by the content that they consume and its placement would pique the interest of audiences to download or convert.

Targeting ads are another way to drive your proposition at multiple touchpoints within a prospect’s awareness lifecycle.  Since the IDFA deprecation, retargeting has been more of a challenge for marketers. Access to direct user data for personalization ads is no longer possible, other forms of targeting are now the focus point – Limited Ad Tracking (LAT), introduced by Apple enables users to opt-out of identifiers for advertisers. As such, retargeting is adversely affected as this data cannot be used cross-platform. 

However, re-engagement is less expensive than user acquisition and is still an important tool, but if users do not opt-in, marketers will need to rely on either probabilistic or contextual data for the retargeting of campaigns.

With the changes to privacy across iOS and Android devices, the method and way in which companies target users have been changing within the last couple of years.  

Be it ad creatives, communications, or creating and maintaining homegrown first-party customer lists, there are other methods of retargeting that work. These include targeting high LTV (lifetime value) user segments who pay for your app/game – so feeding them with regular well-timed content, keeps them engaged and paying – with opportunities to up and cross-sell even further. You can also retarget new users who install your app, and in turn, communicate and reward these users to reduce potential churn rates.

App Store Optimization (ASO)

Getting your game or app on an AppStore is one thing, but App Store Optimization (ASO) is equally important, considering that app stores are still the main driver of app discovery. Optimization efforts should include; title tags with top keywords included, catchy screenshots, and witty ad descriptions that work well. Localized text and keywords are also very effective for acquiring new users. A/B testing page elements is also a final litmus test before you settle on a winning combination and optimization efforts.