How to get Guaranteed Downloads for your App - A Step-by- Step Guide Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Jul 12, 2015
How to get Guaranteed Downloads for your App - A Step-by-Step Guide
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Before you start,
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To
Getting 5,000+ Downloads
in 2 Days
Using Ninja Tactics
http://eepurl.com/1xx-r
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Over the last few years if there is one lesson I have learned in business, it is to make sure that I know who
my ideal target user or target customer really is.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
While I was the first employee and in-charge of product marketing and product management at a Silicon Valley startup, I believed that it was good to target as many …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… people as possible. I was afraid to leave out some segments of the market because I believed that if I
targeted more people I would get more users …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… and downloads for our app.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
This approach was a huge disaster.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Our company spent thousands of dollars trying to acquire users and every user we acquired cost us about $7.87. We were making about $1.25 per user in revenue at that time.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
We would have seen better returns if we actually stopped trying to acquire users and if we invested that
money in some good dividend stocks.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
We were pretty dumb during those days so we actually continued losing money like this for quite a long time
till we had a lucky breakthrough.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
The Breakthrough
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This breakthrough not only changed the way we did business, but it also changed our financials. We were
now able to acquire users for as low as $0.75.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This basically meant that we could completely exhaust the available potential user base in the channel and we
would always be profitable.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This was just like putting $0.75 through one end of the pipe and pulling out $1.25 from the other.
So what was this breakthrough and how did we really get there?
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This was a totally unexpected and a lucky breakthrough for us. It basically resulted from my attempts to figure out
which of my Facebook ads were performing best.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
We had extremely high clickthrough rates for the ads which were targeting freelancers and also the app download and
sign up rate was almost 5X how the general ads were doing.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Key Takeaway: Our biggest takeaway from this was that not all audiences are created equal. Some people will
really love your app and some people will …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… just not care about your app. It is your job to first identify who will love your app and only then start
scaling up your marketing efforts.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Once we figured out what our ideal target audience looked like, we were getting thousands of downloads everyday. Some days we would stop all our ads and …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… we would still have hundreds of downloads for our app organically.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Guaranteeing Downloads for an App
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
The biggest problem most app marketing campaigns face is that when you launch a new campaign you usually do not have any idea if the campaign is going to do well or not.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
You can fix this problem to a large extent by first figuring out if the channel you are targeting has your
ideal audience in it.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Your Action Plan To Guarantee Downloads
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Now that you know how you can guarantee if a particular marketing strategy is going to get you downloads, let us
take a look at how you should approach this for your app.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Step 1: Figuring out your ideal target audience demographics
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This step involves identifying the websites which have a similar theme as your app. For example, let’s say you have
a Zombie game app, …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… look for websites or forums focused on Zombies. Note down their names and go to Alexa.com and enter the
domain of the site you are trying to research.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
The free account on Alexa will give you limited information but you can sign up for the paid account and cancel it
within 7 days if you cannot afford the paid version.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This should give you a good high level idea of the kind of people who are interested in Zombies. This information is not very detailed so let’s look at the next step to further
refine this.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Step 2: Identifying the interests of your target audience
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
To do this you need to have a Facebook account. Log into your FB account and in the search field on the top, type in
“People who like <your theme>”. For our example …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… this would be “People who like zombies”. While you type this in, FB will actually show you a few
recommendations. Note those down.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Once you type this in and hit enter, you will see a list of people who like your theme. On the right side of the
search results you have a few filters.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Use these to filter for the demographics of the people you are really interested in based on your research on Alexa.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
You should now have a list of people who have the kind of demographics which you want and are also interested in
your theme. Go through this list and …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… identify the people who do have less than 100 -200 likes. Your goal now is to find other possible interests for your
target audience. For example people who like …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… vampire games might be interested in Twilight or some other vampire novel/ movie/ toy which you don’t know
about. You are trying to uncover these interests.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Step 3: Narrowing Down on the Target Audience
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
After you identify the interests, you will notice that you will typically have different variety of interests. e.g. If
you have a jewelry shopping app, you will notice that …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… based on Step 1 and Step 2 the potential target audience will have interests in Fashion related things, Jewelry Related things, Coupons/Deals related things.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Now my job is figure out which of these people are the best for my app. For this I use FB ads.
Log in to your Facebook account on a laptop/desktop and …
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… click on “Manage Ads” in the drop down which opens up when you try to sign out.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Once you are in the ad manager, click on “Create Ad”. You will have to create a separate campaign for each of these
group of interests which you identified in Step 2.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
You should NOT just create separate ads, you have to create separate campaigns.
You can setup something like $10 for each campaign and let these ads run for a couple of days.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
You will immediately start noticing that one interest group does much better than others. This is your ideal
target audience.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Step 4: Implementing a Proven Marketing Strategy
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This is the third and final step in getting downloads. You need to pick a strategy which is reliably re-creatable,
allows you to access your target audience and can scale.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
I have created a free guide for one such strategy and you can download it by visiting the page mentioned below:
http://eepurl.com/1xx-r
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
P.S Do you have any other strategies to identify your target audience or to guarantee downloads? Comment
and let me know.
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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association