- Activation
- not installs
- Day 30
- the number that matters
- Attribution
- harder since ATT
Mobile App Marketing
Install counts are a vanity metric. An install that never activates costs you acquisition budget and a store review. We measure to activation and retention, which changes what campaigns are worth running.
- Metric choice
- It changes every downstream decision.
Why installs are the wrong target
Optimise for cost per install and you will find cheap installs. They come from users with low intent who churn within a week, which inflates your acquisition numbers and depresses everything downstream — retention curves, review scores, lifetime value.
Optimising for activation or retained user costs more per install and less per actual customer. It also forces attention onto the post-install funnel, where most apps lose the majority of their users in the first session and where nobody is usually looking.
- 7 areas
- One body of work, not a menu.
What’s included
Acquisition strategy
Channel mix across paid social, search, networks and store search, measured to retained users rather than installs.
Attribution setup
Post-ATT measurement using SKAdNetwork, incrementality testing and modelled attribution, since deterministic tracking is largely gone on iOS.
Onboarding and activation
The first-session funnel, which is where most apps lose users and where the cheapest gains sit.
Retargeting and re-engagement
Bringing lapsed users back, usually far cheaper than acquiring new ones and usually under-invested.
Push and lifecycle messaging
Retention messaging that is useful rather than nagging, since aggressive push is a leading cause of uninstalls.
Store presence
ASO as the organic foundation under paid acquisition.
Cohort analysis
Retention by cohort and source, which is how you discover that your cheapest channel produces your worst users.
- Common questions
- Asked on most first calls.
Questions
How do you measure attribution after Apple’s privacy changes?
A combination of SKAdNetwork, incrementality testing and media mix modelling. Less precise than the old model, and anyone claiming deterministic iOS attribution is misrepresenting how it works now.
What retention rate should we expect?
It varies enormously by category. What matters more is your own trend and how it differs by acquisition source, which is usually more revealing than any benchmark.
Should we buy installs to boost ranking?
Paid acquisition can help break into the install-velocity loop. Incentivised or fraudulent installs will not, and both stores act against them.
Our install numbers are fine but revenue is flat.
Then the problem is post-install, not acquisition, and more budget will make it worse. That is where we would start.
Do you handle app development?
No. Strategy, acquisition, measurement and optimisation. Development we refer.
- Related
- Often scoped alongside this.
Related services
App Store Optimization
Title, keywords, creative and reviews across both stores.
App Conversion Optimization
The gap between people who see your app and people who use it.
Mobile Advertising
In-app and mobile web inventory with post-install measurement.
Social Media Advertising
Meta, LinkedIn and YouTube with creative testing built in.
- Next step
- We look at your site before the call.
Start with a free audit
An automated crawl plus a 30-minute walkthrough of what we can see from outside your site. If what you need isn’t something we do well, we’ll tell you.