If you’re just optimizing for installs, you might get cheap traffic that doesn’t convert. Optimize for events like sign-up, tutorial completion, or even purchase—whatever your real KPI is. When marketing to gamers and app users, short videos (6–15 seconds) with clear, direct messaging usually outperform anything else. That means you need a plan that actually fits your product, budget, and goals.
Endorsements from influencers not only introduce a product or service but also foster a sense of credibility and reliability. If you’re a mobile game developer, acquiring new users has traditionally been your lifeblood, your essence of survival. Studios could also partner up with major publishers to conduct marketability tests and hope to achieve an extremely low CPI (cost per install) for their games – but those days are gone. This type of marketing involves the use of media channels to display direct response ads whose creativity encourages users to install apps. Every day, hundreds of thousands of new apps, products, and services are released, which naturally drives up and raises customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Creative development focuses on producing ads, landing pages, and app store assets that communicate the app’s value proposition. Effective creatives demonstrate what makes the app unique and why users should download it. These metrics help evaluate the efficiency of paid acquisition channels. Paid UA means fast, scalable, measurable growth via ads (in-app networks, programmatic/DSPs, social, app store ads, influencer campaigns). Successful UA strategies have advanced targeting, attribution, and engagement to reach the right users and keep them throughout the user journey. Positive reviews, user testimonials, and friend recommendations increase trust and credibility, making potential users more likely to search for and download your app.
Continuing to invest in generic TOFU informational content is a money pit when AI Overviews already answer those queries inside the search results page. Customer acquisition content that still drives pipeline in the AI era relies on comparison pages, use-case pages, original research, and integration content that AI summaries can’t easily replicate. A robust UA approach leverages insights from each phase to fine-tune campaigns, adapt to user behavior, and ultimately deliver high-quality outcomes.
In contrast, founder content that is primarily promotional performs poorly because it violates the implicit social contract that the audience signed up for. The founder’s job is to teach, observe, and share perspectives on their domain. The moment the content starts reading like a marketing channel or sales pitch rather than a genuine voice, the audience stops engaging (with acquisition value collapsing soon after).
Offer a reward when users complete onboarding, reach a usage threshold, or invite a teammate so the ask arrives at one of the customer journey touchpoints where enthusiasm is highest. Referred customers make 31-57% more referrals than non-referred ones, meaning a strong referral program compounds due to “referral contagion”. This reduces CAC for the initial cohort and generates more customers from those customers. Affiliate programs extend this logic beyond your existing customer base. Where referral programs incentivize customers to bring in peers, affiliate programs incentivize external partners to drive new users in exchange for a revenue share.
This measures how quickly new users take a meaningful action after acquisition (e.g., completing onboarding, making a purchase). A shorter time indicates effective onboarding and strong initial user experience. A low CAC indicates efficient acquisition, while a high CAC may signal the need to optimize channels or targeting. For the latest insights on user acquisition and engagement, check out the adjoe blog. Formats like interstitials, rewarded ads, offerwalls, and banners allow you to engage users in an environment where they’re already active, driving high-quality installs and awareness.
Partner with complementary businesses or influencers to tap into their user bases, offering mutual benefits. Users who have already shown interest in your product (by visiting your website, for instance) but haven’t converted are prime candidates for retargeting campaigns. Focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and ASO (App Store Optimization) to ensure your website or app ranks well in search results, driving organic traffic over the long term. The rapid pace of technological change means that businesses need to stay updated with the latest trends, platforms, and tools. Click fraud, bot traffic, and fake user registrations can skew metrics, leading to misallocated resources and inaccurate performance assessments. ARPU provides insights into the revenue generated per user and helps in understanding user profitability.
Data generally needs to be harvested before you need it since if you didn’t track it when it happened, it’s gone. According to AppsFlyer, only 5 to 7% of users make an in-app purchase. Alongside acquisition, the team works on keeping their new users engaged. They also collaborate with popular gaming influencers on Twitch, who play the game live, offering viewers a glimpse into the exciting gameplay.
More users mean more opportunities for in-app purchases, subscriptions, and ad-generated revenue. By attracting high-value users who are more likely to convert, a well-structured user acquisition campaign maximizes ROI. Different monetization models, such as freemium models, premium upgrades, and affiliate partnerships, depend on a strong user base to generate significant revenue. A steady influx of new users ensures consistent cash flow, supports business expansion, and helps sustain long-term growth. Apps with a large active user base can use their audience for brand partnerships, sponsorships, and additional revenue streams.
User acquisition experts eek out the customer lifetime value of the most engaged, loyal, and ultimately monetizable users. Also, when good users leave, savvy managers employ various methods to retarget and reactivate them. Analytics may help you understand your consumers’ characteristics, sources, and behaviors, so you can decide where to invest more time and money. The ability to separate your data by customer experience is crucial for managing your marketing efficiently. Ensure that you analyze your sales and marketing data for better results.
This approach safeguards both budget efficiency and campaign performance. Now more than ever, publishers need to begin with the entire user lifecycle in mind in order to keep portfolios profitable. Mistplay’s Loyalty Index, created for the 2023 Mobile Gaming Loyalty Report, aims to quantify it. Focusing on these KPIs can help publishers raise their game’s rating, leading to less churn and higher LTV17.
Below are the most important UA KPIs you need to track for your UA campaigns. If your mobile game has entertaining mechanics and meta layers that give players reasons to return, making ad creatives will be much easier. Try to find out what gameplay mechanic or which meta layer your players resonate with the most, and focus on making ad creatives around these ideas. These challenges transformed user acquisition into a more complex, and therefore more expensive, marketing strategy.
Tailor your messaging and marketing efforts to resonate with your audience demographics, ensuring your user acquisition strategy aligns with their interests and behaviors. When your mobile app user acquisition strategy depends entirely on app stores, your ad options shrink to Meta App Campaigns, Google App Campaigns, and Apple Search Ads. For mobile apps specifically, user acquisition is critical because scale directly impacts monetization potential. Whether an app generates revenue through in-app purchases, subscriptions, or advertising, having a large and active user base is essential for financial sustainability. User acquisition, commonly abbreviated as UA, is the process of attracting new users to a mobile app, website, service, or platform through marketing activities. While other industries might refer to this as customer acquisition, the mobile app ecosystem prefers the term “user” since not everyone who downloads an app becomes a paying customer.
The goal isn’t to add more AI tools, but to use AI strategically to simplify and enhance existing processes. Artificial Intelligence has changed user acquisition, offering unprecedented opportunities for optimization and scale. However, successful implementation requires understanding both its transformative potential and inherent limitations. Fire up those analytics tools to get a crystal-clear view of how your campaigns stack up against your goals and KPIs. Dive into the trends and insights to see which channels, messages, and offers are making your audience tick.
Mobile publishers are testing fewer games now but putting way more effort into user acquisition by employing expert teams and conducting never-ending UA tests across all suitable channels. User acquisition is a term often used by mobile marketers that refers to attracting users who (ideally) stick around and generate income for an app or game. It’s more of an umbrella term, as there are various marketing activities (be they organic or paid) you can employ to gain users. Increased visibility, potential revenue growth, enhanced app store ranking, and a larger loyal user base all result from acquiring new users. User acquisition platforms help marketers monitor, assess, and fine-tune their promotional efforts across diverse channels. User acquisition attracts new users to a product or service, while customer acquisition targets individuals likely to make a purchase.
All it takes for you is to publish a brief, and creators from CapCut will participate and submit ads. You then review the results and the creatives you approve auto-sync to your TikTok ad account. No personalization options, no proper A/B testing (Custom Product Pages help, but not much), and you can’t even warm users up before they decide to install.
Suitable for apps at various lifecycle stages, it offers a balanced approach to user acquisition. Userpilot’s product metrics benchmark report is an example of how we practice what we preach. It surveys hundreds of SaaS companies, produces benchmarks that product teams genuinely need, and then gates the full report behind an email form. This helps us capture leads from the exact prospects that the Userpilot product would be right for. The leads then convert because the report was built with our target readers’ interests at the forefront.
If the “summer_sale” campaign is bringing in high-converting users but the “influencer_collab” campaign isn’t, you know where to adjust your budget. This dimension allows you to track the performance of specific marketing campaigns. To use it effectively, you need to tag your inbound URLs with UTM parameters. Paid ads are great for speed and scale—but they’re not always sustainable long-term, especially if your product doesn’t monetize early or if you’re working with a tight budget. This one has exploded in the last 18 months—user-generated content from influencers now rivals traditional paid ads when it comes to driving installs and sign-ups.
You set a budget, bid strategy, and assets (text, images, videos), and Google handles the rest. Apple Search Ads Basic is a simple, automated option where you pay per install (CPI). Apple handles targeting, and your ad appears at the top of search results when users look for specific keywords. CAC measures how much you spend to get a customer to start generating revenue.
Simply put, user acquisition is the umbrella term that encompasses everything involved in getting more people to be aware of your business and converting them into customers. There are no guarantees in life, yet you want to get the most out of every dollar you invest in acquiring new customers. If you spend too much and the average amount you expect to receive from users in return over the time they use your product is not sufficient, you might as well have invested in a sinking ship. Working in product sometimes makes you feel like you’re a character in a Dungeons and Dragons game. So let me introduce you to the realm of user acquisition by being your dungeon master.
When your app is linked to an optimized page, blog posts, guides, or videos, it builds organic discoverability. Tracking critical KPIs, especially during the initial launch of a game, will enable you to make more strategic decisions. Maybe that snazzy ad creative isn’t pulling its weight, or perhaps some pages on your site are seeing too many visitors bounce. This typically involves a user signing up for a free trial or freemium version of a product. In return, the company now has personal information and another channel for engagement with the consumer. In 2006 I started my career as market analyst for a corporation of Germany´s public broadcasting system.
There’s a multitude of channels out there, but not all will be right for your app. This method, centered on ASO, boosts natural discovery and loyalty and reduces reliance on paid advertising. A handful of strategies executed consistently will perform better than spreading yourself too thin trying to juggle the full dozen. Use these four criteria to identify which strategies fit your needs.
If you’re not in mobile gaming and your product has a web component—think SaaS, finance apps, productivity tools—content marketing is a powerful long-term channel. Audience targeting is still a strength, despite the privacy changes post-iOS 14.5. You can go broad and let Meta’s algorithm optimize for installs or in-app events, or use lookalike audiences based on your best users. When you get your user acquisition strategy right, everything else gets easier—retention, monetization, and long-term growth.
Selecting the proper acquisition channels can make or break your user acquisition goals. These channels are generally divided into paid and organic options, each with unique pros and cons. For a comprehensive guide to building and executing mobile user acquisition strategies, see Adapty’s Mobile User Acquisition Guide. Define clear goals by establishing specific, measurable targets for user acquisition.
One of the lesser-discussed benefits of mastering what user acquisition is is app store visibility. App store algorithms take several factors into account when ranking apps, including download volume, engagement levels, retention rates, and user reviews. A successful user acquisition strategy drives an influx of new downloads, increasing an app’s ranking and making it more visible to potential users searching within the app store. Higher rankings not only improve discoverability but also create a snowball effect, which means that users tend to download apps that appear at the top of search results.
User acquisition is critical for the success of digital products, with various channels available for reaching potential customers. Both organic and paid user acquisition strategies have their advantages, but a balanced approach is often most effective in achieving business goals. This example demonstrates how a thoughtful and adaptable user acquisition strategy can lead to tangible results in the mobile app and gaming industry. User acquisition strategies are essential for any business looking to grow its customer base and achieve long-term success. These strategies involve a combination of digital marketing, content creation, referral programs, partnerships, and user experience optimization to attract and convert new users.
As you can see, both organic and paid user acquisition strategies have their advantages and disadvantages. To determine which one is Dragalinos user acquisition resources right for you, evaluate your goals, budget, and resources. Focus on creating valuable content that attracts users to your product.