Is CPI A Good Metric For Gauging The Success Of Your Mobile Apps?

By Lemley

mobile_app_marketing

The Importance of Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Method

There are numerous digital marketing methods you can use to promote your products. But when it comes to mobile apps, only a handful of those methods have proven to be successful. As an app developer, you care so much about raising awareness to your products and having them garner as many installs as possible within the shortest time span. To make that happen, you’ll need to choose the most practical marketing technique. That involves scouting for a competent publisher who will successfully drive your mobile app campaigns. The publisher must be a company that enjoys a long history of success.

Remember that the mobile app industry is a sector that mainly targets a sensitive consumer demographic. Most members of this demographic comprise of millennials whose shopping patterns are always unpredictable. As such, you deserve a publisher that can target their ads specifically to this market segment and appeal to their pain points. One of the fundamental questions you’ll need to ask your mobile app marketing network is the kind of product promotion techniques they use. At the very least, the publisher must employ mobile app marketing methods that deliver maximum value to the app developer at minimal expenditure. And that’s where Cost per Install marketing comes in.

CPI And Why You Need It

Cost per Install is a digital marketing technique where an app developer hires an ad publisher to market their products. The vendor only pays when these marketing campaigns result in real app installs. CPI marketing is, by far, the only successful mobile app promotion technique. That’s because it’s a performance-based model.

Think of it as a company boss who only pays his sales assistants based on the actual sales made as opposed to the efforts they put up in trying to push the products. Being a performance-based model, the ad publisher you hire for your CPI mobile app promotion campaigns will really exert themselves. That’s because they’re aware their earnings depend on the number of app installs they influence, and not just the traffic they drive to your website.

How Does CPI Compare to Other Similar Pricing Models?

  1. CPM

CPM denotes Cost per 1,000 impressions. It’s an impression-based pricing model where the price a publisher charges is determined by the number of impressions served. Generally, payments are made every 1,000 times that the commercial is shown to potential customers.

One advantage of CPM is that it serves to increase awareness of an app. Since the publisher gets their cut after every 1,000 impressions, they would endeavor to ensure they achieve that milestone within the shortest time possible.

However, increasing visibility to your app is as far as it goes. There’s never a guarantee that these potential customers will download your app. Besides, it’s difficult to track how many new impressions are made with CPM, considering most internet users have more than one online identity. So overall, CPM doesn’t guarantee real app installs.

  1. CPC

CPC implies Cost per Click. This is a click-based pricing model where you pay an ad publisher depending on the number of clicks their ads garner. Like CPM, CPC is a good way of increasing exposure to your mobile app. But as you probably already know, viewers clicking on an ad doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll install the app.

Indeed, most ad publishers have always leveraged this pricing model to their advantage. What they do is come up with visually-captivating ads that any online user would click and view. However, the publishers deliberately fail to attach the real product value to those ads. As such, viewers only click to get entertained. When it comes to the part where they should download the app, they close and exit the ad. Not because they’re disinterested in the product, but because the ad didn’t appeal to their pain points.

  1. CPA

CPA, or Cost per Action, is a pricing model where a vendor pays an advertising channel for specific actions that users complete. Examples of these actions include going through tutorials, registration, taking surveys, or making a purchase.

Though it bears some resemblance to the CPI pricing model, the CPA model still doesn’t guarantee that a user will install your app.

How Does CPI Marketing Differ?

The first fundamental difference between CPI and the other digital marketing models is that in CPI, you pay for what you see. Nearly all other performance-based models work to the advantage of the ad publisher.

Another advantage of CPI is that you can track the metrics using a trusted third-party system. Through CPI campaigns, you not only monitor the performance of your mobile apps. Instead, you can also draft an accurate advertising budget since there are no hidden charges involved.

The CPI marketing model is so designed that the app developer wins both ways. After allocating a budget to your ad publisher, you wait for them to influence real app downloads. When that happens, you pay them a commission based on the laid-down terms. But even if you don’t garner app installs, the ad campaigns will definitely boost the traffic to your website. With many users trooping to your site, your brand will gain more exposure as search engines now try to rank you higher on SERPs. But here’s the best part – you don’t pay for the number of traffic to your site. You can look at it like growing your audience without investing anything.

CPI also differs from other pricing models in that you can control when to stop campaigns from poorly-performing publishers. You only have to set timelines and milestones. And if the advertising network doesn’t meet those milestones, you can easily end the partnership and look for better-performing companies. Lastly, CPI is ideal for budding app developers with limited resources.

Even with only a single mobile app to your name, you can still dictate how much you allocate in promoting it.

CPI is undoubtedly the most reliable performance-based mobile app marketing technique. However, the success of your marketing campaigns still comes down to the company you hire. Experts recommend going for reputable marketing companies with a wider audience. MobieRanker is one of the best CPI marketing companies with access to millions of followers. The company endeavors to help its clients garner real app installs as it also seeks to rank those products higher in the App Store, for maximum exposure. You can buy iOS app installs with MobieRanker today as the first step towards giving your app the much-required visibility.

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