We know that there are millions of apps offering many different value propositions in the app stores, and as app marketers, it is your job to shine amongst others. We know that it is a difficult task to pull off but with the right strategy, it is very much possible. That is why you need a rock-solid user acquisition strategy for growth, especially in one of the most competitive app categories, Finance.
Mobile app marketing professionals of finance apps, get your seats. Today, we will utilize our Ad Intelligence tool to discover the ad strategies of top advertisers in the finance category.
Stepping-Stones of Building a Successful App Marketing Campaign
The very first step must be identifying the field of competition. What are the standards of your app category? Who are the big players? Who are your top competitors? What are their weak and strong points?
Without this data, you cannot talk about a successful mobile app marketing campaign. There are several ways of answering these questions.
Let’s say you want to know who are the top finance apps and uncover your competitors.
Keyword Explorer is one way to do this. You can see the total number of apps ranking for keywords you use or plan to use, and which apps are ranking organically for those keywords. It also shows which apps received the highest impression share in Apple Search Ads for the searched keyword.
Or you can utilize our Top Advertisers feature to see which apps are dominating the mobile ad space for your category by filtering according to the platform, ad channels, region, and date.
In this way, you can see the apps leading the paid marketing for your category. And if you are planning to focus on specific platforms, ad networks, or direct competitors, you can determine your competitors more accurately by applying advanced filters.
Now that you know how many apps you will be competing with, who are the best performers, and who are your top competitors, you can start digging deeper: How did these apps reach success with their ad campaigns, and what can you learn from them?
Learn the Benchmarks of Mobile Advertising in Your Category
The next step is to understand the strategy of your competitors. Which Ad Networks do they prefer? How many ad creatives do they run and in which format? Which regions are more competitive?
Vungle, Admob Facebook, Applovin, and Apple Search Ads step forth as the most popular Ad Networks for Finance Category as of March 2021.
What this data tells us is that top advertisers in the finance category believe that the relevant users can be reached out more efficiently from these networks. So, as an app marketer who promotes a finance app, this data should apply to your app as you all target the same userbase.
Top mobile advertising Finance apps are working with 8 ad networks on average. You must have heard the saying “Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket.” It is one of the most popular financial advice out there and it shouldn’t be surprising that Finance apps too are following this advice in their strategies.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the ad strategies of finance apps by analyzing the #1 advertiser of February 2021 in the finance category.
Crypto.com sent 20% of their ad creatives to Molocoads however, Molocoads distributed the ad creatives among other ad networks. We can see a rather large portfolio of various ad networks, gaining insights on these apps’ budget allocations. However, rather than a snapshot, analyzing the trends for impressions across networks is also critical for gaining a better perspective.
As you can see, there has been a significant decrease in the impressions Crypto.com receives from Facebook. We can see a shift in impressions from Facebook to Mopub and Ironsource. By analyzing the top publishers, you can save a lot of time and money rather than blindly testing different acquisition channels.
Another crucial aspect is, of course, localization. You should adjust your ad creatives according to the regions you target and operate. Above, we see three examples for this matter. Since Voyager operates solely in the United States, they run ads in the United States and utilize English only. Mitrade operates in more countries and significantly targets Thailand as we see here so they heavily utilize Thai along with English and Vietnamese. Lastly, we have Binance which operates in 140 countries and you can see how colorful their language chart is.
Successful apps localize their ad creatives to deliver their messages more accurately and so should you.
Top 10 Advertising Finance apps ran on average 3425 ad creatives in the last month.
As seen above, Html was the absolute favorite of finance apps. Nearly 90% of the ad creatives were in this format.
Unlock User Motivations with Creative Analysis
After defining your competition and understanding the benchmarks for your category, you should now spend some serious time studying the top creatives in your niche.
However, it is pretty much impossible to track your competitors’ ad creatives without proper ad intelligence. You may try to hire someone, just to sit and watch ad creatives all day, or you can simply use MobileAction’s Ad Intelligence to discover the top-performing creatives in your category instantly.
Luckily, we have just the tool for this matter and it is a real-life-saver: Top Creatives
For our case today, we set the filters to see the top ad creatives that are on the iOS platforms in the United States for January 2022. We did not narrow the search by choosing a specific media format but if your research requires a special focus for a format, you could.
As seen, Crypto.com kind of dominating this race. They have 6 of the top 10 most-seen ad creatives of the Finance Category in January.
Let’s take a closer look at top ad creatives to build a roadmap for our own. This time we will be searching for answers to the following questions.
- What kind of messages or value propositions they feature?
- How are these messages or value propositions delivered?
- How can we utilize these properties in our own ad creatives?
Crypto coins are getting more and more significant for world finance, and they are getting recognized by more people every day. Where to buy and sell crypto coins is a crowd-pulling subject so highlighting that your app and crypto platform is the best place for these actions while showing your user interface, might be an effective way to engage users.
We mentioned that image and Html formats are good for delivering the entire message, and are highly utilized in the Finance category. As you can see, image texts and presentation of the user interface are common ad creative strategies among finance apps. If you offer features as valuable as annual rewards and more money, be sure to tell your users about them. Money is still a hot topic.
Don’t you think that this video is more memorable than a dull image with text? eToro still showcased its user interface and talked about its value propositions, while utilizing a video ad creative. As seen, delivering messages is exclusive to image and Html formats. Video ad creatives can do the same and can actually bring higher TTRs. You just have to spend a little more time on them to make them catchy and riveting.
Ad creatives are one thing but let’s talk about a really hot topic: Coinbase advertising with a QR at the Superbowl 56.
Coinbase spent 14 million to air this old DVD Opening screen for a minute during the Superbowl. Result? They got 20 million hits during that minute. And keep in mind that there was no brand, no Coinbase logo, no nothing. There was just a color-changing QR and it was enough to direct 20 million people to their website. This is the definition of clever marketing.
Moreover, their advertisement was original and interesting enough to make a sound and although their website crashed after receiving 20 million hits, they managed to reach out to even more people via social media due to people who talked about their advertisement.
Apple Search Ads
As mentioned above, Apple Search Ads is one of the most popular advertising platforms among finance apps. Moreover, you can’t talk about a holistic app marketing campaign without it because if you don’t use Search Result Campaigns, you are missing out on a lot of high-intent, valuable users considering the fact that most downloads occur after a search in the app store.
So, let’s check out some of the most popular paid keywords for finance apps.
As you can see above, the keyword “Crypto” has a search popularity score of 60, which means that it is highly searched by users. Again, Crypto.com seems to dominate the impressions shares for this keyword.
“Trade” might be a relevant keyword for your finance app. As you can see, there are more than 18k apps ranking for this keyword. However, only 13 apps are running Apple Search Ads.
Don’t forget that your efforts for ASO and ASA will complement each other. If your organic ranking is high, you will have a better chance of winning impressions in Apple Search Ads. And if you win the bids, you will have better organic rankings since download volume is an important metric in determining your organic ranking. You see how holistic it is, don’t you?
Bidding on your competitors’ keywords is another useful Apple Search Ads strategy. Assume that a user searched for “Binance”, and your app appeared at the top. It means that you reached out to that user just before his/her final decision and you can perform a steal.
Remember, if you are offering similar value propositions, you are targeting the same users. And neither you nor your competitors can have it all, but you can grow your share of that user base.
We hope that this article gave you some ideas about how to build a successful marketing campaign for a finance app. You must have seen how easy and efficient it is to get insights about the competition and improve your strategies with our Ad Intelligence tool. We came to the end of this article but our collaboration doesn’t need to end here. Schedule a demo with our experts today to learn more about the value that MobileActioin can create for your app!
