It can be challenging to find ways to stand out amongst the competition when it comes to advertising on mobile. That’s why it’s essential to optimize your marketing campaigns. It’s also important to look for innovative ways to engage with your prospects. For existing users, top apps already utilize push notifications containing timely messaging and a specific value proposition to bring people back to the app.
But what if there was a way you could create that same type of timely connection through the App Store with someone who’s never even downloaded your app? Something even more targeted than a season-long event or a holiday campaign. Let’s take a look at what you could achieve with hyper-contextual event-based marketing through MobileAction’s SearchAds.com platform and our dayparting feature.
Why You Should Use Hyper-Contextual Event-Based Marketing to Attract New Users Through the App Store
We’ve written before about how Apple Search Ads are a great way to create custom campaigns that target specific use cases. By making custom product pages, you can craft a uniquely relevant and seamless experience that grabs someone’s attention the very instant that they’re thinking about downloading an app. Where hyper-contextual event-based marketing through the MobileAction platform comes into play is by strategically using our tools to design some of your Apple Search Ads campaigns to align with popular events. Within our platform, you can schedule to increase your bids for relevant keywords on the exact days and at the exact times when it would have the most impact.
Let’s take a look at a specific example and talk about the NBA Playoffs. By the start of the Conference Finals, the game days, start times, and TV channels are known for both the Conference Finals and the Finals. That means that if your app has any use cases that could possibly relate to an NBA game, you could create hyper-contextual custom product pages with messaging that references the specific teams playing and decide to bid enough to run an ad variation with that custom product page solely for the duration of an individual basketball game.
This strategy can be useful for a wide variety of apps:
- Engage with content creators, highlights, or post-game podcasts on TikTok, YouTube, and Spotify.
- Buy apparel and other merchandise from a retailer for your favorite team or player.
- Feed your viewing party with dinner and drinks in time for the game.
- Travel to watch the game with your friends and family.
- Bet on the specific game you’re currently watching.
- Learning more about sport strategy from books.
- Spotlight narrative and documentary basketball films on streaming services.
- Mobile games to play on your second screen during the game that is on theme or work as counter-programming.
- Highlighting that you can meet other fans through dating apps.
And this is just one example. Think of other events that are enjoyed by millions of people at once that you might want to time a campaign with, like the series finale of a beloved TV show. It’s easy to find messaging that would be ideal to use during an upcoming big event, and focused messaging has the opportunity to stand out right as someone is thinking about downloading an app.
Identify the Best Keywords
Once you’ve decided you have an event in mind and features that you want to highlight, the next step is to identify which keywords you want to target. If your app is related enough, you can target branded keywords for yourself, competitors, or the event itself. But it’s still good to use our ASO Intelligence to look at apps you think will be popular during that time frame to see which keywords with a higher volume you want to spend your resources on. You can also take a look at the chance to see how easy it would be to rank in the top 10 organically for that keyword.
The keyword NBA has a high volume and is aligned with apps you would expect to be popular during an NBA broadcast on TNT, ESPN, or ABC.
With your keywords selected, you can investigate which other apps are already bidding on the relevant Apple Search Ads.
See how competitive your is and how many apps are currently running Apple Search Ads on it.
See which ads are getting the most Apple Search Ads impressions for both your target keyword and for all of an app’s paid campaigns combined.
Even if quite a few apps are advertising for your target keyword, the benefit of live event marketing is that you only need to boost your bid for as many hours during and around the event as you want.
Design Your Custom Product Page to Take Full Advantage of Timely Marketing
A lot of companies have ad variations for Apple Search Ads, creating a multi-placement strategy to increase an app’s exposure throughout the entire App Store journey and reduce cost per acquisition. But companies often don’t take advantage of the fact that you can make up to 35 unique custom product pages and easily link them to any relevant ad variations for campaigns.
TikTok runs multiple NBA-themed Apple Search Ads campaigns but does not have a custom product page with unique messaging dedicated to sports or basketball.
It’s no surprise that TikTok would advertise on the NBA keyword, given the number of highlights and other content the app features for the league. TikTok even highlights how to advertise on its platform during sporting events. Many of those same techniques could also be utilized for Apple Search Ads by leveraging MobileAction’s SearchAds.com platform. They could create a custom product page highlighting content a basketball fan would find interesting. It’s one thing to say you have videos for every mood; it’s another thing to have creatives showcasing that you can see highlights if you missed the game, unique footage, and post-game commentary about how Nikola Jokić and Jimmy Butler performed.
FanDuel runs NBA-related Apple Search Ads but could also create custom product pages around specific NBA games.
Imagine FanDuel showing creatives talking about specific bets you could make for Game 1 of the NBA finals that are specifically shown to someone right before the game starts and then switching to showcase that it’s not too late for in-game bets after the game is underway.
The Benefits of Hyper-Contextual Event-Based Marketing Through SearchAds.com
MobileAction’s SeachAds.com platform empowers you with the unique ability to schedule your Apple Search Ads campaign bids for specific days, specific times, and as either a one-off or recurring event.
Use MobileAction’s dayparting feature to schedule hyper-contextual event-based marketing campaigns or other Apple Search Ads campaigns that are most relevant to your business at certain times.
Our automation tools make this process easy to set up without time-consuming manual adjustments. You can optimize your campaigns to increase your budget and display your campaigns during your preferred time for the event, implement daily budgets to ensure you don’t spend too much at once, and optimize your spending for the goals that are most important to you — including in-app events like making a first purchase.
Mobile marketers are always looking for new ways to generate new downloads and increase ROI. With hyper-contextual event-based marketing, you can tailor your messaging to be more actionable and timely than ever before on the App Store — creating a uniquely relevant and seamless experience that grabs someone’s attention at the very instant that they’re thinking about downloading an app.
MobileAction provides comprehensive app store marketing intelligence and seamless AI-powered Apple Search Ads campaign management. Backed by our vast dataset of 5+ million tracked keywords and a library of 70+ million ad creatives from 50+ ad networks, our solutions help you drive more downloads effectively. Maximize your app’s success and make data-driven decisions with the MobileAction platform.
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