Health & Fitness category has become more and more crowded. Numerous apps with great features have been released, therefore, there is a need for a well-structured user acquisition strategy in this category to step up and take a place. In this blog, we will be covering the best user acquisition strategies held by the Top 10 Advertising Health & Fitness apps in the U.S. storefront for February 2023.
Top advertising apps that perform in App Store are mostly differentiated from the ones which perform in Google Play Store. Therefore, we will be talking about the apps that managed to rank themselves in the top 10 on both platforms, which are; Breeze: Mental Health, Calm, and BetterMe: Health Coaching.
Let’s move on to the top advertising health & fitness apps on both platforms, and take a better look at their user acquisition strategies.
Breeze: Mental Health
Breeze: Mental Health provides an advanced level of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy and mood-tracking features. Moreover, it gives information about psychological disorders and guides its users about how to identify them based on sets of actions and mood swings.
As ironic as it may sound, their success relies on how they distribute their ads, which they distribute on social media platforms.
Even though it has been proven many times that social media is one of the main causes of psychological disorders in today’s world, it is also a fact that you should display the cure to the ones who may need it. This is why Breeze: Mental Health doing an excellent job in its user acquisition strategies.
Unfortunately, taking care of psychological needs is not considered a main priority in many countries, especially in the ones that are not financially stable. With that being the case, ad distribution of the app which has a similar purpose as Breeze: Mental Health, mainly covers markets that have enough financial power and knowledge about the importance of mental health.
Their ad creatives get impressions mostly in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. However, when we go through the list, we can see some countries, where the spoken language is not English. Considering the paid ad creatives are only available in English is a problem related to localization. Even though they distribute their ads in countries where the spoken language is English, they have not arranged their creatives accordingly. To get better outcomes from their ad campaigns, they should pay attention to this issue. This will increase the quality of user experience and the level of conversion they get.
Creative Analysis
They are running ads heavily in video format. Considering the app provides some psychological tests and quizzes, displaying how easy to go through with them while adding sympathetic creatives is the best way to promote the app.
As you can see, almost all of the video creatives, show how the user experience is going to be once users download the app. They have made changes in the motion types that they use but mainly they stick with the question sets and result at the end storyline. If you look closely, you can see that they have been testing different visual types, colors, and formats constantly to improve user engagement.
They have created and tested 2 types of image ad creative templates before but as expected, the impressions they got from them are nothing compared to the impression they got from video ads. Since the benefits they promote and the audience they target are better fit with enjoyable, motion-supported creatives, they stopped using these image ad creatives.
Finding out the perfect fit of creatives for your app’s purposes requires lots of thinking and testing. Just like we have analyzed with Breeze: Mental Health, you should try out different sets of options and make your decisions based on your findings. While keeping their creatives related and catchy to their users and showcasing them in the platforms that their target audience will be exposed to, make Breeze: Mental Health a top advertising app.
Calm
Calm is an app designed to help with sleep, meditation, and relaxation. With its advanced features, it aims to increase the sleep quality of its users, make them relieve stress, lower their anxiety, and refocus their attention.
But we are here to see what their paid user acquisition strategies offer to them. So let’s begin.
Once again, we see that Calm also displays its ads through social media channels. Especially, since one of the main purposes of this app is to be a virtual assistant while users make meditation, seeing Instagram as the platform that they showcase their ads in most is a no-brainer. It provides a clear audience-targeting opportunity through influencers and dedicated pages created for meditation and mindfulness.
When we check the markets that Calm distributes its ads in, again we see the United States, Canada, and Australia in the top 3, just like Breeze: Mental Health. However, we can see that Calm is doing a better job when it comes to localization.
As you can see, the German market is the 4th highest storefront for Calm to distribute its ads in, and they have localized their paid ad creatives accordingly. By doing that, they have a better chance of engaging with their users and really stepping up in the market.
Apple Search Ads
Calm utilizes 402 paid keywords and runs Apple Search Ads in 45 countries. Considering how good their localization strategy is, we can say that their user acquisition can really step up by leveraging Apple Search Ads.
As you can see, they have very impressive impression shares on keywords that have high volume. Meaning they managed to outperform their competitors and showcase themselves to their target audience. 
When it comes to leveraging custom product pages, Calm is one of the category winners. They have created various product pages for the app’s different features and arranged the creatives accordingly with on-point keywords.
They have created different custom product pages to promote different features they have and engage with their users better. For example, as you can see above, they have used pictures taken in nature to use the custom product page created for their natural sound feature. Moreover, they have used darker backgrounds for the custom pages they have created with sleeping-related keywords. You can also see that they use green backgrounds in the custom product pages they have created for stress-related keywords, which is again a planned choice considering the color green is scientifically proven for stress relief, better impulse control, and improved focus.
Different features serve different purposes, therefore coming up with custom product pages for all of them individually will create an inevitable opportunity for better user acquisition. With the right strategy of combining ASO insights with Apple Search Ads practices, success will not be a surprise.
BetterMe: Health Coaching
BetterMe is an app designed for providing personalized workout and nutrition plans by real coaches. Its purpose is to support users’ physical workout journey with experts who helps users also with their mental health stability along the way.
Especially considering a person’s physical journey could also be a mental challenge, BetterMe clearly differentiates itself from other apps just because of its services. However, even though an app provides something unique and different, without a well-designed user acquisition strategy users would still not be aware of them enough to download it. So, let’s see how BetterMe: Health Coaching manages its paid user acquisition strategy.
BetterMe: Health Coaching mainly uses social media platforms to distribute its ads. They aim to showcase their app and engage with their target audience through those platforms. However, for the first time in this analysis, we have seen a different platform. In the following parts, we will cover why this is the case but briefly, it is because BetterMe: Health Coaching uses a playable media format as well.
Their ad creatives get the most impressions in Switzerland, the United States, Canada, and Germany. They have localized their paid ad creatives for multiple language options which contain Japanese as well on top of the most spoken European languages. Therefore, we can say that BetterMe: Mental Coaching has a better chance of engaging with its users, which is a perfect example of a successful localization strategy.
Apple Search Ads
Running Apple Search Ads will take up your user acquisition game to another level, especially in crowded categories like Health & Fitness. Leveraging both ASO and Apple Search Ads is the key to success that every UA managers want to achieve.
As of right now, BetterMe has 114 paid keywords. As you can see above, one of the keyword strategies that they have is to protect their brand recognition.
They also leverage the custom product pages. By doing that, they are aiming to match the search intent with the search result. Since one of the main benefits that BetterMe provides is nutritious diet plans, they have been running custom product pages to directly reach out to users who search related terms.
They have created different sets of creatives and keyword lists to increase the quality of user acquisition. Moreover, by adding category winner keywords to their custom product page keyword lists, they have been leveraging the synergy between ASO and Apple Search Ads.
With our Ad Intelligence and CPP Intelligence tools, you can find all the data we have covered in this analysis and more. If you want to keep an eye on what your competitors have been practicing, which ad creatives work best in your category, and how broad the distribution strategies of the apps in your category are, we have just the right tool for you. Schedule a demo with our experts now and start stepping up.
