Last month, our indexes showed the extreme marketing that took place during the Holiday frenzy as advertisers spent heavily to drive up their app store rankings and acquire an elevated volume of users. As it turns out, for app marketers who were budget-conscious in December, January paid big dividends as the post-holiday weeks provided excellent growth and value.

Hot off the presses, our newly released indexes for January show a dramatic drop in mobile app marketing costs in January—the lowest since July 2011—following the Christmas advertising rush. iOS app downloads in January reached an all-time high as all those new devices unwrapped during the holidays drove propelled app discovery and usage in the New Year.

Here’s a quick snapshot of our January findings:

• App Store Competitive Index tracks the aggregate volume of downloads per day achieved by the Top 200 ranked free iPhone apps in the U.S. In January, the Index peaked at 6.79 million daily downloads, up 12 percent from December’s 6.04 million, its previous high.
• Cost per Loyal User Index measures the cost of acquiring a loyal user for brands who proactively market their apps. For the purposes of the Index, loyal users are defined as people who open an app three times or more. This month, the cost per loyal user fell by 37 percent to $1.14, from a record high of $1.81 in December.

So, while many advertisers joined the rush to spend over the holiday season, January actually provided mobile app marketers one of the best opportunities to-date with volume at an all-time high and costs approaching an all-time low.

“We’ve observed many app brands invest heavily in the fourth quarter, seeking extreme growth during the holiday season, then reduce spending in January as they evaluate their marketing programs for the New Year and focus on version upgrades for their apps,” said Micah Adler, Fiksu CEO. “However, the latest indexes show that January is an excellent time for both growth and value—and budget savvy marketers should take full advantage of this time, instead of slowing down.”

Thanks to Kathleen De Vere of Inside Mobile Apps, Keith Andrew of PocketGamer.biz, Sarah Perez at TechCrunch, Allan Maurer at Tech Journal, Dan Rowinski at ReadWriteWeb, and Jon Russell at The Next Web for their reports on our latest Index data.

Last month, Apple announced that its App Store alone now contains more than 425,000 apps. For app marketers, your challenge is finding a way to make your app stand out in such a massive crowd.

Discoverability hinges on getting your app ranked high enough in the app stores. Additionally, in order to scale your business, you need to find a cost-effective way to secure enough downloads. And the real kicker – you need to achieve all of these marketing goals without breaking the bank.

Before throwing your hands up in defeat, rethinking your career choice and going prematurely grey, know that you’re not alone, and that there are ways to overcome these challenges.

Following are four simple and proven best practices for developing your creative and effectively promoting your app for profitable and sustainable loyal user acquisition and business growth. By employing these, you can greatly increase the likelihood of finding loyal users in a cost-efficient way. You can also read additional strategies in our recent post Five Ways to Drive Downloads and Loyal Users for Your Mobile App and in our e-book.

1. With App Ad Copy, Less is More
Unlike traditional ad copy, mobile real estate is limited. Keep your ad text short, punchy and straight to the point, and make your call to action immediate and valuable. When writing effective mobile ads, we recommend the following:

• Your ad copy should resemble that of Google AdWord copy, rather than traditional copy
• Do your research and identify the most compelling, targeted keywords to use in your title
• Highlight key benefits and functionalities that clearly differentiate your app
• Keep it easy to understand, and keep jargon to a minimum

2. Practice Makes Perfect
Once you've developed your creative, conduct A/B testing by comparing a baseline, control sample to a variety of single-variable test samples across all traffic sources to determine which ads perform the best – resulting in higher ranking in the app stores and/or garnering increased downloads. By looking at the results from different tests, you'll be able to identify the ads that consistently produce the best results and swap them for lower-performing ads on a per source basis. But don't stop there – routinely play with different copy combinations with the goal of continuously increasing conversions.

3. Write Your Landing Page for Mobile Consumption
It is extremely important to remember your audience when developing your app store landing page. When composing your landing page, don't focus on how it will look on the desktop, but rather how it will look on mobile devices, since this is where the majority of app download decision-making will occur.

4. Drive Downloads Through Your Title
When creating your app's title, it is essential to look beyond your brand and also consider terms of app store search results and conversion of users who arrive on your app store landing page. For example, if you have a photography-oriented app, speak to the functionality of the app in its title by referencing a feature like "picture color". This way you are just as likely to appear in the app store search results for a user looking for a "photography" solution.

It's true that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for marketing to and securing mobile app users. But the good news is that there is a way to overcome these challenges and build a successful, sustainable mobile app business – and reduce your user acquisition costs by up to 10x in the process. To learn more about these tips and tricks and many others, download the free e-book, Best Practices for Growing Your Mobile App Business.

App clicks, downloads and launches can be very misleading metrics. Measuring ROI beyond downloads involves evaluating an app user’s loyalty. How many times do your users return? Have they made a purchase? Did they register? If these are unanswered questions, then you are NOT measuring your ROI.

Billions of app downloads and a culture reliant on apps is presenting marketers with an increasingly dynamic environment to promote their apps. In-Stat projects 48 billion app downloads by 2015 due to the growing number of touchscreen-equipped smartphones while a recent survey by MTV reports that 83% of respondents are “addicted” to their apps.

This mobile explosion requires marketers to refine their mobile app promotion approach and target downloads by loyal users. Why? Because loyal users use apps repeatedly, make purchases, and spread the word on your behalf. It is loyal users on whom you build your business. A download, or even an app launch, does not mean that you have a loyal user.

So what is a loyal user? A loyal user is someone who has taken an action that can be directly tied back to your ROI. Depending on your business, a loyal user can be defined differently. It is up to you to define your loyal user.

If you’re a publication, a loyal user might be someone who registers and becomes a member. If you’re a deal site, a loyal user may be a customer who makes a purchase. If you’re an app developer who relies on in-app ad revenue, a loyal user may be someone who opens your app at least five times.

Rapid and sustainable app-business growth is all about finding loyal users. However, none of the ad networks have a viable method for understanding how to obtain loyal users.

Here at Fiksu we will help to set benchmarks and performance goals based on your loyal user profile and then tie in monitoring, real-time optimization and reporting to create a full cycle app marketing euphoria. 

Let’s crunch some numbers and see why loyal users are a critical metric. As depicted below, a typical reporting system would only measure the basics, with a heavy emphasis on cost per download (CPD). On the other hand, if Fiksu for Mobile Apps had a hand at the data set, it would reveal the ugly truth behind this marketer’s ROI. 

Pretend my app was created to further my branding efforts and was based on increasing my registrants. In this model, I would like to know: How many of my downloads turned into registered users?  – Ah, yes! This is what we call “Loyal App Users”, as the user is taking an action that can be directly tied back to my ROI.

Exhibit A: The Ugly Truth Behind CPD Metrics without Considering Loyal App Users

In this case, the loyal app user metric is registrations. While Network “A” may seem to have the best CPD and volume combo, the stark reality is that these are the most expensive subscribers to acquire and puts the marketer in danger of a negative ROI.

Transparency will be key in measuring and optimizing users through the mobile app funnel as the market becomes noisier, more fragmented and more complex. This is especially apparent in the Android marketplace where there is less visibility into the quality of users due to less well developed reporting and tracking capabilities. 

The Fiksu for Mobile Apps platform is the only loyal user acquisition platform reaching across the entire mobile ecosystem providing the necessary insights and data to monitor your campaign’s true ROI success. 

No more excuses! Beef up on your mobile metrics and define your loyal user. Find 13 other Best Practices for Growing your Mobile App Business in our free eBook.