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Online businesses have benefited in 2019 from using more effective marketing tools. These tools help them to grow revenues, expand operations, and increase profitability. In this post, we share about those tools and describe how businesses like yours are using them.

Think of Social Media as a Marketing Tool

Take social media for example. What began as a novel concept rapidly transformed into a pervasive and indispensable marketing tool. Today, an estimated 70% of Americans actively engage with social media on a daily basis. Back in 2005 this number was just 5%.

Businesses are eager to cash in on the latest marketing trends, and they conduct much of their communications with their target market via social media. By implementing an effective social media marketing strategy, your business, too, can reach ever deeper into the global online marketplace. This will help you to grow a diversified audience, generate and convert more leads, drive sales growth and performance, and stay up-to-date with the real-time pulse of the people. Clearly, social media is powering the narrative as the premier marketing tool for online businesses.

Consider the following social media statistics:

Source: Statista Instagram Users Globally (Male & Female)

• One billion people use Instagram every month, and 500 million people use Instagram daily. What’s more, 88% of Instagram users are located outside of the US. This means that Instagram is a truly global social media marketing tool. Here’s another interesting statistic: 71% of Instagram users are younger than 35 years of age. And there is a near-even split of users between the sexes.
• Additionally, 95% of Instagram users in the US also use YouTube; 91% use Facebook, and 60% use Snapchat. While just 35% of Americans currently use Instagram, 68% use Facebook and 73% use YouTube. The Pew Center reports growing interest in Twitter at 24%, LinkedIn at 25%, and Snapchat at 27%.

Source: Facebook User Stats Statista 1^st Quarter 2019

• Global usage of Facebook between 2008 and 2019 indicates a substantial increase in the number of users. For example, by Q1 2019, the number of Facebook users topped out at 2.38 billion monthly active users (MAUs). It’s important to point out that Facebook owns multiple social media platforms. They include Messenger, Whatsapp, and Instagram. These social media platforms dominate the landscape, particularly with the highly effective Facebook marketing campaigns.
• By contrast, Twitter boasts 326 million MAUs. Moreover, there are 100 million daily active users (DAUs) on Twitter. Plus, people send 500 million tweets daily. With 261 million Twitter users outside the US and 69 million Twitter users in the US, this social media platform is the premier microblogging platform in the world. Businesses routinely use Twitter to get real-time news updates out to their customers.

2019 Trends in Digital Marketing Tools

Given the significance of social media as a powerful marketing tool, it makes sense that online businesses are investing heavily in global online ads. According to the stats, 2019 ad spend is expected to rise by 4.7% for 2019. Additionally, location-based marketing initiatives are expected to grow by 14%, reaching $24.4 billion in ad spend this year alone.

Plus, influencer marketing is hogging the limelight in 2019. For example, 43% of advertisers announced big budget allocations toward influencer marketing initiatives for the year.

Additionally, Snapchat has become a popular choice for digital marketers in 2019. The average Snapchat user now generates $1.68 in revenue for 2019, compared to $1.21 in 2018. One of the most promising social media hubs on the scene is TikTok. Advertisers are plenty interested in this new app. That’s because it had already generated $9 million in sales by May 2019. Moreover, marketing experts expect it to produce $100 million in sales as the year progresses.

Effective Content Marketing Strategies Drive Sales

Content truly is king. This was true back in the day, and it’s true in 2019. Content marketing managers understand that premium-value content is worth its weight in gold. Content marketing via blogs, website platforms, product pages, social media sites, newsletters, webinars, seminars, podcasts, and so on are highly valuable. High-quality content conveys a value proposition to customers, who then purchase goods and services. Moreover, they share ideas and add value to the transaction process.

Email Is a Powerful Marketing Tool

Part of the content marketing initiative involves email marketing. In 2019, email marketing is a central component of the marketing process. Email marketing is a cost-effective tool that generates leads and drive sales. And it also facilitates predictable results for businesses.

Marketing experts readily attest to the fact that with email marketing, the business owns the network. Unlike Facebook, which requires businesses to pay for the privilege of sharing posts with a wide audience, email marketing puts businesses in control of their marketing strategy.

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Take a Hands-On Approach

This means you can take a hands-on approach to building a valuable asset. It begins with constructing an email database, born from a subscriber list of contacts and clients. Of course, it’s imperative that each person on your email list has granted you permission to contact them in this way. Otherwise, your emails will be relegated to the spam filter.

Marketing managers have fine-tuned this technique by limiting email marketing to just one message every week or two.

Using Effective Tools to Drive Marketing
Results

In 2019, marketing experts are using various tools to generate effective results. These include a combination of high-quality software tools such as Hootsuite, Hubspot, Social Oomph, Sendible, and Sprout Social. However, given that many marketing tools are redundant, experts conduct processes to bring more efficiency to these marketing tasks.

These tools save time, money, and manpower by automating and consolidating activities. Additionally, they reduce the likelihood of error by way of optimal performance strategies and advanced analytics.

In other words, marketing tools span the full spectrum. That is, they include social media, content marketing, and email marketing channels.

Turn to Enticements to Engage Your Customers

Various multinational corporations are also turning to enticements to drive home their marketing message to customers.

For example, incentive-based marketing communications such as special offers, bonuses, promotions, and gamification of marketing offers abound. The 888 casino no deposit bonus is a case in point. This global gaming phenomenon consistently ranks atop the pile of reputable online casino providers.

The success of 888casino is largely attributed to its unique marketing initiatives. Bonuses and promotional offers are enticements designed to make it worthwhile for players to register, deposit, and play. By wooing players to register, this online casino has found the “elixir” to marketing success in 2019.

Marketing Tactics Must Serve Marketing
Objectives

Source: Sprout Social

Tactical activities are short-term objectives. Typically, these are day-to-day activities. On the other hand, marketers measure strategic objectives over the long term.

Successful implementation of marketing strategies requires the establishment of a sound plan of action. In the words of management guru David H. Levy, “If you don’t have a direction, any path will take your business to its destination.”

However, a clearly formulated strategy allows for contingencies with all these issues. Social media objectives, content marketing objectives, and promotional tools should work in sync to establish an efficient plan of action for your business.

This means that your social media goals must gel with your online business’s overall marketing plan. Therefore, you must write your goals down. Only in this way can you measure and achieve your goals.

Consider this: Marketing studies indicate that businesses with written goals are 30%-40% more likely to succeed. Unfortunately, however, various infographics suggest that 83% of people have no strategic goals.

Only 14% of people have strategic goals. However, these are the people who are ten times more successful. People whose business plans encompass written goals (just 3% of operations) are thirty times more successful in the long term.

Research Your Marketing Strategy

To achieve success, you must thoroughly research your marketing strategy. Moreover, your goals must be quantifiable and qualifiable.

Some metrics are more easily understood through numerical data. On the other hand, others are qualitative in terms of appeal, satisfaction, and opinion. You can garner audience insights through surveys, market research, blogs, social media platforms, customer support analytics, email, and other means. However, you’ll best achieve engagement through interactive elements such as gamification, promotional offers, contests, and social media engagement plans.

Moreover, the only way to ensure engagement on social media is through proper communication.

Marketing professionals stress the importance of knowing your target market. This involves targeting your audience with the right content at the right time. Additionally, use the right lingo to hook customers into responding to posts and offers. Match every post with a description and a functional link.

Effective social media strategies always bear fruit because they engage users. More importantly, remember that audiences are smarter today. They don’t want a hard sell. They want to partner with companies and feel invested in the products and services your business is offering.

Conclusion

Effective marketing is really about resonating with your customers. They want to know you follow their life philosophy of responsible behavior, respect for the environment, and inclusiveness. Today, companies that adopt socially responsible practices are more likely to strike it rich with their customers.

Mobile app attribution allows acquisition marketers to understand how users learn about and start using apps. This allows marketers to map out data points for specific actions users take, from clicking an advertisement to installing the app to making in-app purchases.

In this article, we look at what mobile app attribution is. Then we discuss the features you need to look for in a mobile app attribution analytics platform.

Additionally, we compare AppsFlyer and Branch, two of the most popular mobile app attribution platforms. Hopefully, this comparison will help you determine the right solution for your business.

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What Is Mobile App Attribution?

Mobile app attribution is the process of identifying how and where users learn about your app. Then it allows you to map interactions across platforms. Ultimately, this lets you monitor and optimize the journeys people take to becoming your customers.

Advertising platforms can provide a good deal of data on the effects your ads have on your conversion rate. However, these platforms are more interested in reporting conversions than in conveying information that could be more useful to you.

What’s more, if you’re working in a high-growth environment, then you’re likely running campaigns on several networks at once. Therefore, there’s high value in having the ability to consolidate reporting in a single place.

Ideally, mobile app attribution allows app marketers to collect unbiased data about their return on investment (ROI) from their various marketing efforts. This data gives insight into what led a user to install your app. Also, it allows you to figure out exactly what caused a rise or fall in app installs. This information is helpful in optimizing marketing campaigns. Additionally, you can use it when you’re scaling up a business. Also, you can use it to maximize your ROI.

To this end, here are some features you should look for in a mobile app attribution platform:

Mobile App Attribution Across Channels

Mobile app attribution across channels typically involves advanced technologies such as universal deep linking, fingerprinting, and secure postbacks for data sync.

Marketing Engagement Analytics

This involves combining mobile business and app use insights with mobile app attribution. This helps marketers to better understand and optimize sources of real value. For example, app marketers look at metrics such as user engagement, revenue, lifetime value, and ROI.

Integrations

It’s important to know which media sources,
retargeting networks, third-party analytics platforms, and marketing automation
providers your mobile app attribution platform offers integration with.

Data Integrity

Your mobile app attribution platform needs to collect its own data. Further, what you don’t want is a mobile app attribution platform that simply aggregates data that ad networks provide. Therefore, you need to select a platform that’s GDPR-compliant and follows industry security standards.

A Comparison of AppsFlyer and Branch

Now that we have a clear understanding of what mobile app attribution is, let’s compare two mobile app attribution providers, AppsFlyer and Branch. These are two of the leading providers in the industry. We’ll take a look at the key features of each. This will let you see how they stack up against each other in terms of features and functionality.

Factor #1: Mobile App Attribution Across Channels

We’re living in a multi-device, multi-channel world. Therefore, app marketers need to promote their products pretty much everywhere a potential customer might be active.

This can make it hard to know which specific marketing activities are driving conversions. That’s because the audience’s journey often spans a variety of “walled garden” digital environments. Therefore, since the customer’s journey is directed within those environments, it is difficult to monitor.

On the other hand, cross-channel mobile app attribution helps marketers understand which parts of their marketing strategies are most effective and which ones need to be scrapped. Without it, marketers would have no way of knowing what drives prospective users to act on a conversion goal.

AppsFlyer and Cross-Channel Mobile App Attribution

With AppsFlyer, you’ll be able to monitor every app install and connect it to the promotional campaigns and media sources that drove it. This makes it easy to see which media sources perform best. That’s because AppsFlyer’s granular dashboards let you know which channel or network, ad group, ad type, and ad creative drove individual users.

Additionally, the platform’s deep-linking feature enables you to direct users to the right app store. Then you can display a welcome message after the app is installed. This improves your customer’s user experience and increases conversion rates.

Most users interact with multiple ads before they decide to install an app. AppsFlyer’s multi-touch attribution enables you to know exactly which ads helped nudge the user in the right direction. Moreover, you’ll also know which ad was the driving factor behind the final install.

In addition, AppsFlyer helps you attribute new users coming from TV campaigns. This lets you promote your app via its deep integrations with TVSquared, Adalyser, and others. Also, it lets you generate reports about which marketing campaigns drive the best user re-engagement and reactivation results.

Branch and Cross-Channel Mobile App Attribution

With Branch, you can use automatic cross-platform identifiers to track your users on the web and in apps. Importantly, you can do this even if they’re logged out. Therefore, even if customers first learn about your app on a blog and then interact with your ad on Facebook, you’ll be able to connect touch points from each channel. Also, it lets you customize attribution windows based on your marketing campaigns, right down to individual links.

Additionally, Branch’s view-through attribution will give you insight into the users who viewed your ads, even when they didn’t interact with them (for example, by clicking the ad). This gives you a better idea about the ROI of your marketing efforts. That’s because views can help a great deal with brand awareness, even though CPM (cost per thousand) campaigns are measured differently across different networks.

Also, Branch aims for accurate attribution across all channels. It does this by using links to seamlessly track user engagement. Therefore, prospective customers will be able to view your ads and make purchases across multiple platforms.

Factor #2: Marketing Engagement Analytics

One of the key benefits of marketing engagement analytics is that they empower marketers to make informed decisions. Essentially, these analytics answer two important questions: Which marketing campaigns should you be investing in, and how should you prioritize them?

How AppsFlyer Performs with Analytics

With AppsFlyer, you’ll get useful insights about your marketing performance and user retention. That’s because its powerful cohort and retention reporting tools show you areas where marketing campaigns are doing great and where there’s glaring need for improvement.

Additionally, you can customize AppsFlyer’s dashboard with their drag-and-drop interface. This way, you can easily build and view dashboards based on your specific campaigns.

Additionally, the AppsFlyer mobile app enables you to monitor analytics data in real time and share it with your team members. You can also receive live alerts about your key performance indicators (KPIs). Plus, you’ll get other information that’s important for your business.

What’s more, AppsFlyer’s Pivot tool also uses the drag-and-drop interface. This lets you quickly save, edit, clone, and collaborate with your team. Plus, you can do all of this without having to download data or rebuild pivot tables. This way, marketers can better manage and understand complex data. For instance, you can use it for aggregating performance by media source. Or you can run deep campaign analyses.

How Branch Provides Analytics

One of the practical-use cases of Branch’s detailed analytics reporting is that it makes it easy to identify top-performing influencer campaigns. For example, when you know which ones are driving the most app downloads, you can deepen your most lucrative relationships. Then you can also forge more of them with similar figures.

Although Branch
does offer a cohort analysis tool to help marketers understand the ROI of their
campaigns, it doesn’t support retention monitoring or reporting.

Branch’s Content Analytics section allows you to figure out which content is most successful at driving app installs. This way, you’ll be able to promote that particular content with marketing campaigns or deep linked sharing. With Branch, you can repeat this process to identify new content that drives app downloads.

Additionally, Branch’s Data Feeds feature allows you to import analytics data using several integrations. For instance:

• Webhooks let you send Branch events to any endpoint you want
• Data integrations offers a number of analytics and marketing features
• The query API will help you programmatically query analytics data
• Data export API will give you access to all of your Branch data

However, unlike AppsFlyer, Branch doesn’t let you create custom dashboards to view specific information sets based on your marketing campaigns.

Factor #3: Integrated Partners

The mobile ecosystem calls for many types of reports that have an effect on acquisition. These could include metrics from the services you use for attribution. Also, they can include product analytics, A/B testing, and marketing automation.

Integrating with third-party platforms provides more value to advertisers. That’s because you can use the insights you glean for optimizing marketing efforts or running retargeting campaigns.

Using AppsFlyer Mobile App Attribution with Integrated Partners

With the AppsFlyer software development kit (SDK) you can experiment with different integrated partners. This lets you identify the ones that give you the best ROI from your marketing campaigns.

Here are some of
the different types of integrated partners you can get access to with the
AppsFlyer platform:

Ad Networks

These networks connect advertisers to apps looking to host ads. Ad networks act as consolidations of a large ad space supply from publishers and match it to fulfill advertisers’ demands.

Agency Reports

There are companies that manage marketing campaigns on behalf of advertisers. They might work with all types of apps or focus on a specific area, such as gaming apps.

Analytics Platforms

These are third-party solutions that offer in-app analytics reporting. Interestingly, these integrations can push data back and forth. Therefore, you can perform behavioral analysis based on various segments of your end users.

Affiliate Networks

These networks enable publishers to get a share of the revenue advertisers earn that result from visitors to the publisher’s app. Alternatively, publishers earn a fee for each visitor who performs a specific action.

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Retargeting Networks

These are ad networks that specialize in retargeting. Retargeting engages users who interacted with an ad but didn’t yet install the app. You can also use these networks for re-engagement. With re-engagement, you give targeted discounts to users who’ve already installed your apps to make them active users. Also, use these networks for re-attribution. These are campaigns targeted at users who’ve uninstalled the app to get them to reinstall it.

Direct Publishers

These are app owners who integrate their apps
directly with AppsFlyer for superior in-app monitoring.

Facebook Marketing Partners/Twitter Official Partners

These are partners who comply with Facebook and Twitter’s criteria and get their approval. For example, this could be a particular technology such as automated posting apps. Or they could be media-buying platforms that allow marketers to book ads on Facebook and Twitter.

Programmatic Advertising

This refers to the ability of an ad network to buy spots for ads from different platforms without involving a third party.

Branch and Integrations

With Branch, you get a number of integrations to make sure your attribution workflow runs smoothly.

These include:

Universal Ad Partners

With Branch Universal Ads, you’re able to try
out ad networks with unique segmentation algorithms to reach a targeted
audience. This is available as a pre-configured and ready-to-use integration.

Universal Email Partners

These services enable you to seamlessly integrate email marketing campaigns within your workflows. For example, you can use leading email service providers without losing your current analytics.

Data Integration Partners

This integration enables you to use
pre-formatted webhooks to automatically send Branch data to your analytics and
marketing tools.

Factor #4: Data Integrity

When it comes to mobile app attribution, it’s important to make sure you’re keeping customer data secure. Failure to do so can cause serious data breaches. These can cause serious damage to your brand and might even expose you to potential lawsuits or fines from regulators.

AppsFlyer and Data Integrity

AppsFlyer maintains full compliance with industry standards. This means AppsFlyer keeps its data centers secure. Moreover, it enforces strict physical, environmental, and hosting controls.

Additionally, AppsFlyer uses multi-layered controls to protect the data infrastructure. This means it actively monitors the improvement of applications, systems, and processes regularly.

This continuous monitoring lets AppsFlyer keep up with the ever-changing security ecosystem and its challenges.

This mobile app attribution platform also isolates each customer’s account data from that of other customers. Additionally, it encrypts the data at rest. Also, AppsFlyer’s web servers use strong encryption protocols. These protocols secure the connections between its users’ devices and its own web services and servers.

Every change made at AppsFlyer is measured, reviewed, and approved by following a strict process. This process ensures that operational changes meet AppsFlyer’s business goals and compliance guidelines. These include GDPR, TRUSTe, and ePrivacyseal.

Branch and Data Integrity

Branch ensures strict compliance with GDPR to secure the data it holds. This data security directive gives specific guidelines, including the right to object to data processing. However, to submit a GDPR end user request, you’ll have to go through the Branch GDPR portal. Then you must specify the end user’s advertising identifier (for example, IDFA or GAID). Also, you must specify the date when you received their request.

Just keep in mind that even after Branch stops tracking end users, they’ll still be able to generate and share Branch links. In addition, basic deep-linking functionality will also continue to work.

However, end users who object to data processing won’t be able to benefit from seamless customer journeys across multiple platforms. (Branch enables marketers to offer their other end users these seamless journeys.)

Which Mobile App Attribution Platform Is Right for You?

With the right
mobile app attribution platform, you’ll be able to find out how a user first
learns about your app, what drives them to install it, and how they interact
with it. This information can help you optimize your marketing campaigns and
convert more customers.

After reading
this article, between AppsFlyer and Branch, which mobile app attribution
platform are you leaning toward and why?