Let's be brutally honest. Most app marketing is a complete waste of money. Founders and marketing teams get obsessed with one number: installs. They celebrate hitting 10,000, 50,000, or 100,000 downloads, while their bank account quietly bleeds out. They're buying installs, not customers. They're chasing a vanity metric that feels good in a board meeting but does absolutely nothing for the bottom line. This playbook is about stopping that. It’s about ditching the addiction to cheap installs and building a machine that acquires high-value users who actually pay you, stick around, and drive real, measurable ROI. It's time to go from chasing downloads to building a proper business.
Your Idea is Worthless Without a Problem
Before you spend a single quid on an ad, you need to confront a harsh reality. Nobody cares about your app's features. They don't care about your slick UI or the clever bit of code you spent six months perfecting. They only care about themselves and their own problems. Your app is only valuable if it solves one of those problems. And not just any problem—it needs to be an urgent, expensive, or deeply frustrating one.
Forget your "ideal customer profile" that says "millennials aged 25-34 who like fitness and technology." That's useless. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one. Instead, you need to define your customer by their nightmare. What's the specific pain that keeps them up at night?
If you've built a project management app for small agencies, the nightmare isn't 'needing better organisation'. It's the agency owner terrified of losing their biggest client because a deadline was missed. It's the gut-wrenching feeling of not knowing if a project is even profitable until it's too late. Your ads don't sell "kanban boards"; they sell "never miss a client deadline again." They sell "know your exact project profitabilty in real-time." You have to get this right, or you're just shouting into the void. If you've already launched and are finding it impossible to acquire any paying users, this is almost certainly the reason why.
A good way to test if you've found a real problem is to build a simple landing page and try to get people on a waitlist. Promote it on places like Product Hunt or Betalist. If you can't get anyone to give you their email in exchange for early access to a solution for their 'nightmare', you don't have a business idea, you have a hobby. This isn't about creating hype; it's about validation. It's the cheapest market research you'll ever do.
Choosing Your Battlegrounds: Where to Actually Spend Your Money
Once you know the problem you're solving, you need to find the people who have it. Not all ad platforms are created equal. Throwing your budget at every platform is a surefire way to burn through it with nothing to show. Each one has its own quirks and is good for different things. If you're a startup, you can't afford to get this wrong. There are a few main players you need to understand.
Google App Campaigns (UAC/PPC for Apps)
Think of Google as the big, powerful, but slightly mysterious black box. You don't pick keywords or placements in the same way you do with traditional search ads. You feed Google your app, your creatives (videos, images, text), your budget, and you tell it what you want (e.g., installs, or better yet, a specific in-app action like 'subscription started'). The algorithm then goes off and tries to find users across Google Search, YouTube, the Play Store, and the Display Network. It's powerful, but you have to give it the right fuel. Just optimising for installs is a rookie mistake. You'll get thousands of downloads from people who open the app once and then delete it. You need to be tracking and feeding back valuable in-app events. The real secret to success with Google is understanding that you're not managing the campaign; you're teaching the algorithm what a good user looks like. Getting this right is often the best campaign approach for driving specific downloads.
Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram)
Meta is the master of demographic and interest-based targeting. If you know the 'nightmare' your user is facing, you can often find interests, behaviours, and groups related to it on Meta's platforms. Selling a fitness app? You can target people interested in specific athletes, nutrition brands, or competing apps. A B2B app? You can target people by their job titles or an interest in industry software like HubSpot. Where Meta really shines is with its Lookalike Audiences. Once you have a list of your best users—the ones who subscribe, who have a high LTV—you can ask Meta to go and find millions of other people who look just like them. It's incredibly powerful. For one of our B2B software clients, we drove 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each using Meta's targeting, something that would have been far more expensive elsewhere. Getting your ROAS optimised on Meta ads in the UK requires a deep understanding of these audience tools.
Apple Search Ads (ASA)
This is probably the most underrated platform for app marketing. Apple Search Ads puts your app right at the top of the App Store search results, at the exact moment someone is looking for an app like yours. The intent couldn't be higher. Someone searches for "photo editor" or "meditation app," and your app appears first. This is not about awareness; it's about capturing demand that already exists. You bid on keywords just like you do in Google Search. We always structure our ASA campaigns into four distinct types: Brand (bidding on your own app name to defend it), Competitor (bidding on your rivals' names), Generic (bidding on terms describing your app's function, like "task manager"), and Discovery (a broad match campaign to find new, unexpected keywords). Getting your budgeting right for Apple Search Ads in the UK can be tricky, but the quality of user is often unmatched.
TikTok Ads
TikTok isn't just for dancing teenagers anymore. It's a massive platform, and its ad system is getting more sophisticated. The key here is that the creative is everything. You can't just run a polished, corporate-looking video ad. It will fail spectacularly. Your ad needs to look and feel like a native TikTok video. It needs to be authentic, engaging, and often user-generated in style. For one client in the sports and events space, we combined Meta, Google, Apple and TikTok ads to drive over 45,000 signups. TikTok was a huge part of reaching a specific, younger demographic that was less present on other platforms. If your audience is on TikTok, you have to play by its rules.
| Platform | Best For | Primary Strength | Main Challenge |
| Google App Campaigns | Broad reach & machine learning optimisation. | Access to YouTube, Play Store, Search & Display from one campaign. | It's a "black box." Lack of granular control; requires feeding it good conversion data. |
| Meta Ads (FB/IG) | Finding specific user personas and scaling with Lookalikes. | Incredibly detailed demographic and interest targeting. | Users aren't actively looking for an app, so creative needs to be highly engaging to interrupt their scrolling. |
| Apple Search Ads | Highest user intent of any platform. Placing your ad in the App Store itself. | Capturing high-intent users at the point of download. | Limited to iOS users. Can be expensive for competitive keywords. Needs careful keyword management. |
| TikTok Ads | Reaching younger demographics with authentic, creative-led content. | Massive engagement and potential for virality. | Ad creative must feel native to the platform. Polished corporate ads don't work. |
The Cost Per Install Myth: Why You're Measuring the Wrong Thing
I need to be very clear about this: Cost Per Install (CPI) is a vanity metric. Chasing a low CPI is one of the fastest ways to destroy your budget and your business. It's easy to get cheap installs. Just target a broad, low-value audience in a developing country, and you can get your CPI down to a few pence. Congratulations, you've just acquired thousands of users who will never open your app, never subscribe, and will probably churn within 24 hours.
The only metrics that matter are the ones that connect to revenue. You need to stop asking "How low can my CPI go?" and start asking "How much can I afford to pay to acquire a customer who will actually make me money?" To answer that, you need to understand two things: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).
Let's do some simple maths. This is the most important calculation you will ever do for your app.
Average Revenue Per User (ARPU): What's the average amount a paying user spends per month? Let's say it's £20.
Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after app store fees etc.? Let's say it's 70%.
Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of paying users do you lose each month? Let's say it's 5%.
The calculation is:
LTV = (ARPU * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
LTV = (£20 * 0.70) / 0.05
LTV = £14 / 0.05 = £280
In this example, every paying customer is worth £280 in gross margin to your business. A healthy LTV:CAC ratio is at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £93 to acquire a single paying customer (£280 / 3). If your app converts 1 in every 20 installs into a paying customer (a 5% conversion rate), you can afford to pay up to £4.65 per install (£93 / 20) for the right kind of user.
Suddenly, that £3 CPI from your Meta campaign doesn't just look good, it looks like a brilliant investment. And that £0.50 CPI from your broad Google campaign looks like the money pit it truly is. This is the maths that unlocks intelligent scaling. You have to shift your ad strategy to target high-value users, not just cheap installs.
From Install to Activation: Solving the "Ghost User" Problem
So you've spent the money, you've acquired a user at an acceptable CAC, and they've installed your app. Job done? Not even close. One of the biggest failure points we see is the gap between the install and the 'aha!' moment—the point where the user actually experiences the value of your app. Many apps have a fantastic product hidden behind a clunky, confusing, or lengthy onboarding process.
The result? Ghost users. People who install, open the app once, get confused or bored, and never return. You've paid for the install, but you've got zero value from it. You must obsess over your onboarding flow. It needs to be as frictionless as possible, guiding the user directly to the core action that delivers value. For a meditation app, that's starting their first session. For a photo editor, it's making their first edit. For a task manager, it's creating their first task.
You need to use analytics tools (like Mixpanel, Amplitude, or even Firebase's built-in tools) to map out your entire onboarding funnel. Where are people dropping off? Are they getting stuck on the sign-up page? Are they failing to grant necessary permissions? Are they abandoning the tutorial? Every point of friction is costing you money. We often see clients with a low setup completion rate after installs from paid ads, and fixing the onboarding is always the first step. It's often a much cheaper and more effective way to increase your number of active users than simply pouring more money into ads.
Advanced Plays: How to Scale Without Breaking the Bank
Once you've got your foundations right—a solid offer, the right platforms, a focus on LTV, and a smooth onboarding flow—then you can start thinking about scaling. Scaling isn't just about increasing your budget. It's about getting smarter with your targeting and campaign structure.
This is where we move beyond simple install campaigns and start thinking in terms of a full-funnel approach, even within your ad accounts.
Top of Funnel (ToFu): Finding New Users
This is your cold outreach. Here you'll be using your broader audiences—detailed interest targeting on Meta, Discovery campaigns on ASA, broad targeting on Google App Campaigns once the algorithm is smart enough. The goal here is to constantly find new potential users and feed them into your ecosystem.
Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Nurturing Interest
This is where you retarget people who have shown some interest but haven't converted. This could be people who watched 50% of your video ad but didn't click, or people who visited your App Store page but didn't install. You can run specific campaigns to this group with different messaging, perhaps highlighting a specific feature or showing a testimonial to nudge them towards the install.
Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Closing the Deal
This is your highest-intent audience. It includes people who installed your app but didn't subscribe, or who started a trial but didn't convert to paid. Retargeting this group with a special offer or a reminder of the value they're missing out on can be incredibly effective. This is where you convert the ghosts into customers. This kind of structured approach is fundamental if you want to scale app installs effectively.
The real magic happens when you combine this structure with high-quality Lookalike Audiences on Meta. Once you have 100+ paying subscribers, you create a Lookalike of them. This tells Meta to find more people who share the same characteristics as your absolute best customers. This is almost always the most profitable cold audience you can build.
A Note on the UK Market: It's a Different Beast
Running app campaigns in the UK isn't the same as running them in the US or globally. The market is smaller, more concentrated, and in some sectors, especially around London's tech scene, incredibly competitive. This means costs can be higher. We often see founders getting sticker shock when they see the CPls for high-value users in the UK compared to elsewhere.
However, the users can also be more valuable. Disposable income is high, and digital adoption is widespread. The key is localisation. Don't just run your US ads here and change the dollar sign to a pound sign. The humour is different, the cultural references are different, and the pain points can be different. Acknowledge this in your ad creative. For one UK client, a medical job-matching SaaS, we managed to reduce their Cost Per User Acquisition from a crippling £100 down to just £7 by overhauling their targeting and creative to be hyper-relevant to the UK medical industry, specifically targeting NHS trusts and private healthcare groups. A generic approach would never have worked. If you're struggling with low app downloads in London, it's likely a competition or a localisation problem.
Building a successful app marketing strategy requires a deep understanding of the local landscape. Our ultimate guide to UK app campaigns goes into much more detail on these local nuances.
Your Actionable Playbook
This has been a lot of information. The reality is that effective app marketing is a complex, ongoing process of testing, learning, and optimising. It's not a 'set it and forget it' activity. But if you follow this playbook, you'll be ahead of 90% of your competition who are still blindly chasing cheap installs.
This is the main advice I have for you:
| Phase | Actionable Step | Why It's Important | Common Mistake to Avoid |
| 1. Foundation | Define your customer's 'nightmare' problem. Not their demographics, their actual pain. Validate it with a pre-launch waitlist. | If you don't solve a real, urgent problem, no amount of marketing can save you. This ensures there's actual demand. | Building the entire app before you know if anyone actually wants it. Assuming features are what people buy. |
| 2. Strategy | Calculate your LTV. Determine your maximum affordable CAC based on a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio. | This shifts your focus from cheap installs (vanity metric) to profitable user acquisition (business metric). | Obsessing over getting the lowest Cost Per Install (CPI) possible, which leads to acquiring low-quality users. |
| 3. Acquisition | Choose your initial ad platforms based on your audience (Meta for targeting, ASA for intent). Start with a small, controlled budget. | Prevents you from wasting your budget on platforms where your audience isn't active or your message won't land. | Trying to be on every platform at once from day one. Using the same creative and message on all platforms. |
| 4. Optimisation | Set up your campaigns to optimise for valuable in-app events (e.g., 'Trial Started', 'Subscribed'), not just 'Installs'. | This teaches the ad platform's algorithm what a valuable user looks like, so it can find more of them for you. | Leaving the campaign objective on 'App Installs' because it gives you a lower CPI and makes you feel good. |
| 5. Activation | Map your user onboarding flow and ruthlessly eliminate every point of friction. Guide users to their 'aha!' moment immediately. | A great app with bad onboarding is a leaky bucket. You're paying to acquire users just to lose them seconds later. | Assuming users will figure out your app on their own. Having a long, multi-step tutorial before they can do anything. |
| 6. Scaling | Build Lookalike audiences from your best customers (highest LTV, subscribers). Implement retargeting for users who dropped off. | This is the most reliable way to find new, high-quality users at scale and to recapture lost potential revenue. | Only focusing on acquiring new users and ignoring the goldmine of people already in your funnel. |
As you can see, this is a full-time job. It requires a specific skillset that blends analytical thinking with creative strategy. Many founders try to do this themselves and end up learning expensive lessons with their own money. They spend months trying to figure out what an expert could diagnose in a few hours. If you're finding this all a bit much, or if you've tried some of this and are still not seeing the ROI you need, it might be time to bring in a specialist. Finding the right app ads expert can be the difference between burning through your funding and building a truly scalable, profitable business.
Getting this right is the engine of growth for any successful app. If you'd like an expert pair of eyes on your current strategy to see where the biggest opportunities for improvement are, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can walk through your campaigns and give you some honest, actionable advice you can implement right away.
