So you're struggling to scale app installs on Meta. You're probably looking at your Cost Per Install, pulling your hair out when it creeps up, and thinking the whole game is rigged. Tbh, you're looking at the wrong metric and asking the wrong question. The problem isn't that you can't scale without location targeting; the problem is you're probably telling Meta to find you the worst possible users for your app.
Most people just set up an "App Installs" campaign and hope for the best. What you're actually telling the algorithm is: "Go find me the people who download anything and everything, the ones who have folders of apps they used once and forgot about. Find me the cheapest clicks and the cheapest installs, regardless of quality." This is the fast track to burning cash. We've seen it time and time again. You get a flood of cheap installs, your numbers look great for a week, and then you look at your actual user data and realise nobody is signing up, nobody is starting a trial, and nobody is paying you a single penny. Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale.
The real way to scale isn't about getting more installs. It's about getting more valuable users. The ones that stick around, engage, and ultimately pay you. And to do that, you need to completely change how you think about your campaigns, your targeting, and your offer.
Why are my app install campaigns not scaling?
Your campaigns aren't scaling because you're optimising for a vanity metric. An install is worthless. Let me say that again. An install, on its own, is completely and utterly worthless. It's a tiny step in a long journey. What you should be optimising for are the actions that actually signal a valuable user. This is what Meta calls App Event Optimisation (AEO).
Instead of telling Meta to find people who will install your app, you need to tell it to find people who will perform a specific, valuable action inside your app. This could be:
-> Completing registration
-> Starting a free trial
-> Making an in-app purchase
-> Reaching a certain level in a game
-> Subscribing to your service
By switching your optimisation goal, you are giving the algorithm a much more intelligent command. You're saying, "Don't just find me anyone. Find me people who look like my existing trial users. Find me people with a history of subscribing to apps like mine." The cost per install will almost certainly go up. But your cost per valuable action will plummet. I remember one client who achieved over 45,000 signups at under £2 cost per signup across Meta, TikTok, and Google Ads. This was a great start, but as you're experiencing, the real challenge is ensuring those installs translate into valuable users. That's the mindset shift you need.
Of course, to do this, your app needs to be properly set up with the Facebook SDK to pass these events back to Meta. If you haven't done that, stop everything you're doing and fix it now. Without that data, you're flying blind.
So what should I be measuring instead of Cost Per Install?
The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Install go?" but "How high a Cost Per Acquisition can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" To answer that, you need to understand one of the most important metrics in your business: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). If you don't know this number, you have no business running paid ads.
Calculating your LTV tells you exactly what a customer is worth to you over their entire relationship with your app. Once you know that, you can make intelligent decisions about how much you're willing to pay to get one. Let's break it down.
You need three bits of information:
1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month on average?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after app store fees, server costs, etc.?
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your paying customers do you lose each month?
The calculation is simple: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
Let's run through a quick example for a hypothetical productivity app.
| Metric | Example Value | Commentary |
|---|---|---|
| Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) | £15/month | Your average monthly subscription price. |
| Gross Margin % | 70% | After Apple/Google's cut and other direct costs, you keep 70p of every £1. |
| Monthly Churn Rate | 5% | You lose 5 out of every 100 paying customers each month. |
| Calculation | LTV = (£15 * 0.70) / 0.05 | |
| Lifetime Value (LTV) | £210 | |
In this example, every single paying customer is worth £210 in gross margin to your business. Now you have power. A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means for a £210 LTV, you can afford to spend up to £70 to acquire a single paying customer and still have a brilliant business.
Suddenly, that £5 cost per install that scared you doesn't matter. If it takes you 10 installs to get one paying customer, your CAC is £50. With an LTV of £210, you're making a massive profit on every new user. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. You stop worrying about cheap installs and start focusing on acquiring high-value users, even if they cost more upfront.
Okay, I get the maths. But who do I actually target without using location?
Forget the broad, demographic-based profiles. "Men aged 25-40 who live in London" tells you nothing of value. To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. What is the specific, urgent, expensive nightmare that your app solves?
Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is not a person; it's a problem state. Let's take that meditation app again. The problem isn't "people who want to relax." That's too broad. The nightmare is "a startup founder lying awake at 3am, heart pounding, terrified of missing payroll next month." The pain is "a junior doctor finishing a 14-hour shift, completely burnt out and dreading doing it all again tomorrow." Your app isn't a vitamin; it's a painkiller. You need to become an expert in their pain.
Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can find them on Meta. Where do these people hang out online? What do they follow?
-> The startup founder probably follows VCs like Paul Graham, reads TechCrunch, and is in Facebook groups like 'SaaS Growth Hacks'.
-> The junior doctor might follow medical journals, belong to groups for NHS staff, and follow accounts related to medical specialisations.
This is how you build powerful interest-based audiences. You're not targetting "meditation"; you're targeting the symptoms of the problem your app solves. We see so many people make basic mistakes here. If you sell an app for eCommerce store owners, do not target the interest "Amazon". You'll hit millions of shoppers. It's a waste of money. You need to target interests that only your ideal customer would have. Here's how that thinking looks in practice:
| App Type | Rubbish Targeting (Too Broad) | Smarter Targeting (Pain-Based) |
|---|---|---|
| eCommerce Analytics App | "Amazon", "Online Shopping", "Entrepreneurship" | Interests: "Shopify", "WooCommerce", "BigCommerce". Behaviours: "Facebook Page Admins (Retail)". Job Titles: "eCommerce Manager" |
| Fitness & Diet App | "Fitness", "Weight Loss", "Healthy Eating" | Interests: "MyFitnessPal", "Peloton", "Gymshark", "Joe Wicks". People who follow specific fitness influencers or diet brands. |
| Language Learning App | "Travel", "Languages" | Interests: "Duolingo", "Babbel", "Rosetta Stone". People interested in Expat life, or who follow pages related to specific countries they might want to move to. |
Do this work first. Dig deep into the psyche of your user. Once you understand their pain, finding them becomes much, much easier.
How should I structure my campaigns and prioritise audiences?
Right, so you know who you're targeting and what you're optimising for. Now you need a proper structure. Chaos breeds wasted spend. I see so many accounts that are a mess of different ad sets, testing random things with no clear strategy. You need a funnel.
We structure nearly all our app campaigns in a similar way, moving from broad audiences down to highly specific retargeting. This is how you can systematically test and find winning audiences to scale, and it works for pretty much any niche.
Here's the audience priority list, adapted for an app:
Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Finding New People
This is where you find cold audiences who have never heard of you.
1. Detailed Targeting: The pain-based interests we just talked about. Group them into logical themes and test them against each other in different ad sets. This is your starting point.
2. Lookalike Audiences: Once you have enough data, this is where the real magic happens. Create Lookalikes based on your most valuable users. You need at least 100 people in your source audience, but more is always better. Test them in this order of priority:
-> Lookalike of Highest Value Paying Customers
-> Lookalike of All Paying Customers
-> Lookalike of Trial Started
-> Lookalike of Registration Completed
-> Lookalike of App Installs (use this one last)
-> Lookalike of people who watched 50% of your video ad
3. Broad Targeting: Once your pixel has thousands of conversion events, you can test broad targeting (no interests, just age/gender). This gives the algorithm maximum freedom, but it only works on mature accounts with lots of data.
Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - Re-engaging Prospects
These are people who have shown some interest but haven't taken that key action yet.
-> Retarget App Installs (exclude people who completed registration/trial)
-> Retarget people who completed registration (exclude people who started a trial)
-> Retarget people who watched 50%+ of your video ads (exclude installers)
Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Closing the Deal
These are your hottest prospects. People who got right to the point of paying you and then stopped.
-> Retarget people who started a trial (but haven't subscribed)
-> Retarget people who initiated checkout for a subscription (but didn't complete)
You should have separate, long-term campaigns for each stage of this funnel (ToFu, MoFu, BoFu). Inside each campaign, you have different ad sets testing the audiences for that stage. Run them, see what performs, turn off the losers, and give more budget to the winners. This systematic approach is how you scale reliably. We've used this exact framework to get results like 5,082 software trials at $7 each for one client, and 1,535 trials for another B2B SaaS client, all on Meta.
My targeting is better, but my ads still aren't working. What's wrong with my creative?
If your targeting is right but you're still not getting results, your ads are probably the problem. Most app ads are boring, generic, and look like... well, ads. They get scrolled past instantly. Your ad needs to grab someone by the eyeballs and speak directly to the nightmare you defined earlier.
Stop selling features. Sell the transformation. We use a few simple copywriting formulas that work wonders.
Before-After-Bridge: Paint a picture of their current hell (Before), show them the promised land (After), and position your app as the way to get there (Bridge).
Problem-Agitate-Solve: State their problem, pour salt in the wound by describing how much it sucks (Agitate), and then present your app as the solution.
Let's write a few examples:
| App Type | Ad Copy Example (Before-After-Bridge) |
|---|---|
| Productivity App | Headline: Your To-Do List is a Graveyard. Body: That to-do list has 50 items, sticky notes cover your monitor, and you still feel like you're getting nothing done. Another day ends with you feeling behind. Imagine finishing work at 5pm, feeling accomplished, knowing exactly what to focus on tomorrow. Our app is the bridge that turns chaos into clarity. Download and get your first week planned in 5 minutes. |
| Finance/Budgeting App | Headline: Scared to check your bank balance? Body: That "I'll just get paid soon" feeling again. You've got no idea where your money went, and credit card bills are looming. Imagine opening your banking app and feeling in complete control. You know exactly where every pound is going and you're effortlessly hitting your savings goals. We make it happen. Link your accounts and find your first £50 of savings for free. |
For the visuals, you need to test relentlessly. Static images, carousel ads showing different features, and video. Video is often the winner, especially User Generated Content (UGC). We've had several SaaS clients see fantastic results with simple, authentic-looking videos from real users. It doesn't have to be a polished Hollywood production. An iPhone video of someone genuinely explaining how your app solved their problem can be far more powerful because it feels real and trustworthy. It cuts through the noise. Get your first 100 users and ask your happiest ones to record a quick video for you in exchange for a lifetime deal or a gift card. The ROI on that is immense.
Is "Download Now" the best offer I can make?
Your offer is not the "download" button. That's a low-value, low-commitment action. Your real offer is the reason why they should download. It's the promise of what happens next. A lot of apps fail here. They get the install, and then the user opens the app to a blank screen or an immediate paywall. It's a terrible first experience.
You need to lead with value. The gold standard for most apps and SaaS products is a completely free trial or a generous freemium plan. No credit card required. Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You're not just getting installs; you're creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already convinced.
If you're pre-launch, you can still make a powerful offer. Create a landing page for a waitlist. Show off the features, get people excited. But don't just say "Join the waitlist." Offer them something tangible:
-> "Join the waitlist for 50% off your first year."
-> "Be one of the first 500 to sign up and get a lifetime deal for £99."
-> "Get early access and help shape the future of the app."
This builds a community before you even launch and gives you a pool of beta testers. I've seen a software client generate over $30k in sales just from a lifetime deal offer to their early adopters. It gave them the cash flow to fund further development and a base of evangelists to spread the word. Your offer needs to feel like an unmissable opportunity.
What kind of costs should I expect, and how do I handle different countries?
This is the "how long is a piece of string" question, but based on the hundreds of campaigns we've run, we can give some ballpark figures. This is for a conversion objective like a signup or a trial start, not just a cheap install.
| Country Group | Typical Cost Per Click (CPC) | Typical Landing Page/App Store CVR | Estimated Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Developed Countries (UK, US, CA, AU, etc.) | £0.50 - £1.50 | 10% - 30% | £1.60 - £15.00 |
| Developing Countries | £0.10 - £0.50 | 10% - 30% | £0.33 - £5.00 |
As you can see, costs vary wildly. This is why you should never run a single "Worldwide" campaign. It's lazy and inefficient. The algorithm will just spend all your money in the cheapest countries, flooding you with low-quality users and bots.
You need to run separate campaigns for different country tiers. At a minimum, I'd suggest:
1. A campaign for your primary, high-value markets (e.g., just the US, or the top 5 English-speaking countries). This gets the highest quality, but also the highest cost.
2. A campaign for all other 'Developed' countries.
3. A separate, small-budget test campaign for 'Developing' countries if your app is relevant there.
This structure allows you to set different budgets and CPA goals for each tier, ensuring you're not sacrificing quality for the sake of cheap numbers. My advice is almost always to focus on quality over quantity. It's better to pay £10 for a user from the UK who converts than £1 for a user from a low-income country who never will. If you absolutly must target lower-income countries, make sure you have strong bot protection like email verification or a captcha on your signup flow.
This is a lot. What's my step-by-step plan?
I get it, this can feel overwhelming. It's a lot more work than just boosting a post. But this is the process that separates the apps that scale profitably from the ones that burn out. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a simple action plan:
| Step | Action To Take | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Define Your Real Goal | Stop optimising for 'App Installs'. Switch your campaign objective to a valuable in-app event like 'Trial Started' or 'Subscription'. Ensure your SDK is passing this data back to Meta. | You'll get fewer, more expensive installs, but far more high-quality users who actually make you money. |
| 2. Calculate Your LTV | Work out your Average Revenue Per Account, Gross Margin, and Churn Rate. Calculate your Lifetime Value. Determine your maximum affordable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). | This frees you from the tyranny of cheap installs and allows you to bid confidently to acquire valuable customers. |
| 3. Define Your ICP's Pain | Go beyond demographics. What is the nightmare your app solves? What are the symptoms of that pain? Brainstorm a list of highly specific interests related to that pain. | This is the foundation of effective targeting. It ensures your message reaches people who have an urgent need for your solution. |
| 4. Build Your Audience Funnel | Create separate campaigns for ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu. Systematically test your pain-based interests, then layer in Lookalikes and Retargeting as you gather data. | This provides a structured way to test, learn, and scale your spend on the audiences that actually perform. |
| 5. Create Pain-Point Creative | Write ad copy using formulas like Before-After-Bridge. Test different formats, especially authentic-looking UGC videos that show the transformation. | Creative that speaks directly to a user's problem will always outperform generic ads that just list features. |
| 6. Make an Irresistible Offer | Lead with value. Offer a free trial or a freemium plan (no card required). Let the product do the selling. | A strong, low-friction offer dramatically increases the conversion rate from install to active, paying user. |
Why can't I just do all this myself?
You can. All the information is out there. But what you're paying for with an expert isn't just the knowledge; it's the experience, the speed, and the avoidance of costly mistakes. We've managed millions in ad spend across hundreds of app and software campaigns. We've seen what works, what doesn't, and we can spot the patterns much faster.
We've taken clients from a £100 Cost Per Acquisition down to £7 for a medical job matching SaaS. We've generated a 1000% Return on Ad Spend for subscription businesses. That's the kind of impact that deep expertise can have. It's about implementing this entire system quickly and efficiently, optimising it daily, and knowing which levers to pull when performance changes.
Doing it yourself means a lot of trial and error, and that error costs real money. If you're serious about scaling your app and want to accelerate the process, it might be worth getting some professional advice. We offer a free initial consultation where we can look over your current setup and give you some specific, actionable advice to get you started on the right path.
